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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML Attention lapses due to sleep deprivation due to flushing fluid from brain
pedalpete wrote 11 hours 2 min ago:
This is fascinating, and somewhat directly related to the work we do
increasing slow-wave response during sleep.
For those who are not aware, slow-wave are the hallmark of deep sleep
and closely linked to the flushing the glymphatic system, which is what
they are referring to in this article.
We can't create slow-waves, but we can increase their effectiveness
through precisely timed auditory stimulation. I'll be posting a Show HN
next week which dives into the data of how this works, but if you want
to know more, there is info on our website and links to over 50
published peer-reviewed papers. [1] This paper specifically looks at
amyloid clearance as a result of this glymphatic flush [2] While many
people will point to "getting more sleep" that isn't really the answer.
More time asleep does not automatically mean increased glymphatic
flush. Additionally, as we age, the power of the pump gets weaker, and
more sleep does not help with that.
We believe the focus on counting minutes of sleep misses the point of
what makes sleep truly restorative and beneficial, which are the
neurological processes, and downstream physiological changes as a
result. This is why we talk about restorative function, and that should
be the focus of sleep health, not time.
After all, you wouldn't measure your diet based on how much time you
spend chewing, would you?
HTML [1]: https://affectablesleep.com
HTML [2]: https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afad228
hyperjeff wrote 11 hours 15 min ago:
Back when I used to meditate regularly, I would find that an extra
meditation in the middle of a sleepless night would go a long way
toward pushing off the need for sleep. Generally, meditating always
left me in a slightly heightened awake state. Perhaps the help with
brain fluid regulation is a core reason for both effects. (I should go
back to meditating again.)
heywoods wrote 11 hours 24 min ago:
This reminds me of delirium tremens a bit. Same compensatory mechanism,
different sleep process - or at least that's the pattern I'm seeing.
The MIT study shows CSF wavesânormally a sleep-only process that
flushes metabolic wasteâintruding into wakefulness when you're
sleep-deprived. Your brain is apparently so desperate for the cleanup
that it forces the process to happen anyway. Cost: attention lapses.
From what I've read, delirium tremens during alcohol withdrawal seems
to follow a similar pattern, except it's REM sleep intruding into
waking consciousness instead of CSF flushing.
[Polysomnographic studies from the 1960s-80s]( [1] ) documented this.
Patients in alcohol withdrawal exhibit what researchers call ["Stage
1-REM"]( [2] )âa hybrid state where wakefulness and REM sleep
characteristics get mixed together. Right before full-blown DTs, [some
patients hit 100% Stage 1-REM]( [3] ). The hallucinations appear to be
[literally enacted dreams]( [4] ) occurring while technically awake.
The sleep-wake boundary just completely breaks down.
What strikes me is the system-level similarity here. Sleep normally
maintains clean states: you're either awake (alert, reality-testing
intact, no CSF flushing) or asleep (offline, dreams permitted,
maintenance running). But when the system gets stressed
enoughâwhether through sleep deprivation or the neurochemical chaos
of alcohol withdrawalâit seems to start making desperate tradeoffs.
The brain apparently needs certain processes to run. Period. Total
no-brainer! CSF flushing can't wait indefinitely. Neither can REM
sleep, which serves its own critical functions. So when normal sleep
architecture fails, the system appears to force these processes anyway,
even though the conditions are completely wrong for them.
Maybe that's why the costs are so specific. CSF intrusion during
wakefulness costs you attention. REM intrusion costs you reality
testing, because REM is the state where your brain accepts impossible
narratives without question. Same compensatory mechanism, different
critical process forced into the wrong state.
What I find interesting is how the brain knows what lever it needs to
pull and how it pulls it. Sleep deprivation forces waste removal. REM
deprivation forces wakeful dream states; which might be a side effect
not the actual goal. The brain seems to know what maintenance is
overdue and attempts the repair, consequences be damned.
HTML [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7318677/
HTML [2]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/delirium-tre...
HTML [3]: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4757-0632-1_36
HTML [4]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165178...
handfuloflight wrote 11 hours 24 min ago:
I can feel when this fluid hasn't properly flushed.
assimpleaspossi wrote 12 hours 7 min ago:
Maybe unrelated but, years ago, I had a job that had me criss-crossing
the country by plane Monday through Friday and sometimes Saturday. So
my sleep and the time zones and hotels could sometimes mess with me.
One day, I went to a grocery store and mid-turn onto another street, I
forgot what city I was in. Worse, I was half a mile from my apartment
in my home town.
hollerith wrote 12 hours 5 min ago:
How long did it take you to orient or to get home (whichever one
happened first)?
assimpleaspossi wrote 9 hours 6 min ago:
It was very brief. Only a few seconds
gcanyon wrote 12 hours 51 min ago:
What I want to know is: can we trigger these flushes? My grandfather
died of/with Alzheimerâs, and Iâd prefer not to follow in his
footsteps. If we determine that these flushes are key to good brain
health, and there were a way either through a pill or even a treatment
to up the frequency of these flushes, that would be awesome.
laptopdev wrote 4 hours 1 min ago:
Carnivore
Muromec wrote 10 hours 55 min ago:
I know a reliable way to trigger this. 400 gram of lamb, one bell
pepper, one or two leek, one zucchini, some random spices (red chili
pasta from the shop works a-okay), put in at slow heat for an hour
and a half, so by 4 in the evening it's ready and you can close your
laptop. Serve with rice or mercimek chorbasi.
The fluids have no chance to not be flushed once you are done with
it.
pedalpete wrote 11 hours 8 min ago:
We can't "trigger" the flushes, however, it looks like we can
increase the power of the pump.
This is specifically the area we work in traditionally called
slow-wave enhancement which is stimulating the restorative function
of sleep.
This paper [1] specifically looks at amyloid response as a result of
stimulation and shows a corresponding relationship between
stimulation response, amyloid response, and memory. I wouldn't say
it's putting a bow on the results, but it is a very promising result.
If you're curious about what we're building, I'll be posting a ShowHN
next week which dives into some of the data in a way regulatory
requirements don't permit us to do on our website, but until then,
check out [1]
HTML [1]: https://affectablesleep.com
HTML [2]: https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afad228
amluto wrote 6 hours 39 min ago:
Why is a headband a subscription service?
hammock wrote 10 hours 58 min ago:
> We can't "trigger" the flushes
How do you know that?
pedalpete wrote 10 hours 41 min ago:
I work in neurotech/sleeptech and this is the primary function
our work focuses on.
However, I also mis-stated that. It is possible to create a
slow-wave, however only through magnetic stimulation (rTMS), but
that is not realistic outside of a hospital environment.
hammock wrote 10 hours 18 min ago:
Ok awesome. Are you saying that because it is an autonomic
process or some other reason?
You will probably say no but I wonder if those yogis who can
exert some control over heart rate, blood pressure, and
breathing pattern might try to target this process as well.
pedalpete wrote 10 hours 13 min ago:
I'm just saying that based on known science. I don't know if
anyone has looked at if yogis, etc can control the glymphatic
system.
What blew my mind when I got into neuro just over 5 years
ago, is that the glymphatic system was only discovered in
2012!!!! We have SO much to learn about the brain.
HPsquared wrote 11 hours 39 min ago:
Choosing to sleep more, I guess.
boogieknite wrote 13 hours 15 min ago:
should have given them a cup of joe while in the fmri to see what
difference that made
binary132 wrote 13 hours 36 min ago:
What Iâm picking up here is that if I can just get an automated CSF
circulator installed I wonât need to sleep or get distracted when
Iâm tired. That was the point of this article, right?
SilentM68 wrote 14 hours 35 min ago:
That is very interesting. I have a somewhat related issue with sleep
cycles.
This issue, waking around 3:00am every morning then not going back to
sleep until 6 or 7am, is not really a productive sleep cycle. I read
somewhere that taking a spoon of sugary substance, like Raw Honey, MCT
or Collagen, before going to bed can replenish the brain of this
energy, so it becomes easier to fall asleep. I've been trying it with
two to three spoons of honey, right before hitting the sack to see if
it can help me fall asleep again. It seems to be having a somewhat
positive effect as it does not take me too long to go back to sleep.
rsync wrote 10 hours 18 min ago:
Extremely fine optimizations - like you are describing - only make
sense after the major, gross actions have already been exhausted.
Do you have a regular, intensive, exercise routine with a good mix of
aerobic and resistance training?
Donât buy the fancy high flow air filter if youâre not even doing
oil changesâ¦
shomp wrote 14 hours 40 min ago:
In high school a friend of mine told me about "microsleep" and how your
brain will oscillate into it if you're under-rested. This would align
with that theory.
Olshansky wrote 15 hours 21 min ago:
Need a cron job to flush that cache
kurtis_reed wrote 15 hours 27 min ago:
Title sucks
HEmanZ wrote 15 hours 33 min ago:
I hope that the actual medical field starts taking note of this.
My wife still has to work 24 hour shifts with no sleep, performing
emergency surgeries no matter how long it has been since she slept.
During residency only a few years ago she and her co-residents were
almost weekly required to do 36 hour shifts (on top of their regular 16
hours per day, 5 day per week schedule) and once even a 48 hour shift
when the hospital was short staffed.
