
Choosing the right sleep schedule to maximize time and keep you healthy - ga0bi
http://lemikegao.com/startup-sleep-setting-up-a-sleep-schedule-to-19349
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pwenzel
My child wakes me up every 90 minutes to 2 hours, and I sleep cumulative 5
hours per day. I find this awful sleep regimen affecting my health in many
ways:

1\. My memory is shoddy at best. It's bad enough that Google and Wikipedia
have made my mind lazy, but with lack of sleep, it's worse. For some reason,
pronouns (names, places, and co-workers) are very difficult to remember.

2\. I eat a poor diet. Since I wake up at odd hours of the night, I eat more
convenience foods to fill up my wrenched stomach.

3\. I like to exercise, but it's damn hard to do on such little sleep.

4\. I love my wife dearly, but spousal bickering is the worst at 4am.

Based on my personal research, I recommend the author considers alternatives
to cutting sleep.

As an aside, I live in Minnesota, where it dark for extended periods of time
during the winter. Vitamin D deficiency and seasonal affective disorder are
REAL. I do not look forward to combined SAD and lack of sleep this winter.

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skrebbel
> _"but now that i'm currently uninsured (i may do a follow-up post on finding
> cheap health insurance packages), i'm beginning to care more about my
> physical and mental health."_

This one really scared me. The author wants to work on his health for _money
reasons_? I know that money is virtue in California, but isn't this taking it
a little to extremes?

I find the idea to screw up your health because you're "insured anyway", well,
disturbing. Not sure I'd take sleeping advice from someone with this attitude.

~~~
jonnathanson
_"The author wants to work on his health for money reasons?"_

Why should that surprise you? If you're uninsured, you'll pay a small fortune
for any medical expenses you might incur. (Hell, you'll likely pay a small
fortune even if you _are_ insured).

Hence, someone who's uninsured should take a pretty keen interest in
maintaining and improving his health. I mean, obviously we all should. But for
the uninsured, a health problem is also a potentially catastrophic financial
problem.

 _"I find the idea to screw up your health because you're "insured anyway",
well, disturbing"_

I think that's a misinterpretation of the article.

~~~
argv_empty
Most people I've known prefer good health because it feels good and wouldn't
need to cite lack of insurance, dishonest insurer, etc. as reasons to maintain
it.

 _I think that's a misinterpretation of the article._

Or simple contraposition :-P

~~~
drbaskin
_Or simple contraposition :-P_

Please correct me if I am wrong, but if the relevant part of the article is "I
do not have insurance, so it is important that I maintain my health", then the
contraposition would be "It is not important that I maintain my health, so it
follows that I have insurance." What you are suggesting as the contraposition
is "I have insurance, so it is not important that I maintain my health", which
is the inverse of the statement (and equivalent to the converse "If it is
important that I maintain my health, then I do not have insurance."

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gmodena
I really liked this overview!

For the academic inclined, there is some awesome body of work done by the
Affective Computing group at Media Lab:
<http://affect.media.mit.edu/projects.php?id=3162>

As for myself, one of the next gadgets on my buying list is the zeo personal
sleep coach (AFAIK there are no affordable consumer-level competitors at the
moment): <http://www.myzeo.com/sleep/>

Would love to hear from people with hands on experience with it.

~~~
gwern
> Would love to hear from people with hands on experience with it.

I suppose I could promote myself since you asked for it:
<http://www.gwern.net/Zeo>

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tatsuke95
>"definitely do not take hormonal supplements just to fall asleep."

I'm going to partially disagree with the author here.

I take 3-5mg of oral melatonin every night, and have for years. My basic
research, which includes talking to my and my girlfriend's physician, has
concluded that there's no harm in taking it as a supplement. Unlike
pharmaceuticals, melatonin doesn't knock you out, it creates a very natural
sensation of, well, being sleepy. But you can take it in the middle of the day
and not have it affect you at all with respect to drowsiness (though I
wouldn't recommend warping your hormone pattern like that).

