One of the strategies that changed my sleep quality for the better is to stop taking coffee after 9 AM; after learning that caffeine has a half-life of around 6-7 hours[0], but a quarter-life of around 12 hours. If you have a cup of coffee at noon, a quarter of that caffeine can still be circulating around your brain at midnight.
This link unfortunately doesnt really address the chemical imbalances which are normalised throughout society as stress and aging. If you consider yourself to be just a complex chemical reaction with a consciousness as the end result of the complex chemical reactions which have evolved over thousands of years, then I'd simply be looking at chemical solutions for good rest.
Its not strictly true that caffeine has a half life of 6-7 hours, nicotine reduces this to 3-4hrs and some prescription drugs also affect the half life either by shortening it or increasing it, in extreme to 24-48hrs.
I found a few grams of Taurine will improve and increase sleep, the science is out there, the more you take the more you sleep and you can sleep through fire alarms and all sorts so use with caution.
Now a restless mind can also keep people awake, so increasing 5-alpha reductase by consuming Glycine can then break down cortisol. You will laugh your head off with lots of Glycine, so dont blame me if you laugh your head off in a stressful situation and get fired from a job or something!
I'd suggest Glycine but if you are not allowed sugar for medical reasons, consult a doctor first. Glycine like many chemicals play many parts in the body and combine with other chemicals, like other amino acids. Its one of the ingredients of creatine, now creatine gets broken down into creatinine which is a gram positive and gram negative anti bacterial, and bacteria in the brain & body can also affect personality so there may be other factors at play contributing to your mood. If you want to study this, then you should know the answer to your question!
A constant half-life is necessarily an exponential decrease (linear curve on a logarithmic plot). So, yes, if the half-life is 6 hours without qualification, then the quarter life will be 12 hours.
Though, in real-life you get things like enzyme saturation, depletion of chemicals consumed in the metabolism of the chemical, etc. Real world pharmacokinetics are probably not exactly constant half-lives.
For example, IIRC, the average American adult male saturates his alcohol dehydrogenase at about 3/4 shot of 80 proof liquor per hour. Below saturation, I presume ethanol has something close to a constant (and short) half-life, but that exponential decrease is only observed at alcohol concentrations where the effects of alcohol aren't very obvious. So, for most practical purposes, the biological half-life of ethanol doesn't apply and its metabolism is better approximated as a constant rate process.
Are there any examples of this?
If its half-life is 6 hours, then after six hours half of the caffeine is still there, and we know caffeine has a half life of 6 hours. I don't know of any molecules with a non-linear half-life but I might be completely wrong
There's a whole area for this - pharmacokinetics. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_half-life#Rate_equa... for examples of e.g. first order models (exponential elimination rate, etc.) It has to do with protein binding dynamics among other factors I have no idea about. Remember that you are dealing with biological systems.
Interesting, for a second I thought that had to be wrong because I was aware of aspirin and alcohol, but apparently they are the two common ones and the vast majority are a bit more complex, which also makes sense if you think about it logically I suppose.
It looks like in addition to those, others with zero-order pharmacokinetics include salicylates (salts of salicylic acid incl. aspirin), omeprazole (for indigestion), fluoxetine (antidepressant), phenytoin (for epilepsy), methanol (a poisonous alcohol) and cisplatin (chemo medication.)
This is one of those things you just have to try and see if it works. I've quit caffeine completely for a few weeks, and didn't notice a difference in my sleep quality.
I found it didn’t improve my sleep quality or my ability to fall asleep. However - I do feel like I have a slightly easier time getting out of bed now.
I’ve been off caffeine for a year or more. Having it actually makes my stomach slightly upset now. Similar to sugary drinks - I can’t do them anymore. Once I gave them up - I couldn’t go back.
Actually for me I sleep better at night with caffeine in the morning. I find it helps with having a proper active / rest cycle, i.e. concentrate energy and stress during the first part of the day so I can start to wind down in the afternoon, instead of hovering around mildly stressed all the day and the evening.
I'm not certain how relevant that is. I definitely don't feel more awake 6 hours after coffee let alone 12 so clearly not all effects are still there. Claims like these are quoting numbers while implying things which aren't true a priori.
Sleep is admittedly easily disrupted but I also haven't noticed a difference in sleep quality when skipping my afternoon cup.
Different people reacts differently. I normally drinks 2-3 cups a day, last one sometimes after 8 PM. So to test some claims about coffee being so bad etc, I completely removed coffee from my life for a month - zero difference. And the same is true for Yerba Mate for me (although with Yerba I definitely feel different for few hours). But I believe that some simply react more to this substance.