Of course Iâm sure they wonât. No one cares if doctors are over
worked.
evulhotdog wrote 1 hour 9 min ago:
Current ACGME rules allow a max of 30 consecutive hours, so not as
bad but still not great for someone you would hope to have fine motor
skills to save a life!
bmitc wrote 10 hours 1 min ago:
Were these continual shifts? I thought that doctor's on shift like
this were given sleep rooms to sleep when they aren't needed.
evulhotdog wrote 1 hour 3 min ago:
Yeah they usually do have a dedicated sleeping space for their
service. The thing is, they only sleep if thereâs enough
downtime. Depending on your service, size of the program, and of
course who your patient population is, it could be a lot, or none
at all.
whamlastxmas wrote 10 hours 30 min ago:
This stupid hazing ritual is only happening because of the AMA, which
is doing it for really stupid "because we had to" logic.
ineedaj0b wrote 12 hours 4 min ago:
her at her worst is better than 90% of people at their best.
if you get through and into a good med school -match into surgery-
you are Peak in a way very few are.
I donât see this changing unless they reduce the requirements for
med school; if they let anyone in who wants in and force that group
to work 30hr shifts - youâll get enough bad outcomes the system
will change.
There was a study, I believe on nurses and shift durations. The study
found the nurses were happier with shorter shifts - but the patients
did worse. Patients come first.
I could see a group of Doctors loudly proclaiming love for Donald
Trump (and mentioning very much how great he is) and pleading the
case for a change and something happening. He is an interesting
president.
I would be interested in hearing a european drs perspective, I heard
they work shorter shifts (but no EU dr I met has confirmed, itâs
like meeting a unicorn)
lostlogin wrote 11 hours 25 min ago:
> her at her worst is better than 90% of people at their best.
A fraction of a fraction of a percentage of people are good at
surgery.
If I need someone cutting me, Iâd prefer someone good, and that
they were rested.
random3 wrote 15 hours 22 min ago:
I think both doctors and patients would want a different system for
both doctors and patients. Having seen a poor performing medical
system, and comparing it with the US medical system, all I can say
it's that the US one doesn't seem designed to optimize health and
well being of patients and, based on reading several articles
representing doctors opinions, neither doctors'.
I do think it's maximially optimized to extract revenue. That can
sometimes be good (e.g. good access to healthcare) but often times
it's not great.
Given healthcare, along with education should be a national priority,
both should be heavily "configured" to serve peoples' goals first and
any financial goal should be secondary (although arguably useful).
I suspect the current shareholder structures from hedge funds are
(intentionally or not) driving things in the wrong direction wrt to
public health goals. This is article from a few days ago is also
interesting
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45680695
lordnacho wrote 15 hours 29 min ago:
I've never understood those long shifts. Unless a shift just means
you are there but sleeping, what is the reason for allowing it? We
don't let truck drivers do 24h shifts, why do doctors the world over
seem to do this?
magicalhippo wrote 11 hours 17 min ago:
Here in Norway the doctor's association have worked hard against
it, and talking to a relative which became a doctor some years ago,
it's primarly because they want to keep the extra premium pay they
get from the "uncomfortable hours" as it's called here.
cma wrote 13 hours 22 min ago:
The AMA works to prevent importing doctors from other countries,
largely to maintain wages, but we don't have enough doctors.
Doctors boards and AGME (partly governed by AMA, but there is some
amount of public representation) control residency admissions and
board certification. We don't necessarily want low admissions
standards, but there is a lot potential conflict of interest in
constraining supply.
Some states, I think I read Florida recently, have started pushing
back to allow in foreign doctors.
munificent wrote 15 hours 18 min ago:
My understanding is that the research shows that the harm to
patient care from information loss during doctor shift turnover is
worse than the harm from fatigued doctors.
Yes, a tired doctor sucks. But a tired doctor who already has the
patient's state loaded into their head may still be better than
doctor who is completely fresh in both senses.
It's a hard problem.
amluto wrote 6 hours 43 min ago:
I have never, in my entire life, ever personally encountered a
situation in which a doctor paid enough attention to anyone over
a period of time exceeding two hours that I could possibly
believe that keeping the doctor on shift for a long time had the
slightest benefit.
Iâm sure cases exist. But Iâd be rather surprised if
theyâre common.
arcticfox wrote 12 hours 17 min ago:
> Yes, a tired doctor sucks. But a tired doctor who already has
the patient's state loaded into their head may still be better
than doctor who is completely fresh in both senses.
AI fixes this. Imagine the boot time of loading a patient's state
from dozens of labs and files vs. a summary that gets you to
exactly what they're going to end up remembering anyways. And if
a doctor finds something interesting that the AI doesn't flag,
they should be flagging it in the chart for the next doctor
anyways.
munificent wrote 9 hours 52 min ago:
Jesus Christ you have to be fucking kidding me.
Your solution to information loss during doctor handover is to
insert a brainless hallucinating program with zero
responsibility into the middle?
solsane wrote 11 hours 57 min ago:
In my experience, AI summarization is a pretty lame
application. I donât really need a block of potentially
wrong, rephrased text. Iâve got a feeling that the same
applies to healthcare.
K0HAX wrote 12 hours 50 min ago:
Instead of 1 doctor covering a 24 hour shift, why not pair them
and overlap?
12:00am - 6:00am: Doctor 1 and Doctor 4 are doing everything
together.
6:00am - 12:00pm: Doctor 1 and Doctor 2 are doing everything
together.
12:00pm - 6:00pm: Doctor 2 and Doctor 3 are doing everything
together.
6:00pm - 12:00am: Doctor 3 and Doctor 4 are doing everything
together.
This way, all 4 doctors only do 12 hour shifts, and the patient's
state is maintained continuously through all 24 hours.
patcon wrote 7 hours 42 min ago:
Maybe doctors are divas and they tend to not communicate very
well with others
janalsncm wrote 8 hours 57 min ago:
The answer is thereâs already a doctor shortage, and the US
simply does not have the capacity to effectively 2x the
doctor-patient ratio.
Doctors are also unlikely to want a 50% pay cut in exchange for
shorter hours. They arenât directly exposed to the risk
caused by fatigue since they will have malpractice insurance.
Therefore the safer method of care would be simply too
expensive, and doctors wouldnât see an upside.
Part of the shortage is a result of artificially constrained
supply as there arenât enough med school seats to keep up
with demand.
IncreasePosts wrote 6 hours 41 min ago:
The doctor shortage is entirely caused by intentionally
limiting how many doctors are admitted to med school every
year
munificent wrote 9 hours 54 min ago:
Here's an anecdote that might help answer. When my wife was
pregnant with our first doctor, she started hemorrhaging
spontaneously ten weeks before her due date. We rushed to the
ER.
1. Shortly after, a doctor A came in, asked some questions,
looked at the chart, and told us she was having the baby
tonight. Holy shit our life is about to get crazy and we're
going to be parents 2+ months early! He leaves.
2. Several hours later doctor B comes in. We ask about
delivery. "Oh, no. You're not going to have the baby now. But
you will have to be on bed rest until the due date." Jesus, my
wife is going to have to quit her job.
4. Even more hours later, now the next morning, doctor C
arrives. "OK, you're free to go home. No bed rest needed. Just
let us know if anything else happens."
My general experience with doctors is that you get as many
unique opinions as there are doctors in the room. This is not
an indictment of the profession. Human bodies are insanely
complex, there is way more variation between them than most
people realize, and doctors are operating under very very
limited time and information.
Having overlapping doctors would likely cause even more patient
confusion and increase the risk conflicting treatments. Also,
it would obviously double the cost of care.
(My wife and baby were fine. Partial abruption. Very scary and
my daughter was born five weeks early, but no other significant
problems.)
janalsncm wrote 8 hours 59 min ago:
Many industries have solved this issue already. Use a
pilot/copilot model. First doctor drives, second one mostly
observes and makes sure the first one doesnât make
mistakes.
lostdog wrote 4 hours 40 min ago:
Then you'd need to pay more doctors, and it would be much
harder for the hospital to make a lot of money!
lostlogin wrote 11 hours 27 min ago:
Thatâs a lot of handovers.
someguyiguess wrote 11 hours 56 min ago:
If engineers ran the world
ineedaj0b wrote 12 hours 0 min ago:
Doctors do not get along and thatâs too many Drs. Each
patient often has multiple speciality Drs visiting them and
reviewing their case up to 3 or 4 sometimes already. Imagine
being on consult and trying to figure out which guy on a team
of 4 you should talk to about such and such.
renewiltord wrote 12 hours 57 min ago:
The European Working Time Directive has requirements for rest,
etc. Either Europeans have much better hand-off procedures, they
don't know how to comply with the rules they make, or they're
fucking idiots who are going to kill people due to information
loss during shift turnover. It was proposed decades ago. I wonder
what compliance is like in Germany, etc.
thaumasiotes wrote 13 hours 24 min ago:
> My understanding is that the research shows that the harm to
patient care from information loss during doctor shift turnover
is worse than the harm from fatigued doctors.
