
Sleep deprivation is increasing our risk of serious illness - open-source-ux
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/sep/24/why-lack-of-sleep-health-worst-enemy-matthew-walker-why-we-sleep
======
mratzloff
I haven't used an alarm in probably a decade, outside of super early flights.
I consistently wake up when I need to. I have no problems with insomnia. I
don't need caffeine to feel awake and in fact haven't drank any in about three
years. I wake up feeling refreshed and happy and looking forward to the day.

I say this because I used to have pretty bad insomnia. Weeks of almost no
sleep. Let me tell you: when sleep is not going right for you, nothing is
going right. Sleep does wonders for depression, too. So I looked at everything
I was doing wrong and changed it all. I changed my diet, my work habits,
everything. I don't do a lot of critical thinking an hour or two before bed
(no work, no computer). I've trained my body to know how to sleep. I go to bed
at around the same time every night, and I listen to my body. Barring those
with actual medical issues, for the majority, it is a choice.

~~~
ThrowawayP
> _I was doing wrong and changed it all. I changed my diet, my work habits,
> everything..._

I did all of those things too and it did nothing for either my insomnia or
depression. There are a surprising number of us out there with, as you say,
"actual medical issues".

~~~
noitsnot
He found his cure so he thinks it will work for everyone. It never works that
way.

~~~
louprado
Or he may have "found" his cure but it was not one of the variables he
mentioned. With that caveat, here's what I changed to fix my 25+ years of
insomnia.

1) Always wear socks and semi-tight fitting pants and t-shirt.

2) I increased (yes increased) my calories by ~20% but I stop eating by 6PM.

3) If you suffer from PTSD or wake up screaming when someone tries to wake
you, either A) get a dog or B) Do heavy weight training and learn a viscous
form of martial arts / street fighting as it will make you feel safer.

4) Avoid toxic people. This one was the hardest.

------
hal9000xp
There is massive problem in the culture about value of sleep. The culture
_implicitly_ defines mentality where working hard without much sleep is
somewhat heroic. Therefore according to the culture (again _implicitly_ )
those who sleep a lot are lazy.

Hard working heroes who sacrifice sleep from time to time displayed in popular
films. Take for example three films _Micro Men_ [1] and _The Martian_ [2] and
_The Social Network_ [3].

In first two films, hard working heroes don't "waste" time on
"useless/unproductive" sleep and instead drink lots caffeine.

In corporate culture it's often the same. Since 2006 till 2008 I worked as a
technical support engineer and I often had to work at night. Sometimes, I took
two hours of sleep (in an office's couch) from 4 AM till 6 AM. After these two
hours of sleep I would be energized and work really productive till 9 AM. But
the company decided to impose strict ban on sleeping in office and instead put
coffee machine. As I expected my performance fell significantly no matter how
much coffee I took. So the company put stupid discipline over actual
performance.

In 2014, I had insomnia so I couldn't perform well at work (again no matter
how much coffee I took). I went to corporate doctor (a doctor assigned by
company). She looked at me and said that I don't have bruises under my eyes,
so I'm totally fine. More than that she actually didn't take any my complaints
seriously and instead assumed that I'm lazy.

Nowadays, I mostly sleep well and I almost don't drink caffeine. Sometimes, my
insomnia came back. Since I participate in algorithm contests and I know very
well that _no matter how hard I try to work hard without enough sleep I do not
perform well in algorithm contests_.

The mentality that working hard is opposite to good sleep is most irrational,
harmful and widespread yet very implicit thing in the culture.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Men)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_\(film\))

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network)

~~~
spraak
I wonder if there is a reverse effect of taking caffeine when tired/sleep
deprived? Some days when I'd hardly slept the night before I would try to rely
on caffeine to make it through the day but actually found myself ready to fall
asleep after the drink.