I hear that often enough. I think the confusion is that it's true by dry weight of beans/leaves, but a cup of coffee will typically have more caffeine than a cup of tea by a factor of a few.
Thanks. Being a HSP(highly sensitive person) I am always careful of my coffee after lunch. Now I realised I need to either have it early morning or not at all.
Why talk about half-life and quarter-life here instead of full-life (which I guess is around 18-24 hours)? Having less than a quarter of caffein in your system does not impact your sleep?
It's an exponential decay, so full-life is not really a coherent concept. Detectable (but unnoticeable) levels will persist for quite some time and undetectable levels will persist for a bit after that.
> A 20-minute nap provides an energy boost comparable with a cup of strong coffee (without the later crash).
This is not true for me. If I get a 20-minute nap in the middle of the day, I wake up wasted. It takes around another 20 minutes for me to get really awaken.
Something to factor in here is if you're sleep deprived. I can normally nap for 20 minutes and get said boost, but not when I'm sleep deprived. In that case, it feels way harder to wake up at the 20-minute mark, I also wake up groggy and I feel like napping longer (and that's what normally ends up happening).
Our brains compensate for sleep deprivation by releasing increased dopamine in the striatum, which is involved in motivation and reward, and the thalamus, which is involved in alertness. On top of that, one of the effects of sleep deprivation is a reduction in your ability to tell how sleep deprived you are.
If you're sleep deprived, you're running on a natural high. If you get just enough sleep to get close to rested, that extra striatum and thalamus dopamine stops, and you also regain your ability to perceive yourself.
That feels really bad. Not only do you forego the high, but you can feel every bit of the lack of rest. It's like the end of a bender. The only good thing is knowing you're making progress back to relatedness.
If you haven't do so already, perhaps you could try to experiment within +/- 5/10 minutes, to see where you sleep cycle hits better. It can make a whole lot of a difference.
I agree - don't talk a walk, it's an unnecessary hit on your productivity. But, depth jumps require you to get up, which again seems unnecessary to me if you can just taser the CNS directly to wake it up.
To get primed for the day, my protocol involves 3 cycles through a cold plunge (28 degree salinated water) and a sauna. On the third cold plunge I use the taser to boost the CNS.
Would not recommend this unless you’ve studied the Wim Hof method and have medical supervision.
I’ve tried this method at a spa, it’s pretty effective. I’ve looked into getting a Japanese style soaking tub for my spare bathroom so I could also fit a sauna and just do it at home, but it’s still not enough space. I would user a lower voltage taser probably if I was doing it myself.
Anecdotal, but for me this means I'm sleep deprived. When I'm getting enough sleep on a regular basis, a 20-minute "nap" (even if it's just closing my eyes and listening to something like [0]) is extremely refreshing.
I’m curious how folks here manage a midday nap. I usually fall asleep quite well at night, but unless I’m unusually exhausted (stayed up too late, one of the kids was up during the night), I can’t calm my mind enough to actually sleep during the day. Even if I can manage to do it, it takes a long time, so a 20-minute nap really takes an hour+ given the wind-down time.
I have that issue, and I've tried with anything from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. Regardless of the time frame I wake up feeling confused, sleepy and my head hurts.
There are two key points. First, our exhaustion—in its various material and immaterial dimensions—is a consequence of the part we play in a techno-social milieu whose rhythms, scale, pace, and demands are not conducive to our well-being, to say nothing of the well-being of other creatures and the planet we share. Second, the remedies to which we often turn may themselves be counterproductive because their function is not to alter the larger system which has yielded a state of chronic exhaustion but rather to keep us functioning within it. Moreover, not only do the remedies fail to address the root of the problem, but there’s also a tendency to carry into our efforts to find rest the very same spirit which animates the system that left us tired and burnt out. Rest takes on the character of a project to be completed or an experience to be consumed. In neither case do we ultimately find any sort of meaningful and enduring relief or renewal.
That is hilarious. Ferriss is an interesting guy, but there's something funky going on when you're trying to "hack" century old concept. It's basically Schwarzenegger telling you to sleep faster.
Unfortunately, yea we do. Now that more people are working from home the lines between work and not work are incredibly blurred. Add the increased connectivity we all have (email/slack/teams/etc on phones, laptops as work computers), it is essential we build good and meaningful habits of rest.