This would not appear to apply to emergency surgeries. They
aren't done by doctors who are familiar with the patient anyway.
(Neither are non-emergency surgeries. Surgeries are done by
doctors who do that kind of surgery. Familiarity with the patient
is useful in deciding what surgery should be done, but not in
doing the surgery.)
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote 14 hours 58 min ago:
What about the harm to the doctor themselves+the harm to the
patient? Would the sum of both be worse?
arjvik wrote 14 hours 42 min ago:
One signed up knowing the risk
(not defending, I also think its insane, just devils advocate)
harperlee wrote 15 hours 13 min ago:
That only works if the mean stay in the hospital (or at least the
critical care period) is several hours but also way below 24hâ¦
Timon3 wrote 14 hours 35 min ago:
Longer shifts mean fewer shift turnovers for any patients that
stay a sufficient amount of time, especially if longer than
24h.
The world doesn't run on boolean logic. A solution can improve
an issue without solving it completely.
JumpCrisscross wrote 15 hours 39 min ago:
Could ADHD be caused by a broken flushing response? Lots of flushing
followed by intense focus caused by the tabula rasa?
Geee wrote 14 hours 22 min ago:
Not sure if it's related, but I have way more ADHD-like symptoms if
I'm on late sleep schedule, but sleeping the same amount of hours.
Citizen8396 wrote 14 hours 47 min ago:
Disordered sleep can cause executive dysfunction similar to ADHD, but
it does not cause ADHD. It certainly can exacerbate it or be
diagnosed incorrectly.
luciferin wrote 15 hours 1 min ago:
I suppose it's possible, but it seems less likely to me because ADHD
is a life long neurodevelopmental disorder that shows [visible
physical changes in the brain on scans]( [1] ). That said, there are
statistically more people with narcolepsy who have ADHD, and the same
goes for sleep apnea. There's a number of hypotheses I've read as to
why, to name a couple: related epigenetic causes, or [possible
misdiagnosis]( [2] ) (narcolepsy is much harder to diagnose than ADHD
if you don't have textbook symptoms). So there is definitely
something there.
HTML [1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7879851/
HTML [2]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7336577/
delecti wrote 15 hours 16 min ago:
I'm not an expert, but that wouldn't really fit with my understanding
of ADHD. It's not that we have a lack of attention ("defecit" of
attention, as the name suggests), it's an impaired ability to direct
it.
To abuse a metaphor, the sleep-deprivation-induced spontaneous CSF
flush is slamming on the brakes of a car, and ADHD related attention
shifts would be more like a drunk toddler is turning the steering
wheel wherever they please, but the gas/brakes still work fine.
rickcarlino wrote 15 hours 40 min ago:
Could this be why SNRIs help some patients mitigate ADHD symptoms?
codethief wrote 16 hours 14 min ago:
> The scientists found that during these lapses, a wave of
cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flows out of the brain
> Lewis and colleagues showed that CSF flow during sleep follows a
rhythmic pattern in and out of the brain
> Most significantly, they found a flux of CSF out of the brain just as
those lapses occurred. After each lapse, CSF flowed back into the
brain.
I can't believe the authors of the article didn't address one of the
most obvious questions: Where does the CSF flow to and where does it
flow back from? It's not like there are pipes leading out of the brain,
or the CSF will just leave my brain through my ears or anything, will
it?¹ What happens with the waste products? (¹ Though it would be
kinda funny if this was where snot comes from.)
EDIT: Wikipedia's got the answer:
> Clearing waste: CSF allows for the removal of waste products from the
brain,[3] and is critical in the brain's lymphatic system, called the
glymphatic system. Metabolic waste products diffuse rapidly into CSF
and are removed into the bloodstream as CSF is absorbed. When this
goes awry, CSF can become toxic [â¦]
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebrospinal_fluid
dragonwriter wrote 16 hours 6 min ago:
> It's not like there are pipes leading out of the brain
There are, in fact, âpipesâ leading out of the brain.
Cerebrospinal fluid is (and this is probably somewhat oversimplified)
produced from material in the bloodstream in the ventricles in the
brain, flows through the system of ventricles and then out of the
brain into the subarachnoid space around the brain and spinal cord,
and is then reabsorbed into the bloodstream.
cvoss wrote 14 hours 54 min ago:
And some people literally need an actual pipe implanted to assist
with CSF drainage.
HTML [1]: https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/brain-shunt/ab...
svnt wrote 16 hours 8 min ago:
They didnât put it in there because knowing the flow of CSF is so
elemental to performing research in the field that it would be a
waste of everyoneâs time.
codethief wrote 15 hours 37 min ago:
This is a pop sci article, though?
cozzyd wrote 16 hours 14 min ago:
As a chronic undersleeper, good thing I don't drive!
fsckboy wrote 4 hours 16 min ago:
isn't chronic undersleep associated with dementia in old age?
meaning, whatever you have to do, stop doing that.
gwbas1c wrote 16 hours 15 min ago:
Sometimes when I get a really bad migraine and poor sleep together, I
can literally feel a flushing feeling in my head once I can fall
asleep.
pstuart wrote 16 hours 15 min ago:
My pet theory is that dreams are the brain booting up/shutting down and
the equivalent of old analog TVs that have the flash of static and
bloom/collapse on the screen when turning off/on.
bzmrgonz wrote 16 hours 26 min ago:
hmm.. this is interesting... the article says "spinal fluid exits the
cerebrospinal fluid (csf) flows out of the brain... I wonder where it
discharges these waste products. I ask because it is believed we have
a sort of chimney on our backs. I think I read this on the article of
the Irish lady who could detect alzheimers years before any modern
medical detection systems. But maybe it is discharged in the gut? via
the mesentery, the new organ they finally named fo rthe stuff that
holds our intestines together. If anyone knows where it is discharged,
please comment, I'm interested in this, because I do prolong waterfasts
every 3 months, and I strongly believe the brain drains waste into my
mouth during that time, because the taste in my mouth is godawful, but
if there are other exit points the brain discharges waste, we probably
need to know about them.
alfonsodev wrote 15 hours 59 min ago:
What I understood from youtube gurus, take it with a grain of salt,
is that your brain is taking ketones as source of energy to preserve
the little glucose that goes into the system, and as result it
consumes less oxygen.
But I'm not sure the mouth taste comes from the brain's waste.
To some degree, if you had your brain inflamed by bad eating habits,
fasting would revert that and make the flushing more efficient as
well.
Again please take with with double grain of salt, since I don't even
know inflame brain is a thing for sure, or the correct term.
jp57 wrote 16 hours 10 min ago:
Why do you think that the taste in your mouth is waste draining from
your brain and not the result of some metabolic changes in your body
from the fast? Ketosis is known to cause a metallic taste in the
mouth, for example.
canadiantim wrote 16 hours 24 min ago:
I believe it's discharged basically half directly into the venous
system in the neck, the other half goes through the
lymphatic/glymphatic system and ultimately also the venous system in
the neck. That being said, that's just based on our very crude
understandings and I'm sure there are other pathways.
kingkawn wrote 16 hours 24 min ago:
The description of the mesentery as a single organ dates to the time
of Da Vinci, at the latest.
0xbadcafebee wrote 16 hours 39 min ago:
So... can we trigger it manually? I'd love to be able to lay down and
press the 'flush brain' button.
g-b-r wrote 15 hours 31 min ago:
If you're very tired you should be able to fall asleep, or at least
doze off, whenever you let yourself go.
It seems likely that you'll get those flushes right after falling
asleep, so a nap of a few minutes could help a lot.
In my experience, after a night without sleep even a 30 seconds nap
reinvigorates you significantly.
pbhjpbhj wrote 15 hours 39 min ago:
Searching back, as I recall a video that was supposed to cause
[increased] CSF flow, I did find this - [1] about suggestions some
learning difficulties might be due to interrupted CSF fluid flow.
The video (?) was related to clearing of plaques from the brain with
a view to mitigating Alzheimer's effects.
It was not the NSDR (Non-Sleep Deep Rest) videos a sibling commenter
posted.
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34764730
krackers wrote 12 hours 35 min ago:
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41942775
vrx-meta wrote 16 hours 15 min ago:
Research on NDSR, I have been using this for days I had to wake up
without proper rest.
If you have 15m, search this on YT for a guided practice and test it
yourself.
niwtsol wrote 15 hours 1 min ago:
Kind of related, but there is a concept of polyphasic sleep - where
you sleep for small increments throughout the day (like 30 minutes
every 3 hours). I did it for a bit at a startup thinking we were
"hacking sleep" and "getting more productive hours out of every
day!" - It takes awhile to transition to it, but once there, your
scheduled "sleeps" are insane, 15 minutes, feel like straight to
REM. The main problem was if you missed on schedule sleep you were
a zombie.
cestith wrote 14 hours 15 min ago:
When I worked an overnight shift and lived alone, I got into a
pattern of 2 to 3 hours a go three times a day. These were after
work, halfway or so through my personal time, and before work. I
used these separate times in between sleeps for work, almost
exclusively for chores, and a dedicated slot for hobbies. I
started each one refreshed, which was great. It doesnât
necessarily work so well when aligning your life with a partner.
tetha wrote 14 hours 32 min ago:
Yeah, when I was looking into the plausibility and function of
polyphasic sleep, I stumbled across studies from the US Airforce.