Read up on using it as a supplement. It has long list of benefits/possible
benefits, and very few possible side effects. Oh, and it will help you fall
asleep.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin>

~~~
powertower
3-5mg of melatonin will have the opposite effect on me and prevent me from
falling asleep.

The effective range for me is less-than 0.5mg, anything over that and receptor
cross-over happens.

The main problems I have with it is that: 1) it makes me useless the next day
(lack of motivation) and 2) I can only take it for a couple of days otherwise,
even with the low dosage, it ends up having the opposite effect on me (just
can't fall asleep that 3rd day on).

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latch
Off topic, I know..but the lack of capital letters is both annoying and lame.

~~~
01Michael10
I don't think your comment was off topic. The no capitalization thing was
annoying and I didn't finish reading the post. His readership demographic must
be the 25 and under crowd...

~~~
doctoboggan
I am under 25 and usually apathetic to the occasional grammatical error, but
using literally no capitalization really turned me off and I did not finish
reading what he had to say.

~~~
ga0bi
I suppose I can start capitalizing my "i's" :). regardless, thanks for the
feedback.

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kin
For those of you who have a hard time getting up after long hours, I've
learned that though alarms that cause me to panic do successfully wake me up,
majority of the time I snooze it and go back to sleep or because it
interrupted my REM, I end up having a groggy day. I suggest one of those
gradual alarms that build up, really great results in how I feel throughout
the day regardless of sleep hours.

Also from personal experience, sleeping more than 9 hours really can have
adverse effects to your day short term as well as your body long term.

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gwern
> assuming that you will still have a balanced social life, i have not found
> any conclusive research that proves it is harmful to sleep at an irregular
> hour.

Well, depending on what you mean by that. For example, go to sleep with the
sun shining on you, and I guarantee you you will have worse sleep from lack of
melatonin secretion!

In a related point, while researching links between melatonin & depression for
<http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin#fn5> I noticed that Lewy et al 2006's SAD
sufferers had normal total amounts of sleep, but they all seem to suffer
delays or advances in their sleep schedule compared to normal people, which is
suggestive...

~~~
ga0bi
you're correct; if you go to bed with the sun shining on you, not only will
you have uncomfortable sleep, you will also have an extremely weak immune
system and will be more prone to sickness (due to the lack of melatonin).
further points are discussed in the bullet lists.

the best environment to sleep in would be a dim/dark room. personally, I'm
sleeping in the living room, so I make sure that the blinds are properly
blocking potential sunlight to ensure uninterrupted sleep.

------
th
> be exposed to the sun: only reliable way to generate vitamin D in your body
> (helps bone mineralization)

I think sunlight exposure may be important for a healthy mental state as well.
A few years ago I adopted a schedule of sleeping around 10AM and waking up
around 6PM. I maintained a reasonable level of sun exposure in the morning,
but I would usually wake up shortly after sunset leaving me without sun for
the first half of my day. I found that after a few days of this I would wake
up every day disappointed that I'd woken up in darkness again. Around this
same time period I had no problems waking up at 3PM every day, even though I
didn't always go outside while it was still light.

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sliverstorm
I personally have found, research or no, that shifting my sleep schedule later
has deleterious effects on my state of being the following day. I do not sleep
less time (I wake later- my internal clock is very reliable about extracting
8:30-9:00hrs of sleep when alarm clocks don't intervene). This holds whether
or not I am keeping a regular sleep schedule, have curtains, when I last ate
food, etc.

I find I am most effective when I begin sleep at ~11PM.

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quizbiz
When ever I am "in the zone", I keep working.

I have a siesta + short sleep routine:

My long sleep session is usually crashing soon after I get home. On top of
that, I get 2-3 hours either between classes or right before my first class.

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rayhano
What an awesome article. Interesting about not sleeping more than 2 times in a
day and which hormones are stimulated how and why.

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changdizzle
hmm, very interesting thoughts - definitely good to keep in mind as i know
we're all workaholics