One of my favorite essay is Adorno's "Free Time" in The Culture Industry [0]. When someone talks of work and rest as opposite, I always think of this quote:
>I have no hobby. Not that I am the kind of workaholic, who is incapable of doing anything with his time but applying himself industriously to the required task. But, as far as my activities beyond the bounds of my recognized profession are concerned, I take them all, without exception, very seriously.
Free Time and Rest are actually what makes us intelligent and creative. Work is experienced within its own constraint while free time let us explore and make fortunate mistakes.
I've been doing "shallow rest" (think your typical mindless binge on anything) for whole my life and it has been difficult to convince myself or even find resources to become involved in resting, making it "deep rest" as mentioned in the article. Anyone has a good personal perspective on how to learn to do it?
I find that whatever I'm doing (binging a show, taking a walk, playing a video game, etc.) is much more restful when I'm fully present. For me, this means putting my phone and any other distracting technology away (or even turning it off) and just fully immersing myself in whatever I'm doing.
Additionally, I find a bit of boredom is helpful in making an activity restful. For example, I love The Expanse TV show but sometimes it's very slow moving and I find myself wanting to stimulate my brain more than it's currently being stimulated by the show if that makes sense. However, I've found that if I embrace the boredom, resist the urge to take my eyes off of the TV, and just "float" in the moment so to speak, after about 15-20 mins the discomfort fades and I lose myself in the narrative. I find this "losing of oneself" in an activity or experience to be very restful and rejuvenating.
I think it's the same as trying to form any other habit intentionally.
Have a bed that you sleep in.
Don't do anything in that bed other than sleep. If you are laying trying to sleep and find you cannot, get out of that bed and go elsewhere.
This trains you to associate that bed with sleep and nothing else. It makes it so that when you go there in the future you have an ingrained habit that tells you it is time to sleep. Even reading in bed screwed it up for me.
I think basically the same approach fits any other activity. If you want to get deeply in the flow for learning karate you have a dojo that you associate with it. You get way less distracted because you only do one thing there.
I think sleep or laying still and meditating is about the most useful kind of rest for me, so I originally mostly talked about sleep. I think that the ability to get deeply into a task is generally strongly associated with environmental cues. Bowing before you start karate practice is a formal way to move into deep practice, even if you're practicing on your own.
Judging by OP, I’d say I have a pretty good handle on ‘deep rest’. I think it’s more because I’m quite deliberate than because I planned it this way, but it functions well as rest. I have almost total separation of work and personal life.
Be purposeful with sleep. Work out how many hours you need, have a schedule, stick to it. I do 2200-0600, if I’m out late I still get up at 0600, a few ‘short’ nights a week won’t ruin my energy. Also, if I’m stuck at home, nothing interesting happens after 10pm. Distractions like my phone are kept in another room.
Push mindless binging out for more intensive activities. As OP says, rest does not have to be relaxed. It doesn’t have to be solitary, although it can be. The things I do (and what they bring me) are: board gaming (social), tennis (social, competition, exercise), running (solitary, calming, exercise), woodworking (solitary, satisfaction), Age of Empires II (competition), and piano (solitary, creative). It seems a lot when I write it down, but I still have a fair amount of downtime.
If you do not chase the thoughts or try to actively think it should stop sometimes and not think all the time.
If I understand the article correct then rest is not about “not thinking”. Rest can also be about engagement (for example sports or a making music). Just using different parts of your brain which are usually not directly used for work.
If it never stops thinking try meditation practice, it will help after a couple times already (for me at least).
Also sometimes it can be good to “reset” the brain by going into the wilderness or a retreat or have a day nap.
That's why I go for walks. I believe it frees up time for the brain to think through stuff without getting interrupted. Sure it might be a series of incohernt throughs and ideas, but that's fine, now they've been processed and the mind can relax.
I also like doing this and I'll try to focus on what I'm seeing during my walk which helps my brain not to wander worrying about work or other stressors but it allows me to be in the moment.
I’m taking this to the extreme and purchasing a bluetooth home phone, so I can leave my phone in a room with the base station, and still pick up if someone calls / texts throughout the day. But no apps or anything. Gives me a way to get out of connection anxiety.
One thing that really helps me rest better is sleeping on my back. It's more difficult to fall asleep that way, but the sleep I get seems to count more. I dont know why, but it does. I've been doing it since I was a kid, so it's gotten easier, but It's still a struggle to not roll over a few times a week.