Their conclusion was similar: In a controlled enviroment, it can
be spectacular and work really, really well.
However, it is very, very fragile to any kind of interruption, so
they stopped looking into it.
GavinMcG wrote 15 hours 46 min ago:
NSDR, ratherâNon-Sleep Deep Rest.
BobaFloutist wrote 15 hours 46 min ago:
I believe you were referring to NSDR (Non-Sleep Deep Rest)?
vrx-meta wrote 8 min ago:
Yes, thanks for the correction. I need to get some real sleep.
Muromec wrote 10 hours 53 min ago:
Mixing up acronyms is on brand with sleep deprivation.
epsilonic wrote 16 hours 47 min ago:
Exogenous ketones (such as BHB salts) are known to help with glymphatic
drainage in the brain during sleep. I've used them extensively and have
noticed improved sleep with nearly a doubling of the time spent in REM
stage.
smith7018 wrote 16 hours 42 min ago:
Could you go into detail what you take, how much, and when? I could
always use a little boost for my sleep!
epsilonic wrote 12 hours 19 min ago:
Sure. When I have a night of poor sleep or anticipate one, I
usually take 6 grams of BHB salts in the morning on an empty
stomach. You can work your way up to a maximum of 12 grams, but I
would advise caution since it can cause diarrhea. I would start by
buying the cheapest product (nutricost) you can find online; if it
costs more than $80 for ~300g, then you're probably getting ripped
off. I noticed that I have very lucid dreams and experience strong
hypnagogic jerks when I take this supplement.
Here is some literature that I've perused to support my
experimentation with BHB salts:
1. β-hydroxybutyrate is a metabolic regulator of proteostasis in
the aged and Alzheimer disease brain
( [1] )
2. Refueling the post COVID-19 brain: potential role of ketogenic
medium chain triglyceride supplementation: an hypothesis ( [2] )
My motivation for pursuing this was protracted sleep disturbance
from long-covid.
HTML [1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451945...
HTML [2]: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10...
shahbaby wrote 16 hours 54 min ago:
> For example, what you don't want to do is NOT take amphetamines at
testing if you had used them to study;
Hard disagree there. If you get any anxiety during the test it's better
to take it only while studying.
85392_school wrote 16 hours 38 min ago:
Did you mean to reply to < [1] >?
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45772306
lazide wrote 16 hours 41 min ago:
Huh? Care to explain?
thimkerbell wrote 16 hours 54 min ago:
[This is one of those article titles that would really benefit from
adding one more word.]
cvoss wrote 14 hours 46 min ago:
Or some parentheses. Is "due to" naturally left-associative or
right-associative? I would have said 'right', which gives the
unintended reading of the sentence.
Attention lapses due to (sleep deprivation due to flushing fluid from
brain).
(Attention lapses due to sleep deprivation) due to flushing fluid
from brain.
earless1 wrote 17 hours 19 min ago:
So biological garbage collection pauses then? skip sleep, and the brain
tries to run gc cycles during runtime. Causing attention and
performance latency spikes. Evolution wrote the original JVM.
apatheticonion wrote 5 hours 6 min ago:
This is a hilarious comment, I actually laughed out loud
hinkley wrote 10 hours 14 min ago:
Skip enough sleep and parts of your brain will try to nap while
youâre doing things like meetings.
timeinput wrote 9 hours 13 min ago:
Depending on the meeting it might be worth a nap even if I'm well
rested.
jama211 wrote 2 hours 25 min ago:
Thatâs every meeting Iâm in that contains more people than
myself and two others.
hinkley wrote 8 hours 17 min ago:
But in that cause you are well aware that you have invested no
brain at all instead of investing half a brain while thinking
youâre engaged.
dathinab wrote 10 hours 55 min ago:
this might explain how "power napping" (<30min) can help so much when
you are sleep deprived even through it's too short to really count as
sleep. I wonder if you can find that when sleep deprived people power
nap a "flush" happens then
hinkley wrote 10 hours 10 min ago:
Thereâs a phenomenon we have known about since at least the late
1980s when Race Across America riders were using it.
Essentially these guys try to stay up for the first few days and
then sleep less than 8 hours after that. Way less. Many of them end
up hallucinating by the end, and only their extreme fitness levels
probably save them from just dying from lack of sleep.
The trick is that waking up to daylight makes you feel more rested.
So the teams would have their riders sleep 2-3 hours from just
before dawn until dawn so they would wake up to sunlight.
Physiologically the difference is small, but psychologically itâs
much bigger.
Some of the effect of power napping is likely the same sort of
trickery, just as caffeine is partly trickery and partly adrenal.
ra wrote 5 hours 59 min ago:
I used to do adventure races of 24 or 48 hour duration. can
confirm that after 20+ hours of endurance you 100% start having
microsleeps and hallucinations. 20 mins sleep is all you need to
get going again for a few more hours.
hinkley wrote 41 min ago:
Seen any pink elephants?
Zenul_Abidin wrote 16 hours 15 min ago:
Is Sun Microsystems in the room with us?
layer8 wrote 17 hours 12 min ago:
Luckily it doesnât clear all unreferenced memory, though.
ghurtado wrote 15 hours 55 min ago:
I realize you're making a joke, but there is no such thing as
"unreferenced memories", as in, something that is no longer in use
and has been removed from the brain.
Every memory your brain has ever produced is still there, even if
most are beyond conscious access. Memories quite literally become a
permanent part of you.
A lot of people mistakenly think of human memory as a sort of hard
drive with limited capacity, with files being deleted to make room
for new ones. It's very much not like that.
lux_sprwhk wrote 15 hours 24 min ago:
I had this experience at Big Bend State park that makes me think
they are. I didn't bring enough water and camped in the primitive
area. At night, I was dehydrated pretty bad. When I finally got a
little sleep (it was tough to say the least), I had this vivid
dream where I put a pebble in my mouth and started sucking on it
to make saliva. Then I woke up for real, and I knew it because
there was a lot of wind IRL, that wasn't in the dream. So I took
out a coin from my back, put it in my mouth to make saliva, and
got a little bit of relief. Enough for a couple hours until it
was dawn, and had enough light to hike down to the restroom area.
I don't know where I got this trick. Likely some survival show or
some novel. But I don't have any background in survival,
otherwise, I would have brought a lot more water.
So my brain knew there was a memory that could help and made up a
dream about it is my theory.
vanviegen wrote 15 hours 33 min ago:
Bullocks. Memories fade. Or do you really believe that
'subconsciously' I still know what I had for dinner today exactly
30 years ago?
The way I understand it, it's just that, unlike on disk, the
deletion process is not binary. Weak connections that are not
revisited regularly gradually become weaker, until they're
undistinguishable from noise (false memories).
mym1990 wrote 15 hours 40 min ago:
Knowing almost nothing about memory and the brain, I don't know
if I agree with "Every memory your brain has ever produced is
still there".
Memories seem to be constructed by a group of neurons together,
and it seems clear that neurodegeneration is a thing, whether by
trauma or due to aging. When pathways degenerate, maybe you have
a partial memory that you brain can help fill the gaps with(and
often incorrectly), but that does not make it the original
memory.
pdonis wrote 15 hours 52 min ago:
If you are implying that human memory has infinite capacity,
that's not possible. The human brain is a finite, physical thing.
It can't store an infinite amount of data.
If you just mean that human memory has a finite capacity that's
much larger than anyone has come close to reaching by storing the
memories of a normal human lifetime, that might make sense.
Do you have any references for your statements about memory? I'm
not familiar with whatever science there is in this area.
jjk166 wrote 13 hours 39 min ago:
The claim that everything is there does not imply infinite, or
even large capacity.
Consider an exponentially weighted moving average - you can
just keep putting more data in forever and the memory
requirement is constant.
The brain stores information as a weighted graph which
basically acts as lossy compression. When you gain more
information, graph weights are updated, essentially compressing
what was already in there further. Eventually you get to a
point where what you can recall is useless, which is what we
would consider forgotten, and eventually the contribution of a
single datapoint becomes insignificant, but it never reaches
zero.
balex wrote 37 min ago:
And this description is based on what?
pdonis wrote 12 hours 43 min ago:
> The claim that everything is there does not imply infinite,
or even large capacity.
It implies enough capacity to store everything. But what you
describe is not storing everything.
> lossy compression
Which means you're not storing all the information. You're
not storing everything.
> When you gain more information, graph weights are updated,
essentially compressing what was already in there further.
In other words, each time you store a new memory, you throw
some old information away.
Which the person I was responding to said does not happen.
standardly wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
> The human brain is a finite, physical thing. It can't store
an infinite amount of data.
True, but it doesn't really detract from his statement because
do we really know what that upper bound even is? I don't think
we come close to the theoretical storage limit... So saying
"every memory you have is permanently stored" is effectively
true, at least true enough for a thought experiment like this.
Perhaps when people live to be 200 years old and we know more
about the brain we can test this, though.