In any case I definitely agree, get sleep instead of coffee.

~~~
synicalx
So weird, same thing happens to me - I can drink a huge can of energy drink,
or a strong coffee or anything else with a lot more caffeine in it than usual
and within 20 minutes I'm ready for a nap.

Not medical advice, I'm not a doctor, go speak to a doctor, this isn't a
substitute for sleep etc etc. But in my experience, whenever I've found myself
in a situation where I'm not able to get much sleep but still need to function
for an extended period of time, Modafinil or Armodafinil has been an absolute
life saver. No lingering caffeine like coffee as well, once it wears off it's
gone and you can sleep normally (roughly 12-14 hours).

Overall downside - it's not super well researched, especially long-term
effects, might cause brain problems, or cancer, who knows? I also often hear
of people coming to rely on it as a substitute for sleep - it's not addictive
per se, but what it allows you to do definitely can be.

------
spodek
This article says:

> _It’s his conviction that we are in the midst of a “catastrophic sleep-loss
> epidemic”, the consequences of which are far graver than any of us could
> imagine... sleep deprivation... constitutes anything less than seven hours_

I thought we found out that we sleep the same as our ancestors. This article
-- [https://ca.news.yahoo.com/nightmare-sleep-no-more-
plentiful-...](https://ca.news.yahoo.com/nightmare-sleep-no-more-plentiful-
primitive-cultures-183037441.html) \-- says

> _Even without electricity or other modern trappings, they [the Tsimane
> people of Bolivia, Hadza people of Tanzania and San people of Namibia]
> logged an average of 6 hours and 25 minutes of sleep daily, a figure near
> the low end of industrialized society averages._

~~~
saimiam
How long do those peoples live? If their expectancy is less than or similar to
modern society's after controlling for infant mortality and preventable deaths
before say 18, then maybe the lack of sleep is hurting them too.

------
tabeth
Even if it's true that less sleep results in less life, it's still a wash.

Say you slept 10 hours a day and lived to 100. In other words, you have 14
wakings hours times 100 years. 1400 * 365 hours, in other words. Now compare
this to sleeping 6 hours a day and living to 80. In other words, 18 waking
hours. 1440 * 365 in a year, in this case.

This gets more complicated if you abandon the hours and rather frame it as a
percentage of time you spend with the people you care about. Now your sleep is
a function of their sleep and the math gets too convoluted, but I'm sure you
get the point.

Whether one is better than the other is more of a philosophical question, but
just food for thought.

IMHO people shouldn't worry about these kinds of things. In general, trying to
optimize the quality of life you have when you're awake will generally lead to
the optimal outcome in general. In this case, eating well, exercising and
having meaningful relationships will result in a higher quality sleep due to
lower stress and also make your waking hours also more enjoyable. Ultimately,
that's the point, right?

EDIT: Hah, forgot to multiply by 365, but my point stands.

~~~
knocte
>Say you slept 10 hours a day and lived to 100. In other words, you have 14
wakings hours times 100 years. 1400 hours, in other words. Now compare this to
sleeping 6 hours a day and living to 80. In other words, 18 waking hours. 1440
in a year, in this case.

True, but what's the quality of life of those zombie-walking hours?

~~~
tabeth
That's not the point though. You could replace 6 and 10 with 8 and 12.

------
quuquuquu
I'm unemployed. I sleep 10 hours per day.

When I was employed, I slept 6 hours per day.

The difference in mood is massive.

However, I'm not sure if the working world will change. It's a zero sum game
of who is willing to torture themselves the most, which is sometimes
correlated with how much work you produce.

At my past job, it wasn't enough to just produce. You had to /look like/ you
were producing. This meant working 8-6. This meant skipping lunch. This meant
always sitting at your desk (no walking meetings).

Obvioisly not every employer is like this. But working is a pretty decent way
to kill yourself. It happens to most people eventually.

~~~
InternetUser
>The difference in mood is massive.

What are two adjectives that describe your previous mood, and two that
describe your current one?

~~~
quuquuquu
6 hours' sleep = zombified, confused, stressed, steeped in dread

10 hours' sleep = alert, optimistic, sharp, happy

And the only variable that changed was lengthOfSleep !

~~~
asdfologist
I thought another variable that changed was your employment status. That's a
huge one, no?

