

When Sleep Leaves You Tired - tjr
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124451280076496767.html#printMode

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TrevorJ
Not to downplay the severity of people's health problems when it comes to
certain sleep conditions, but I've observed a basic principle in life: When
you try to work in ways that go against the basic design of your body you have
to resort to a lot of complicated things to coddle and cajole your body into
going along with it. 300 dollar sleep devices, mattresses, alarm clocks et al.

At the end of the day, I wonder how many sleep issues would go away if we ate
correctly, stayed active, turned the lights out at dusk and kept the blinds
open for when dawn peeks through the curtains. When we operate outside our
design parameters we can function, but we function as visitors. Encumbered
with our mass of tools, plans, pills and procedures designed to enable us to
survive outside the envelope. Necessarily? Sometimes yes. Elegant? Almost
never.

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ghshephard
I couldn't agree with you more - but, the challenging part is, what does it
mean to take on a healthy lifestyle for a particular individual, to maximize
their sleep health?

I've found not eating a snack at night means that the next morning I have a
_very_ difficult time waking up. But, at the same time, eating the wrong type
of food (heavy on carbs, too much liquid) means that my sleep health is
reduced, though I am able to at least wake up quickly the next morning. A
half-cup of caffeinated coffee around 6:00, counter-intuitively, seems to let
me transition into a deep sleep a bit better (particularly with a walk at that
time) six hours later.

A walk around the neighborhood 3-4 hours before I go to sleep seems to be
about perfect for increasing the value of my sleep, but has little value 6-8
hours, and, is counter productive 1-2 hours before.

I think the goal of devices like the "MyZeo" isn't so much to improve the
health of your sleep, but to let you know whether the tweaks you are making to
your lifestyle, are actually having a positive or negative benefit. Does
opening my blinds (and allowing night lights in) improve my wakeup with the
morning light but reduce the quality of my sleep? What about adding one of
those eye-shades? How about putting on headphones with some nice background
noise?

What I like about the MyZeo is I can get some quantitative data and "Hack" my
sleep and see the results.

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TrevorJ
That is a good point. If a natural solution can't be arrived at through
intuition then more data may help steer us to the solution. I think your point
may be even more accurate today than it would have been years ago since the
artificial stuff in our environment tend to mess up our intuition a lot so you
can't really rely on just going with what 'feels' right until you retrain your
body. For instance artificial sweeteners taste the same as sugar to us so when
we want sugar we go for them, but it does little to solve the underlying
reason why we craved the sweets in the first place. (Low bloodsugar)

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thetrumanshow
Nice ad.

Go to your doctor, explain your sleep troubles, see if you can get a sleep
study. Check with your insurance, they may pay for it (~$1200).

Also, if you opt to see your doctor over the Zeo $400 doctor-mom route, he
would be able to prescribe a CPAP device in the event that you have sleep
apnea, or controlled medicines such as Provigil that require a bit of extra
medical evaluation to get approved.

~~~
hunterjrj
Also, note that if you are in Ontario (as I know several HN'ers are), OHIP
will subsidize up to 750 dollars of your CPAP, if a sleep study yields a
prescription.

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sjf
The headline is deceptive, the point of the article is interrupted and
insufficient sleep leaves you tired.

~~~
jonsen
The headline didn't deceive me. The article was up to my expectations from the
headline.

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jobu
The article struck me as a thinly veiled advertisement for the Zeo Personal
Sleep Coach. Not much substance.

~~~
kentosi
to be honest, i thought the same. but it does have a lot of interesting facts.

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gyeh
_"I’ve always figured out that there 24 hours a day. You sleep six hours and
have 18 hours left. Now, I know there are some of you out there that say well,
wait a minute, I sleep eight hours or nine hours. Well, then, just sleep
faster..."_

The Governator (USC '09 Commencement)

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davidmathers
I just ordered the Zeo Sleep Coach. Interesting idea. Hoping they wouldn't
have gone to market unless they had it working reasonably well. 30 day refund
just in case.

~~~
Derek_At_Zeo
Hi David,

We're excited for you to begin the journey of discovering more about your
sleep, and are excited to hear your thoughts.

We spent more than 5 years developing and testing Zeo until our early users
(over 150 of them) told us it was ready.

Not sure if you saw, but the uploading your data to an online account is
included along with 6 months of sleep coaching via email.

Enjoy! -Derek@Zeo

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costan
So now I'll have two devices measuring me every day: the Wii Fit and the Zoo
sleep device.

I foresee a niche in getting all this data out of walled gardens and putting
it together seamlessly. Google Health would be a good place... except Google
has too much data and it needs to see someone else do this first.

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matt1
Zeo Personal Sleep Coach, from the article, FYI:

<http://www.myzeo.com/pages/4_what_is_zeo_.cfm>

$399

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ibsulon
800 bucks for the two of us... it might still be worth it.

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infinibuy
Yes, this point of living a more holistic lifestyle would definitely cut down
sleep problems in America. If anyone is familiar with Penn and Teller's show
"Bullshit," they spend of their episodes trying to de mystify different sleep
remedies and solutions. The go into how the sleep industry (mattresses,
pillows, etc.) is a multibillion dollar a year business which attracts many
con artists promising you a better sleep than you normally get.

During the show, they had an insomniac test out different mattresses and sleep
solutions and they fittingly concluded that it was, well, bullshit. They ended
the show by saying that the best way to get a a good nights sleep was to eat a
healthy diet and exercise regularly. Its funny how living healthy can help
with just about an physical or mental problem these days. Too many people are
looking for the quick fix but all they really need to do is adjust their poor
lifestyle decisions.