I used to be weary of learning new, complex things, thinking
I'd "lose" old knowledge XD
pdonis wrote 12 hours 46 min ago:
> I don't think we come close to the theoretical storage
limit
That was the point of the second part of my comment--which
the person I was responding to said was not relevant to what
he meant.
ghurtado wrote 15 hours 37 min ago:
I didn't mean either of the things that you are wondering
whether I meant, so i can't give you evidence of those things
you made up yourself.
If you have questions about my comment, I'm happy to try to
explain myself better
"I didn't understand you at all, so you must have meant either
A or B" is not the way to reach an understanding
pdonis wrote 14 hours 48 min ago:
> i can't give you evidence of those things you made up
yourself.
I didn't ask for that. I asked if you have references for
what you said. Even if I misunderstood you, that shouldn't be
a reason for you not to give references for your statements,
if you have them.
If you don't have any references to back up your statements,
then I'm not sure what you're basing them on.
vanviegen wrote 15 hours 30 min ago:
Your words: "Every memory your brain has ever produced is
still there [..]"
How would that not imply infinite storage?
dragonwriter wrote 14 hours 39 min ago:
It wouldn't imply infinite storage because human life is
not infinite in time and memories do not accumulate at an
infinite rate in storage consumed per unit time, so the
total storage over a human lifespan is finite, so the claim
can be true with finite storage.
It is almost certainly false, but it doesn't require
infinite storage to be true.
pdonis wrote 12 hours 45 min ago:
> human life is not infinite in time and memories do not
accumulate at an infinite rate in storage consumed per
unit time
Which would put it into the category of the second part
of my comment--which the person I was responding to said
was not relevant to what they meant.
blauditore wrote 16 hours 35 min ago:
Fun fact: Suppressed/hidden/lost memories due to trauma that appear
to re-surface through therapy are not a real thing, as previously
thought (and still by some psychotherapists). Nowadays it's
understood by psychology that any memories "re-surfacing" in
therapy are in fact newly created, although the patient themselves
cannot tell the difference. Allegedly, whole accusations of
childhood abuse may have been created out of thin air, without the
victim realizing. [1] (see research section)
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovered-memory_therapy
layman51 wrote 11 hours 27 min ago:
This idea of unconscious memories perhaps being a type of fantasy
is also discussed in this article too:
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud%27s_seduction_theory
bozhark wrote 12 hours 22 min ago:
Careful with this absolute assumption. The brain rationalizes.
Though irrationally.
Sometimes yes, created to validate, sometimes no, unlearns to
disassociate
agumonkey wrote 13 hours 30 min ago:
I beg to differ, or at least I'd need clarification, some people
experience traumatic visions from what is assumed repressed
memories (with or without therapy)
It might be something that one might not understand if he/she
doesn't live through it I guess
pcthrowaway wrote 14 hours 16 min ago:
Sure it's a real thing for memories to surface that were
previously buried. It's happened to me.
If it happens in therapy, that doesn't mean the memories are
"implanted". And not all memories lack the ability to validate
them... for example, if you've forgotten someone's name, then
remember it later, you can call out to them by their name to
confirm that you've correctly remembered it.
Memories tumble around in the brain all the time, not all
memories are easy to access, but that doesn't mean they're
inaccessible.
The point that memories can also be implanted or fabricated
during therapy is absolutely an important one, but dismissing the
possibility for memories to resurface (and conflating any
situation where this might happen with a specific type of
discredited therapy) is needlessly reductive.
dbspin wrote 14 hours 38 min ago:
The problem is not that memories can't be repressed. There's
plenty of research demonstrating repression does exist as a
defence mechanism. The problem is that even highly evocative
memories can also relatively easily be falsified, or modified
through elicitation and reframing. Since there's no neurological
stenographer, there is no mechanism even in principle to identify
the difference between the two. With potential consequences like
the satanic panic of recovered and elicited memories of sexual
abuse. That's what Elizabeth Loftus and others have shown, and
shown so thoroughly that eye witness testimony should never be
trusted.
saltcured wrote 14 hours 10 min ago:
As a counterpoint to this, I am replying here because I can't
make myself write a polite response to the GPP.
Yes, witness testimony is always potentially flawed.
But knowing "some repressed memory recovery is false" does not
justify saying that repressed memories are not a real thing.
Repressed memories do happen. They do come back sometimes. When
they do, they are just as valid as any normal memory that a
person thinks they always had.
I know because I had them myself. Mine were of trauma in the
age range from 5-9. I had a high "ACE score" when I eventually
looked into this. I did not have any therapy session prompting
the recall, I just remembered them spontaneously around age 15
when I was empathizing with a schoolmate who told me about
domestic violence. It was a sickening feeling to have this
whole phase of my past come unlocked.
Amazingly, it submerged into repression again. I next
remembered it at about age 20. In between, I had years of
basically not remembering/knowing that I had any of this trauma
or that I had experience the earlier recall. They all came back
together, again triggered by an empathetic moment in college.
Again it was disorienting to have this whole aspect of my past
reopen.
At that later point, I confronted people who were around my
childhood and got enough of a painful discussion, confession,
and apology to know that these memories were not invented.
I had other forms of childhood trauma that never submerged. I
don't know why this one section did.
I find it very offensive for someone to make broad statements
that these phenomena do not exist.
JohnMakin wrote 10 hours 7 min ago:
Thanks so much. I was wanting to write a scathing response as
well but you calmly explained what I wanted to. I had severe
childhood abuse that was documented by third parties Iâd
completely forgotten about - when I remembered them in
therapy, my therapist thought they were fake or delusional
too and sorta gaslit me about it. I had to go hunt down the
receipts, which for me was traumatic in and of itself and
permanently severed a few relationships with my family
members, which didnât have to happen. I fired her over it.
The comments in this thread are indeed disturbing. Clearly
many on this forum have led blessed lives and canât imagine
people having it differently,
oceanplexian wrote 10 hours 27 min ago:
You might "think" you had a repressed memory but it could all
be completely made up. You might even get other people to
believe it, because human memory is incredibly faulty. Shared
delusions are literally a "known bug" of human biology.
Wikipedia has a whole page on them ( [1] ). The Seattle
Windshield Pitting Epidemic ( [2] ) is yet another example
The thing that changed though is since the 2010s everyone has
a high definition camera in their pocket. Everything you do
is recorded online. Kids that grew up in the last few years
will have their entire childhood recorded in some way or
another. Every movement tracked by GPS. Therefore, while I
don't agree completely, I wouldn't be surprised if some
assumptions about psychology are upended and a great deal of
so called repressed memories turn out to be bogus when we can
easily disprove them.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux
HTML [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pit...
JohnMakin wrote 10 hours 6 min ago:
The person youâre responding to said they did the work of
verifying themselves with third parties. Do you not believe
that too? People dont suddenly just admit to committing
severe abuse because they were convinced to do so. In fact,
usually the opposite happens with abusers - they delude
themselves into thinking the abuse never happened and
believe/defend this very aggressively.
This whole thread is gross. Iâd say you should be ashamed
of yourself but you likely lack the prerequisite self
inspection.
saltcured wrote 10 hours 17 min ago:
Malicious suppression and gas-lighting are also known
functions of human biology.
Yes, real life is messy and ideals like justice are quite
difficult or impossible to achieve.
Don't assume you can cleverly deduce a nice, absolute and
comfortable answer. That's just another coping mechanism
called rationalization.
mrsvanwinkle wrote 11 hours 11 min ago:
Thank you so much, the parent thread was truly an
uncomfortably disturbing read and your post is a necessary
contrast to "rational" "objective" "minds" armchairing
something so delicate with gross finality.
eiginn wrote 12 hours 52 min ago:
This mirrors my experience as well of multiple instances over
my life of repressing childhood trauma and some event or
conversation suddenly bringing it back to the surface.
jimmaswell wrote 12 hours 19 min ago:
Not to minimize your experience or anything like that, I'm
just thinking out loud: What's typically the delineation
between repressed and "not on the mind at the moment"? We
naturally "forget" things all the time because there's no
need for them to be in our current context window, e.g. I
can't recite every coffee shop I've been to, but maybe if
you start talking about a coffee shop with uncomfortable
seats, I'll remember the one I went to with uncomfortable
seats. Not a comparable experience in general of course,
but one wouldn't say I repressed the coffee shop. Is it
more like if I started at "uncomfortable coffee shop",
nothing came to mind, but then I later remembered only
after smelling some special flavor of coffee beans they had
had?
JohnMakin wrote 8 hours 19 min ago:
IME for me repressed is ânot on the mind at the
momentâ but like so constant that any attempt to access
it, your subconscious fights to divert your attention
from it. itâs kind of like dim stars you can only see
out of the corner of your vision.
the craziest one I had, my reaction wasnât âoh my god
i never knew i had this memoryâ it was âwow, i cant
believe i havent thought about that in 25 years.â I
knew and had known it was there all along, I just
literally never thought of it to the point my other
thoughts just didnt collide with it, ever. Itâs almost
like your brain just puts it in storage in a dark corner
of your garage.
I understand it isnât the same for everyone, but that
was how it felt for me.