~~~
quuquuquu
Correct, becomeUnemployed() was what altered lengthOfSleep :)

I certainly could have tried to sleep more while I was working, but there
really wasn't a way for me to personally achieve that. My boss and company
were psycho. Lots of unpaid forced overtime, else fired. Lots of meetings and
political games to play, else fired.

I wish my skills were desired elsewhere but it's been difficult to find a new
job. So, plenty of time for me to sleep.

I definitely am exercising the same amount as I was while working. Sleep
changed everything.

EDIT: How on earth is this answer downvotable?

What have I said that is even remotely wrong or controversial?

~~~
jackmott
the job stress elimination could be the first order cause rather than amouny
of sleep. thus pedants must downvote. it is their way. our way?

------
chimprich
One thing that never seems to be discussed in these type of articles is that
for most people time awake is significantly more valuable than time spent
asleep. An extended lifespan is of little use to me if those extra hours are
spent unconscious.

If I spend 10% extra of my time awake (2.4 hours) but shorten my life by 5%,
that seems like a worthwhile trade-off. (That's just an example; I've no idea
if those figures are in any way plausible, but I'd be interested in any
research that tried to figure out the optimum level of sleep for maximum life-
awake time.)

~~~
Hyperbolic
This makes no sense. It's not just that you might, for example, die at 70
instead of 75 if you don't sleep. The point is that your quality of life
during those 70 years would be horrible, for all the points listed in the
article.

~~~
louprado
But you could use caloric restriction to get some of those years back. You're
probably near rock-bottom grumpiness/misery anyway so the cost is minimal.

------
lg
> An adult sleeping only 6.75 hours a night would be predicted to live only to
> their early 60s without medical intervention.

I wonder if this controls for other lifestyle factors. Eating a lot before bed
makes me sleepier and I could go 7-8 hours a night. Small dinner several hours
before bed results in about 6 hours. No alarm clock, that's just how much I
need. I find it hard to believe that I'm shortening my lifespan by eating less
at night.

~~~
misev
Maybe sleeping long enough (7-8 hours) requires a certain (higher) amount of
energy, which would be supported by a big dinner before bed? Not sure if there
are any studies on this.

------
bonniemuffin
This reminds me of a delightful article that helped me fall back in love with
sleep (and therefore find it easier to fall asleep):
[https://aeon.co/essays/the-cure-for-insomnia-is-to-fall-
in-l...](https://aeon.co/essays/the-cure-for-insomnia-is-to-fall-in-love-with-
sleep-again)

------
zild3d
> the number of people who can survive on five hours of sleep or less without
> any impairment, expressed as a percent of the population and rounded to a
> whole number, is zero.

Pretty deceiving claim, the author starts with "the number of people", but
gives a rounded down percentage instead

the point would be perfectly clear as "only 0.X% of people ..."

------
joveian
"Deep sleep – the part when we begin to dream"

While I'm glad they don't use the popular but incorrect REM sleep == dream
sleep, I don't think this is correct either. I have a circadian rhythm
disorder and had severe insomnia before that and so have observed the process
of getting to sleep in slow motion many times. At least in many cases for me,
dreaming preceeds sleep by a bit as gently waundering thoughts gradually turn
into dreaming (this might be considered stage 1 sleep on polysomnograph, but
certainly not deep sleep). I have a poor visual memory and when I notice
visual recall when close to sleep then that is a very good sign that sleep is
about to happen. It turns into dreaming a little bit after that and then I
fall asleep, although I don't think it always follows this progression (and I
don't think I always get visual recall before sleep).

~~~
Shikadi
I was under the impression that rem was the state when you dream, and you can
sometimes enter it before the other stages, can you enlighten me to the truth
with a decent source? Thanks =D

~~~
joveian
I think the best article on this is Mark Solms 2000 "Dreaming and REM sleep
are controlled by different brain mechanisms"[0]. Solms and a couple of
coauthors have an article this year, "Dreaming in Neurological Disorders"[1],
which is also great although I don't think it directly answers your question.