I was on the weeding and got super tired once so I wanted to take nap. Couldn't really nap (I can't) but just relaxed body and tried to not think about anything for 20 minutes. I felt after that like after whole night good of sleep. Was very surprised that it worked.
That's a great result. Sometimes I think resting as "waiting while doing nothing" is good enough if it simply keeps one from working during the bottom of a local ultradian pattern. Coming back up out of that pattern by itself should naturally feel better.
I'm on 200mg of magnesium taurate. Magnesium l-threonate years ago when the hype for it started. Absolutely no difference in anything. Also taking l-theanine + apigenin (mix that Andrew Huberman recommends) - same effect. But for people with not-the-best diet magnesium is definitely beneficial for health so it's good to take it anyway.
Might it be a biochemistry thing rather than diet? I eat very few processed carbs and sugars and enjoy deep, restful sleep with most off-the shelf magnesium.
L-theanine is fantastic too with my morning coffee. Alertness without the jitters.
This book actually gets quite a lot of hate on HN as parts of it have been debunked (or are at least heavily argued about): https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
I wouldn't call it "debunked". All these were later answered by author, I don't have sources, but I remember it was on author's blog and also on some podcasts*. I remember that he said all these will be answered also in second edition.
Thank you for sharing, this was an interesting read. I wonder if the rest of the book also suffers from this.
To be fair though (not that it excuses it) but pop-science/livestyle book written by academics to gain more notoriety usually suffer from this issue that a lot could be fixed by doing X. Livespan by David Sinclair also does this by basically pinning everything on aging.
It makes for a good read but I think it's best to always keep a healthy skepticism.
Slightly off topic but I always understood these types of books (scientific, biographical, medical) go through extensive fact checking before legit publishers will publish them. Is that not the case? Or did the author just serve as his own fact checker for that book?
Note that this book tells you all about why we sleep, and gives you a lot of scary stats, but almost nothing practical about how to sleep better. If you already know sleep is important and want actionable advice, this book won’t help.
This is not true -- he does give good advice, it's just that it can be summarized in a single page. In fact the last page of the book has his 12 tips. They are widely shared across the internet -- here is one such place: https://fastlifehacks.com/matthew-walker-12-tips-for-good-sl...
So the book is mostly documenting his research into the negative effects of a lack of sleep. Totally worthy and interesting. But the great thing for YOU is that you don't need to read the book. Just those 12 tips.
I'm 41. Over the years I have tried lots of ways to sleep well: various herbs, pills, etc. Ultimately I found, for me, there's no way to hack it. Good sleep is a part of lifestyle. Matthew Walker says the most important thing is routine: now I get in bed at 9:30pm, I read for an hour, I fall asleep around 11pm, I wake up at 6:55, etc. Almost every day, I allow some flex on the weekend. And a party is a party, I give myself a freebie on those (sadly increasingly rare) occasions.
You must get reasonable daily exercise. You can't drink a lot of alcohol and expect to sleep well. Don't bring your devices into the bedroom, read a paper book. Try to get cozy at night. Chamomile tea is wonderful. Look into sleep masks as I found as I got older I became more sensitive to light & a sleep mask helps. Spend some money on your bedroom: a good mattress, fan, blinds, the right temperature, etc.
It totally works! I sleep fantastic these days! Best of luck to you in turn.
The actionable advice for me was just "you have permission to sleep 8 hours, it isn't a waste of your life. No animal escapes the need to sleep, and thinking you can 'game the system' by robbing yourself of sleep night after night is the height of arrogance."
I never had any problem sleeping, I just wouldn't let myself do it enough.
Josef Pieper[0] has written about leisure at length. What we call "rest" today is largely either idleness or recreation and something meant only to "recharge us" so that we can continue to work. But this is ass-backwards and not leisure. Leisure is what we work for and this was reflected, among other things, in the medieval culture of religious feasts. Our modern culture is a work-centric culture, but the middle ages were more of a leisure-centric culture.
To better understand what leisure is, Pieper points to the etymological roots of words like "school" (from the Greek word for "leisure") and points to the distinction between the liberal arts and the servile arts (the former are superior to the latter and what the latter exist to enable). By definition, work is for the sake of something; you don't work for work's sake. Our culture either worships work for its own sake (an absurdity and largely a neurotic distraction from our own nihilism) or it terminates with a preoccupation with consumption and indulgence of various appetites. A culture frustrated by a false materialistic/mechanistic anthropology will produce this kind of vulgar ethos.
[0] https://youtu.be/k5BMGmf1ai0