TLDR for me it was dissociation, and the only treatment
that ever worked was scraping the corners of my mind for
stuff like this and it got so much better the issues
basically went away. I used a great deal of meditation,
particularly tibetan buddhism.
saltcured wrote 10 hours 26 min ago:
A repressed memory and its associated knowledge and
entailment is "not there" until triggered properly. To
the extent that our autobiographical memories construct
our sense of identity, repressed memories have been
censored from ourselves. And, I think it is censored for
a purpose, not because it was one too many bits of trivia
to keep in ready memory. I think it is a coping mechanism
like very deep and targeted denial or dissociation.
When such memories come back, it can be like a mini
identity crisis. You suddenly know things that are
counter to your self-identity from the moment before.
Once I was able to absorb the whole picture and not
recoil back into repression, it became a permanent and
unpleasant part of my self. .
There can be flashbacks of related events, some of which
I also might feel are remembered for the first time in a
long time. Those little flashbacks might be like
remembering your specific uncomfortable cafe. The overall
memory recovery is like suddenly realizing I spent years
in a theater of war, that happened to have such cafes in
it.
mrsvanwinkle wrote 11 hours 5 min ago:
I can objectively say your reply minimizes the previous
two posts who shared childhood traumas by the objective
fact that you are implying (if they are not able to
satisfy your Scientific Endeavor) that, if there is no
delineation, then their repression of childhood trauma is
equivalent and minimized or perhaps exalted if coffee is
your religion to the repression of your religious
experience of this coffee shop. If you were perhaps a
child victim in this coffee shop maybe? You literally
erased the trauma part. That is the delineation if you
still need to think about this out loud
DiscourseFan wrote 14 hours 40 min ago:
There are two types of repression, however. The notion that
primarily repressed memories--say, those of being breastfed, of
being potty trained--could ever resurface is bogus of course. But
it is that original violence, first of being cared for, and then
having that care taken away and even, in many cases, transforming
into authoritarian violence in order to be socialized properly,
that precipitates all other "secondary" repressions like Freudian
slips, even screen memories or rationalizations. No, most people
traumatized past the age of say, 5, won't readily forget it. But
perhaps they will have a way of reconciling with that trauma in
an unhealthy or not fully conscious manner (consider
self-harming, or drug abuse, making up a narrative in order to
stay with a partner who violently abuses them). And they will not
readily connect their traumatic experiences with their unhealthy
coping mechanisms. And we could say that the connection between
unconscious behaviors and trauma, when revealed, could be
considered a "re-surfacing." Even if I can't remember being
breastfed, I know that I find the warm embrace of another's arm's
comforting and soothing, and this perhaps relates to my original
state of relaxation as a child in my mother's arms, for instance.
drdeca wrote 9 hours 26 min ago:
Why would it relate to your past experience of being held in
your mothers arms, rather than to whatever inbuilt tendencies
that lead one to respond well to being held in oneâs
motherâs arms while a baby?
Like, if kissing is derived from impulses relating to
breastfeeding (which is a hypothesis that, AIUI, is in good
standing, though not the only one in good standing nor
necessarily more favored than a couple others), I wouldnât
think that therefore someone who was only ever bottle-fed as a
baby would therefore not get anything out of kissing. The
appeal of âmy lips on another personâ should be there
regardless, just as it was for the first time a baby is
breastfed (though, of course, it is also a cultural thing: not
all cultures have had kissing as a standardized way of
expressing affection, so whether one grows up in a context
where kissing plays a role, that probably also plays a part in
whether one finds it appealing to have oneâs lips on another
person).
ghurtado wrote 15 hours 47 min ago:
> any memories "re-surfacing" in therapy are in fact newly
created,
You're saying that those memories are exactly the same as all the
other memories.
Every time you "recall" something, you are not pulling up some
file that is always the same. You are actively recreating the
memory.
There's nothing "fun" or insightful about this, this mechanism
has been known for a long time.
Obviously it's not unique to psychotherapy.
> may have been created
Most things that "may" have happened do not warrant absolute
statements such as "that's not a thing" (which, incidentally, is
a particularly empty statement in any context, since every thing
is a thing)
elmomle wrote 15 hours 57 min ago:
The statement "there is evidence of black swans" does not justify
the conclusion "every swan is black".
fsckboy wrote 15 hours 38 min ago:
if you specialize in looking for black swans, and you've looked
for more black swans than anybody ever, and all the black swans
you thought you'd found have turned out to be sooty white
swans, people might be interested in reading about your
experience and have their faith shaken that black swans
actually exist.
I'm reminded of the story of dragon sightings in Great Britain:
after the printing press and newspapers and newspaper reporters
chasing stories emerged, as news distribution out from city
centers into rural areas increased, it seems dragons picked up
and moved farther away, only being spotted in the hinterlands
without news.
You apparently would keep your mind open to the idea that
dragons don't like the smell of newsprint as no other
conclusion could be more plausible sheerly on the basis of
logic?
musicale wrote 4 hours 22 min ago:
Dragons are smart, and wary of human civilization. They still
remember St. George and his ilk.
bollocks9 wrote 16 hours 9 min ago:
What about Dr. Jim Tuckerâs two child psych cases, James
Leininger and Ryan Hammons?
One remembered memories of a WWII pilot named James Huston Jr.
and the other a deceased Hollywood agent named Marty Martyn.
Putting aside the reincarnation hypothesis for the moment, do you
think the kids invented the details and coincidentally happened
to match to a real person or were they fully coached? Maybe they
didnât get enough sleep or got too much sleep?
anal_reactor wrote 16 hours 11 min ago:
Most people think that when their memory fails it's just the act
of not remembering something, but misremembering something
happens equally often, and completely making up shit also does
happen. It's just like LLM hallucinations.
layer8 wrote 16 hours 19 min ago:
People can remember things that hadnât re-entered their mind
for decades. It certainly happened to me a number of times
(completely trauma-unrelated and not actively elicited).
GuB-42 wrote 15 hours 0 min ago:
This is a more precise statement than just "you can recall
things you thought you forgot".
It is specifically about trauma, and generally you don't forget
traumatic events and that's often a big part of the problem. We
are not talking about trivial things like the name of your
maths teacher in high school, which have a tendency to come and
go.
It is also specifically about therapy, that is an environment
where you are actively encouraged to recall memories. We know
how easy it is to make up memories, especially with the help of
a third party (here, the therapist).
Combine the two: memories that are hard to forget and an
environment conductive to making false memories and it becomes
very likely that the "lost" memories are completely made up.
Muromec wrote 11 hours 11 min ago:
>It is specifically about trauma, and generally you don't
forget traumatic events and that's often a big part of the
problem.
Oh, of course you can.
theshackleford wrote 11 hours 33 min ago:
> and generally you don't forget traumatic events
That depends on how many you endured really. Only so much
room in the old noggin with everything else important going
on.
kulahan wrote 15 hours 15 min ago:
They won't remember it accurately anyways, so it's kind of a
moot point.
Though you're right - a specific scent can easily call up an
ancient, forgotten memory.
Aurornis wrote 15 hours 37 min ago:
A valid memory spontaneously re-entering your mind is
different.
The idea of "repressed memories" was that people had hidden
memories that they couldn't access, even if they tried.
According to the theory, even if someone brought up the past
event and tried to remind the person about it, they would be
unable to recall it happening because their brain had blocked
it out.
The idea was that only intervention by a therapist or some
other special event could help the person "unlock" the
repressed memories, making them available for remembering
again.
What was really happening was that some therapists were leading
people into "remembering" things that didn't happen through
aggressive prompting and pushing, much like what happens when
an aggressive investigator convinces a vulnerable person to
falsely confess to something they didn't do.
tehjoker wrote 15 hours 17 min ago:
I wouldn't be surprised if there are inaccessible, partly
corrupted memories encoded in the hippocampus. I suspect most
of them cannot be prompted by a therapist though, and likely
there is no practical way to recover them.
strbean wrote 15 hours 7 min ago:
I think it's all a matter of finding a trigger (or
reference) to grab the memory. A therapist talking to you
almost certainly wouldn't achieve that, but walking down
the street and smelling an odd smell might.
rkhassen9 wrote 14 hours 8 min ago:
I once found a recording of a lab session in high school
physics. A day I completely forgot about. A moment that
had no bookmarks in my brain.
Other things about that day were surfaced. How my braces
felt and the fear I felt about forgetting a textbook.
All real, but unsurfaced until then.
t0mas88 wrote 10 hours 24 min ago:
That makes sense considering that human memory is
strongly based on associations. Activating nearby
memories can bring things back.
If you hear the first tones or words of a song you're
much more likely to be able to tell the lyrics that
follow compared to being asked to say those lyrics
based on the title.
tehjoker wrote 14 hours 10 min ago:
I think it depends on the stage of degradation and
whether the network is still connected to something that
can interpret it.
warmedcookie wrote 15 hours 51 min ago:
Indeed. I was browsing a Nintendo fan site I made in 1998 on
archive.org when I was just 11 years old. I don't remember
every detail about making it, but my brain had no problem
stitching all the pieces it did retain back together.
