
Sleep Debt - brett40324
http://www.howsleepworks.com/need_debt.html
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nul_byte
I tend to go to bed around 11pm each night and awake at 7am (even on the
weekends as I have young kids) and I still feel like I am lacking sleep and I
am often tried during the day. This I know is direct a result of my (poor)
quality of sleep. I often wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble
getting back to sleep. I have tried a few things to address this: sleep apnoea
tests, having coffee cut off at 2pm, I run redshift on my laptop (light
balancer). I don't smoke or drink and I am not over weight.

I feel I still have a ton of sleep debt from my two children. Prior to having
kids I never felt tired and could have really long deep sleeps. My wife then
had our first and then second daughter and its not to often I have had a night
of sleep without someone waking up the family at 3am in the night. They are
getting better now (3 & 7 years old), but my sleep is not recovering with them
maturing in their own ability to sleep all night.

I often joke to my wife I would like to be hospitalised for two weeks and put
on a large dosage of Morphine coupled with a food drip and just crash for two
weeks.

I do need to get on top of this though, as it really can interfere with my
work (programmer). I feel tired a lot. I work from home, and I quite often
pull out the futon in my home office and crash for 30 minutes in the
afternoon.

~~~
plantain
I spent a few years oncall overnight at a company with very high pager load,
and my sleep seems irreparably damaged in the same way. I wake up in the night
and can't get back to sleep, and I almost always wake up well before my alarm
(after 6-7 hours), even though I still feel tired and remain tired through the
day.

I think there's something here, but I haven't figured out what or how to fix
it.

Things I've found that have helped:

A thorough eyemask and good earplugs reduce the awakenings and help me sleep
in a bit longer.

An air conditioner that runs into the morning to keep it cool - I think the
air temperature warming after the sun comes up starts to trigger wakefulness?

Cutting out sugar and caffeine after 6pm, which helps getting to sleep a
little.

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Eridrus
Any recommendations on an air conditioner that would work when it's below
freezing outside, but too hot inside?

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tomrod
If you don't have control over the heating being on, a cracked window goes a
long way. My (very, very dated) dorm my freshman year ran the heat 24/7, often
up to 85 degrees. Cracking a window kept it a pleasant 72 degrees. Wasteful?
Absolutely. But worked with the constraints given.

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Eridrus
Sadly it's hard to get a precise temperature this way when it's 30F oitside.
Waking up cold isn't much better than waking up hot.

~~~
randomdata
This is _Hacker_ News though. A thermostatically controlled actuator, or
similar, will fix that up.

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Eridrus
Yes, but I also value my time.

It's a possible project, but you would need to not only have something that
opened and closed, you would need a fan system to drive the air, and you would
need to have it be thermally insulated when closed, and unless you have a very
conservative cooling algorithm you would probably want a heating system to
deal with the room getting too cold because the room itself is not thermally
sealed.

It ends up being a DIY air conditioner/heater, which I'd rather just buy.

~~~
fghgfdfg
I think you're thinking a little too big. All I think that is really being
suggested is an automatic window cracker/closer.

If the goal is just to maintain a temperature I don't think you need to go to
most of the lengths you mentioned. You have a window that is currently
adequately insulated when shut. This is intended for maintenance so no need
for a fan to speed things up. However the room is getting too hot now will
suffice to heat it back up if needed, but again being slow means it shouldn't
overshoot badly either.

It still may not be worth your time, but if just cracking a window would be
sufficient cooling for most of the year it could be.

~~~
CalRobert
A moment's thought leads me to think you could use something like this: (temp-
controlled plug bar, basically)
[http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=536763](http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=536763)
Attached to a motor /servo (depending on your window) that will turn on or off
at a given temperature. Have a switch on the window which cuts off/enables the
power when the window is open or closed at the desired max/min.

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prophesi
The amount of highlighted words in the article irks me. Why not only highlight
a word when it's first introduced?

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rubyfan
That accident density distribution chart needs to be normalized for road
traffic and perhaps normalized for drunk/buzzed driving if we are to use it to
say anything about sleep deprivation influence on accidents.

~~~
majewsky
I'm pretty sure it's normalized in some way already. Traffic sure ain't
several times more intensive during the night [1]. Having said that, they
sorely need some proper units on that Y axis.

[1] Obligatory Australia joke: Maybe it's because they have night and day
swapped? Oh wait, that was summer and winter.