My sense is that it is still being debated if there are differences in the
types of dreams that happen in different stages or not. I couldn't find it
last time I looked, but some research somewhat recently found that medically
extinguishing REM sleep did not produce a detectable change in dream reports.
Other studies seem to show that there may be differences.

[0] [http://neuro.bstu.by/ai/To-
dom/My_research/Papers-2.1-done/C...](http://neuro.bstu.by/ai/To-
dom/My_research/Papers-2.1-done/Cognitive-S/Consciousness/For-
icnnai-2010/2/Ref/download.pdf)

[1] [https://twin.sci-
hub.ac/cd77f4d5f6111801eee90b66a3ac13ee/sol...](https://twin.sci-
hub.ac/cd77f4d5f6111801eee90b66a3ac13ee/solms2017.pdf)

~~~
Shikadi
Awesome material, thanks!

------
Apocryphon
Two thoughts on how sleep deprivation directly impacts hackers and people
working in the tech industry:

1\. Glorifying low sleep through all-nighters, perpetual crunch time, etc.,
has become part and parcel of startup life for generations [0]. (I've always
wondered if it's a carryover from the particularly collegiate nature of
software culture [1]). There's been some backlash against founders and the
like boasting about operating on low sleep, as part of the general backlash
against poor work-life balances in tech. Hackers need to push back against the
suboptimal performance and system degradation that chronic sleep deprivation
creates.

2\. The tech industry, known for its whimsical benefits and presumptions to
think differently and be unconventional, could explore allowing employees to
take nap breaks. So far it looks like Google and Cisco are among the handful
of large tech companies to allow employees to nap [2], but one wonders how
many employees with poor sleep hygiene actually do take advantage of it, and
whenever those articles pop up it always seems like ads for sleep pods. Yet
siestas and naps are something that have been allowed in cultures around the
world, even in work-heavy East Asia [3].

[0]
[https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=90_Hours_A_Week_...](https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=90_Hours_A_Week_And_Loving_It.txt)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11299145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11299145)

[2] [http://fortune.com/2011/08/18/why-companies-are-cozying-
up-t...](http://fortune.com/2011/08/18/why-companies-are-cozying-up-to-
napping-at-work/)

[3] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/japanese-
firms...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/japanese-firms-
encourage-workers-sleep-on-job) [http://mashable.com/2017/07/12/capsule-beds-
beijing/#ohlpi6K...](http://mashable.com/2017/07/12/capsule-beds-
beijing/#ohlpi6Knaaqr)

------
5_minutes
It doesn’t mention taking naps.

But damn, they make life pretty great!

~~~
manmal
It does, and mentions that they are not long enough to reach deep sleep. The
next sentence says that we need 4-5 cycles to get enough deep sleep.

------
zem
for the last few years, i've been getting by with 6 hours/night on weekdays
and 10 on weekends, but lately i've found myself waking up too early on
several weekends, and i'm a bit worried my body is getting used to "six hours
are all you get". need to work up the self discipline to close the book at
least an hour earlier every night.

~~~
Shikadi
I read somewhere recently that the 8 hours a night number is wrong, and it
depends on your age, lifestyle, and genetics. 6 was at the lower end of what
they said was fine, though unfortunately I don't remember the source or if it
was reputable.

------
anotherevan
The quality of your sleep is an important factor too. If you suspect you may
have obstructive sleep apnea then go get it checked out.

------
wellboy
Wasn't the consensus that 7h sleep was the best for lifespan and more or less
than that lead du decreased life span?

~~~
cxseven
There was never a conclusion that certain sleep lengths _lead to_ decreased
life span, only a correlation. The causal link has been suggested to be the
reverse - that sick people tend to stay in bed longer because they're sick. I
believe I saw a recent article that even said that the popular takeaway that
avoiding "oversleep" is healthy is the opposite of reality, because extended
sleep is actually a healing mechanism.