On the other hand, I do have some Gandalf "I have no memory of
this place" moments for other things.
worldsayshi wrote 16 hours 9 min ago:
My guess is that long term memory recovery is inherently a
reconstruction from the pieces that you have retained. So it is
not unlikely to include dreamed up parts.
bpj wrote 14 hours 51 min ago:
This has been my experience as someone who has experienced
childhood trauma, and what I've inferred from my therapist.
He taught me that the memories I have are typically
exaggerations of what happened and it's hard to pin down what
truly happened. The only evidence I have that has any merit
is my siblings can corroborate with similar experiences since
it happened to all of us, and I'm sensitive to things related
to these traumas. Almost every day I can feel the things that
happened, and on my worst days these areas are much more
sensitive.
On top of that, I have legitimate memories that were not
traumatic, but still related to the same traumas because said
person attempted to encourage these activities throughout my
young life on rare occasions. I didn't remember what happened
as a kid, but I knew something wasn't right and I wasn't
comfortable. It wasn't until I was almost 30 that I had my
first "flashback" which was a fractured memory, I still
remember it looked like a faded photograph in my mind, and it
was accompanied by an extremely uncomfortable feeling.
The re-surfacing memories aren't real in a sense, but in my
case they aren't entirely fake either.
I wonder if it's possible that things can be completely
imagined with absolutely no basis what-so-ever in certain
circumstances, and I also wonder how difficult it is to
discern that. It seems to be a difficult concept to manage.
Aurornis wrote 15 hours 21 min ago:
The debunked recovered memory therapy was something
different: They would use different techniques and leading
questions to try to get a patient to think they remembered
something that may not have happened at all.
Some of the techniques included hypnosis or even giving the
patients (including children) sedative-hypnotic drugs before
pressuring them with the leading questions.
If they could eventually get the person or child to claim to
have some memory of the event (after asking a lot of leading
questions and maybe even drugging them) they considered it to
be a recovery of the memory.
layer8 wrote 16 hours 1 min ago:
The accuracy of recollection can certainly vary, but the
point is that some information is retained long-term even
when it isnât made use of in the meantime. Of course one
could argue that actually it is being made use of
unconsciously, but Iâm skeptical of that, given the
relative irrelevance of the details that can be recollected.
Itâs also not that difficult to imagine that some
memory-representing micro-structures in the brain just happen
to be stable over decades even when they remain untapped.
slater wrote 16 hours 33 min ago:
Gonna need some citations on that âfun factâ
ghurtado wrote 15 hours 42 min ago:
People downvoting a request for supporting evidence is peak
Hacker News.
fsckboy wrote 15 hours 23 min ago:
people demanding supporting evidence without expending any
effort themselves is peak internet.
theshackleford wrote 11 hours 29 min ago:
Itâs not my job to track down proof only every bullshit
claim thrown at me.
jjk166 wrote 13 hours 53 min ago:
The onus of proof lies on those making a claim. If you're
unwilling to back up what you say, don't say it.
fsckboy wrote 3 hours 18 min ago:
on a discussion board? no, there is no onus of proof,
because nothing is riding on it, just as you don't need
proof to reject the ideas.
demanding citations is the favorite trick of people who
want to waste your time precisely because they disagree
with you and no matter what you come up with, they'll
never give in. therefore, one should never give in to it.
rather, doing your own research and contributing it to
the discussion is the lifeblood of online communities.
nwienert wrote 9 hours 12 min ago:
In science. On a casual forum you have no obligation and
Iâd rather someone leave a short comment so I at least
know, if Iâm interested Iâll go look and verify
myself.
blauditore wrote 16 hours 29 min ago:
[1] (especially the research section)
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovered-memory_therapy
ghurtado wrote 15 hours 43 min ago:
Claim: "modern cancer research is a scam"
Proof: "colloidal silver has been used to attempt to cure
cancer".
Solid logic.
svnt wrote 16 hours 11 min ago:
That is extremely weak to nonexistent counter-evidence that
seems to focus on supporting Loftus, who has put a lot of
effort into the defense of her public persona. I donât
disagree that it is possible to manufacture memories but the
evidence isnât there to support your conclusion or the
converse.
Aurornis wrote 15 hours 23 min ago:
Recovered-memory therapy (the topic of the Wikipedia
article) is very clearly quack science and has been
discredited.
Some of the techniques used in the therapy include giving
patients sedative-hypnotic drugs to put the patient in a
waking dream-like state while the therapist asks leading
questions to get them to "remember" an event. The same
drugs they used are known to be associated with false
memories, like when someone falsely recalls something from
a vivid dream as having actually happened.
svnt wrote 11 hours 57 min ago:
It has fallen out of favor based on a lack of evidential
support, for sure. It has not really been dismantled
publicly scientifically, but mostly quietly, perhaps in
order to protect its practitioners, perhaps because the
research cannot currently be ethically conducted.
I am not advocating for it, just stating the near total
lack of substantive scientific evidence presented either
in support or opposed.
bigbuppo wrote 16 hours 39 min ago:
I forgot what I was going to type, but I didn't get enough sleep
last night.
jyounker wrote 16 hours 59 min ago:
Are you sure about that?
DenisM wrote 17 hours 3 min ago:
Cleanup is an LRU process.
Once a memory lapses you have to relearn from life experience (or
not at all).
thaumasiotes wrote 13 hours 28 min ago:
No, a lapsed memory can be provoked. It doesn't have to be
relearned. It is "lapsed" because the organizational path to it
within your brain has been lost, like a book in a library that
has been left out of the card catalog, but just like the book, if
you happen to find it anyway, it will be there.
Compare, from [1] :
> at the first news of English ships in the area, Buckley rushed
to the spot. He attempted to make contact, but couldnât swim
out to the ship and couldnât convince the ship to send a boat
to him (Buckley had, at this point, forgotten how to speak
English.) Buckley was again heartbroken until another ship showed
up, and he found the English colonists and tried to approach
them:
> âPresently some of the natives saw me, and turning round,
pointed me out to one of the white people; and seeing they had
done so, I walked away from the well, up to their place, and
seated myself there, having my spears and other war and hunting
implements between my legs. The white men could not make me
outâmy half-cast colour, and extraordinary height and figure
[Buckley was around 6â5â or taller,]âdressed, or rather
undressed, as I wasâcompletely confounding them as to my real
character. At length one of them came up and asked me some
questions, which I could not understand; but when he offered me
breadâcalling it by its nameâa cloud appeared to pass from
over my brain, and I soon repeated that, and other English words
after him. â¦
> âWord by word I began to comprehend what they said, and soon
understood, as if by instinct, that they intended to remain in
the country; that they had seen several of the native chiefs,
with whomâas they saidâthey had exchanged all sorts of things
for land; but that I knew could not have been
I submit that it takes more than a day to learn English if you
don't already know it.
Once I was in a Toys-R-Us and noticed a cover image among the
bottom-of-the-barrel DVD display which caused me to put what I
was doing on hold for several minutes while I stared at the DVD.
I bought it, and it turned out to be a movie I had watched many
times when I was very young, but that information hadn't been
accessible to me.
HTML [1]: https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/anthropol...
cyberdrunk2 wrote 17 hours 22 min ago:
I wonder if this could help explain why creatine helps mitigate the
effects of sleep deprivation. Since creatine aids in water retention.
HTML [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16416332/
Citizen8396 wrote 14 hours 43 min ago:
I would imagine it has more to do with its principal function in
recycling ADP back to ATP (fuel for cells). People who are sleep
deprived also have impaired glucose metabolism, meaning that the
cellular "fuel pipeline" is impeded. Perhaps creatine is especially
helpful under these conditions.
HTML [1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1991337/
jorvi wrote 17 hours 2 min ago:
Mix your cheap instant coffee with creatine powder and ORS for that
ultimate early morning flavor bomb!
huemaahn wrote 15 hours 38 min ago:
Welp, now Iâm bout to make the nastiest coffee known to man for
the next 3 months
pawelduda wrote 15 hours 42 min ago:
Don't forget to intensely shake your head after consumption for a
proper brain flush
zer00eyz wrote 15 hours 52 min ago:
The mechanism of creatine isn't that straight forward.
You need to take it for a while for it to build up, and for water
to accumulate in cells.
It would also be disgusting in a cup of coffee!
layer8 wrote 17 hours 20 min ago:
Itâs not clear how water retention would help with the needed
flushing.
regularfry wrote 17 hours 16 min ago:
Hypothetically, more water retention would mean that the fluid
being flushed is less concentrated, and if the flushing mechanism
is triggered by a certain concentration level then it'll happen
less frequently.
