

Up All Night: The Science of Sleeplessness (2013) - benbreen
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/03/11/up-all-night-2?currentPage=all

======
jacquesm
Very interesting read. I have a completely different problem, I'm addicted to
the night. It's much more quiet, fewer distractions and I tend to be far more
productive than during the day. Much easier to get into the 'zone' at night
than during the day.

As a result when I'm not on the clock for someone I tend to sleep very
erratically, get up at the weirdest times and go to bed at even weirder ones.
When I'm inspired the hours just fly by. I forget to eat/drink. This usually
is not a huge problem but it can take a while to re-sync with the rest of the
world when I have to. Not having a watch (and not compulsory checking the
phone) really helped me to no longer think of this as a big deal. But there
are still days when I freak out and go 'seven already???' thinking it must be
early afternoon.

I also tend to completely forget what day of the week it is which can lead to
interesting situations when having to deal with authorities and other
companies. Arriving at the municipality office on a Sunday is definitely not
going to get you served.

I think there is a small error in one sentence in the article, at some point
it reads "When the subjects woke, they tended to say that they’d slept better
when they’d been together. ", I think given the rest of the sentences around
there that a 'than' should have been present before the 'when'.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Inspiration is weird like that. Very occasionally, it impedes my ability to
sleep. In these cases, I'll try to sleep for about 45 min, then get up and
start hacking. Time flows extremely quickly at night when I'm in this state,
despite the fact that the clock is always visible on-screen.

When I finally look over, it's 4am, my hands aching from not moving out of
typing position for at least 4 hours, and I can usually settle into 4 hours or
so of sleep. The resulting sleep is usually very deep and relaxing.

If that's the price of being courted by a muse, I'm fine with it.

~~~
MacsHeadroom
Whatever works for you. But 45 minutes is outside of the sweet spot for naps.

Our bodies produce sedative hormones after about 30 minutes of sleep and don't
let up for another 30-60 minutes after that.

~~~
j_s
I believe 45 minutes is the conventional wisdom for maximum nap time.

[http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/naps/](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/naps/)

------
omurphyevans
Until recently I thought I had a serious sleep issue - perhaps apnea. I would
be tired during the day, and by mid-afternoon almost asleep at my desk. I
would even feel my brain shutting down while people were discussing things
with me. I'd drink several cups of coffee a day just to stay awake.

Then for an unrelated reason I stopped drinking alcohol in the evening during
the week. The effect was immediate. After a day I felt better. After two days
I was alert all day - no coffee, nothing.

It seems I could drink in my twenties and it didn't matter too much. Now in my
mid-thirties a couple of glasses of wine is enough to make me a tired the next
day. Any more and I'm a wreck...

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Alcohol keeps me from having restful sleep, both mentally and physically. I
find I don't dream much, and I'm usually extremely warm from metabolizing the
alcohol.

------
simonswords82
I was up until 2am this morning, simply couldn't sleep. Once the initial
thought of "oh no, I can't sleep" hit me I knew I was destined for a late
night. It's 20x worse if that thought hits me and I know I've got an early
start the next day.

I've met _lots_ of people who self-medicate their sleep patterns using a
combination of alcohol, sleep tablets (Melatonin for example), or weed. Over
time a dependency forms which then means they can't sleep without their
particular crutch.

Personally I've found exercise and avoiding work and computers 2 hours before
bedtime to be the best way to get a good night's sleep, but these good habits
are hard to maintain.

~~~
happyscrappy
At times I inexplicably wake at 2am no matter how tired I am. After three
nights of this I will start taking a single Melatonin tablet before bed. This
works and I stop after a week and then generally go many months before it
starts again. If I kept using Melatonin it would certainly lose its efficacy.

~~~
krrrh
A couple quick notes here further to your point: the effective dose for
melatonin seems to be around 250mcg, while most supplements are sold at 1, 3,
or 5mg. There is no evidence of melatonin losing effectiveness over time that
I'm aware of, but there is some evidence that larger doses are less effective
than 250mcg. Try splitting your pills or titrating your liquids and see how it
works for you.

Source: sorry, on mobile and just taking a quick break, this information has
appeared in other discussions on HN though, and should be googlable.

~~~
wahnfrieden
You can buy Melatonin pills in 300mcg amounts, see Amazon.

------
chanced
Ah, this after I laid awake in bed (or so I believe) until 5, decided to get
up and get to work. I'm cursing myself with insomnia by cycling in and out of
24, 48, and, in rare cases, 72 hour cycles. Yet I seem to work best with at
least some degree of exhaustion.

I generally hit peak efficiency between 20 and 32 hours. Beyond that, I'll
have bursts of productivity with the remaining time filled by mindless
distractions. Those bursts last anywhere from thirty minutes to several hours
but their frequency drops as the day(s) go on.

If I'm well rested I feel a lot better in general but I'm so easily distracted
that my productivity drops like a rock.

Having written this,I suspect I'm on a perpetual downward spiral where my
sleep patterns fuel an unhealthy lifestyle which I then remedy by subtracting
sleep...

------
petercooper
This article emphasizes just how weird sleep is and also how personal, but I
think there's far more to it than preferred sleep timing but also
_environment_.

It took me ages to get to sleep, unless I freecycled around the clock, until a
few years ago when I realized I often easily fell asleep while other people
were talking around me (think visiting family in the evening, Christmas, etc.)

Since then I've put a podcast/audiobook on, earphones in, and almost every
night since I'm asleep in 20 minutes. Realized I'm a verbal thinker and my
brain "stops thinking" if other chatter is distracting it, whereas silence
guarantees me a bad time. Now I sleep totally normal hours no problem.

~~~
Shengbo
You should try listening to ASMR videos to put you to sleep then.

------
Zenz
Similar to petercooper, I used podcasts and audiobooks to counter the chatter
in my brain.

But Shengbo's suggestion is a great one because I also found ASMR videos even
better. There are a variety of styles, but some are reading stories and in a
very relaxing voice - so best of both worlds.

You can read more about how ASMR videos may cause your brain to relax and
induce sleepiness here: [http://asmruniversity.com/origin-theory-of-
asmr/](http://asmruniversity.com/origin-theory-of-asmr/)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I use meditation. Deliberately let the chatter drift away, watch it disappear
into the void...asleep. 30 years of this, I can go to sleep in seconds.

------
tanvach
For anyone who experience 'inner chatter' when trying to sleep, I highly
recommend meditation. A few months ago I noticed that during meditation
classes I kept drifting off, so now I am using it as a sleeping tool. The act
of focusing on breathing and practicing to be thoughtless helped me through
the initial stages of sleep.

Unfortunately I am an owl, so it's still a fight to try to sleep in the first
place.

------
chris_wot
I can't help but post the following horror story, the Orange Soda sleep study:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXXnPRhAZbI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXXnPRhAZbI)

Sorry, I couldn't help posting this.