Hard to imagine that it would be worth more than a few percent
though.
layer8 wrote 17 hours 14 min ago:
Less flushing sounds like it would also worsen the sleep
deprivation, even if it reduces the momentary lapses.
kurisufag wrote 17 hours 24 min ago:
anecdotally, i never feel better than when i haven't slept. spent 8pm
tuesday -- 8pm thursday this week awake nursing cheap energy drinks,
and not only could i manage a higher-than-usual level of focus, i was
genuinely content.
bombed a midterm halfway though, but at least i felt good about it.
boogieknite wrote 16 hours 35 min ago:
anecdotally i feel pretty good when im buzzed but reality is my
performance is impaired. there is a teeter-totter of overconfidence
and impairment where the liquid confidence actually helps more than
the impairment impairs but its a sweet spot
kurisufag wrote 16 hours 5 min ago:
sleep deprivation definitely reduces raw reasoning ability. in some
cases, though (and this is true for getting buzzed as well) the
trade-off is absolutely productive.
rtaylorgarlock wrote 17 hours 14 min ago:
Age sounds like a factor here. I know zero long-term healthy ppl in
30s and beyond who act/think this way.
jtuple wrote 14 hours 21 min ago:
I've done a few all-nighters in my 30s and 40s, and they generally
feel the same as my 20s. Still get that clear headed, high focus
second wind around 4am that carries through until noon or so.
But, I definitely crash harder than I did in my 20s and need longer
to recover after. In my 20s, would be fine if the next night was a
normal one, now it takes multiple days.
It's definitely something I try to avoid at this age, as opposed to
just being standard procedure back in college.
freedomben wrote 17 hours 1 min ago:
Indeed, as a 20 year old I would stay up all night pretty regularly
for work and occasionally fun. At 40 I'm not sure I would live
through it, at least not in a cognitive state where I could
converse.
puzzlingcaptcha wrote 17 hours 14 min ago:
It's not unusual to feel good after pulling an all-nighter. Sleep is
when re-uptake of serotonin takes place, so if you interrupt it you
end up with a surplus. Although there are also other possible
explanations [1] 1.
HTML [1]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2214505120
taeric wrote 15 hours 57 min ago:
I'm assuming it is similar to the "runners high" people get at the
end of a long run? You will feel very energized in ways that don't
make sense. And if you don't force yourself to just lay down and
pass out, you can keep going for longer than you would have
thought. Will crash harder, though, if my experience is common.
90ne1 wrote 17 hours 15 min ago:
I see the same thing in myself.
I've attributed it to a my brain moving to power-saving mode and
muting some of my anxiety / perfectionism tendencies. Does this
explanation resonate with you at all?
kurisufag wrote 16 hours 13 min ago:
That's possible. It feels a lot like the placebo component in
drinking: if you're free to ignore one of the few things you need
to /live/, it should be much easier psychologically to be carefree
(similar to "oh, haha, i'm drunk, might as well get wacky").
jcims wrote 17 hours 17 min ago:
I've got pretty bad ADHD and I find that my mind is more quiet,
focused and productive on mornings after a night of 2-4 hrs of sleep
than it has ever been on meds or anything else. It all falls apart
by the afternoon, but for a while it's a nice feeling.
barrenko wrote 17 hours 17 min ago:
Well, not sleeping through the night, you'll feel genuinely euphoric
around dawn, it's one of the most immediate "cures" for clinical
depression.
paglaghoda wrote 17 hours 40 min ago:
Rest in peace to all the college dudes covering the whole syllabus
within 24 hours of the exam
znpy wrote 16 hours 40 min ago:
Not a college dude, but i used to work on shits (including night
shifts) and adjusting to and from a five-nights (23:30-07:30) shift
isnât that pleasant either.
nfriedly wrote 14 hours 40 min ago:
I think you meant to say "...I used to work on shifts..."
That, or maybe try a laxative.
(Man, if ever there was a time I wanted emoji support on HN, this
is it!)
wslh wrote 17 hours 36 min ago:
It is always great to follow the instructions from a psychiatrist [1]
HTML [1]: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/08/how_to_take_ritalin_...
thesmtsolver wrote 15 hours 39 min ago:
This is just outdated, bad and dangerous advice that a ton of
recent research invalidates.
1. Ritalin, and other stimulants are not cognition enhancing for
non-ADHD adults and may in fact do the opposite. [1] 2. > Because
the doctor will rigorously apply artificial and unreliable
diagnostic categories backed up by invalid and arbitrary screens
and queries to make a diagnosis. So after this completely
subjective and near useless evaluation is completed, your doctor
should be able to exercise prudent clinical judgment to decide if
Ritalin could be of benefit.
What else can you do for psychiatric conditions? We don't have a
magic ADHD-o-meter but know that it statistically impacts lifespan,
health, etc. Even for more objective measures like blood glucose,
BP, BMI, clinical interventions are based on discrete thresholds
that don't exist in nature.
HTML [1]: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/smart-drugs-can-decrea...
plmpsu wrote 17 hours 26 min ago:
I miss her.
MarcelOlsz wrote 16 hours 8 min ago:
What happened? Did they pass or something or just stop posting or
what?
_--__--__ wrote 10 hours 16 min ago:
TLP was doxxed in a way that threatened their real life
psychiatry practice, briefly blogged on Tumblr under a
different psuedonym, and has since had little online presence
other than rare tweets and randomly dropping a self-published
book on Amazon (_Sadly, Porn_ by 'Edward Teach').
jongjong wrote 17 hours 40 min ago:
Good to know that the brain finds a way to flush itself while awake. I
think I've become pretty good at putting unused parts of my brain to
sleep while awake. My brain is like that of a dolphin now.
But on rare occasions (like a couple of times a year), I get migraine
auras and stuff disappears from my field of view. Can last about an
hour. I feel like that's my visual cortex falling asleep.
ferguess_k wrote 17 hours 48 min ago:
I wonder if a 30-min nap improves the situation. But I need to tell the
brain to hold the flushing until the nap.
gwbas1c wrote 16 hours 16 min ago:
> I wonder if a 30-min nap improves the situation.
I pretty much wait until I feel drowsy, and then take a 15-30 minute
nap
JKCalhoun wrote 16 hours 49 min ago:
Anecdotally, it seems to. I have laid down and closed my eyes even
for a short while. And believe that I have even had a "flushing"
sensation, that feels like a mental fog being lifted (or "drained", I
guess).
I pop up 5 minutes later and feel completely refreshed.
256_ wrote 11 hours 34 min ago:
I do something similar, although there's an added peculiarity when
I do it. I lie down for 5 minutes and wake up 9 hours later.
assimpleaspossi wrote 14 hours 17 min ago:
Agree though it's 10 minutes for me.
When I owned some property out in the country, it was a 2 1/2 hour
car trip to get there. Sometimes I just couldn't finish the drive
home but pulling over to the side of the road for a 10-minute nap
made me feel fully refreshed.
ferguess_k wrote 15 hours 27 min ago:
I had the same experience. The only trick is to keep it short, like
5-10 minutes. Any longer and the nap may bring negative impacts.
nullstyle wrote 16 hours 22 min ago:
Fwiw, i have the opposite experience of napping. Napping adds to
mental fog for me especially for the hour immediately after
napping. Its not until several hours later that i actually
experience any loss of mental fog or increase in clarity.
g-b-r wrote 15 hours 24 min ago:
It probably depends on how much sleep you're lacking, and how
long the nap is.
My experience after sleeplessness nights is that even few seconds
help significantly, especially when you're almost unable to
function anymore.
If the nap lasts longer than 30 minutes, though, you have a good
chance of feeling groggy afterwards.
rtaylorgarlock wrote 17 hours 13 min ago:
There's controversy over exact mechanisms involved in glymphatic
function, so suffice it to say that allegedly even just NSDR / yoga
nidra will engage a rest deep enough for glymphatic function to
engage/improve
DenisM wrote 16 hours 56 min ago:
I was disappointed the article didnât mention that. Can you give
me some pointers. I will use Google but HN curated content is often
a better starting point. :)
cdelsolar wrote 17 hours 54 min ago:
I slept around 5 hours last night split up into two periods because my
baby daughter woke up crying from fever and wanted to play / was
hallucinating / etc. She's totally fine now but I am wondering if there
is a correlation between dementia and having kids.
freedomben wrote 16 hours 59 min ago:
Ah, those days were the absolute grinder for me. How a precious and
sweet little baby girl can become an absolute monster all night long,
and then wake up the next day back to her normal self while leaving
me a hollowed out mess of a human is a mystery for science to solve
someday.
cdelsolar wrote 15 hours 21 min ago:
aren't they the best though? but yeah, back to the grind, and now i
also have her respiratory disease and am trying to launch my
startup off the ground ...
aliljet wrote 17 hours 16 min ago:
What have you done when your toddler wakes up at random hours during
the night to interrupt your sleep and come and play? That's what has
truly obliterated our sleep. Everything else was a passing fad that
was minimally painful at best..
zoeysmithe wrote 17 hours 16 min ago:
I mean the baby stage doesn't last very long. I dont even remember
the sleepless nights from my own kids anymore lol
Chronic sleep deprivation is the larger issue. And how we really
don't have treatments on how to fix that, and how ultimately sleep
phase issues are a social issues (being forced to follow a fixed
modern schedule). Not to mention how closely that's tied to ND
people. So a lot of us deal with sleep issues since we were little,
but work and school dont give us the flexibility we need. For
example, flex hours could be helpful here. I would rather work 10am
to 6pm or 11am to 7pm most days. Or 5-6 hours during the day and 2-3
hours late at night.
randerson wrote 15 hours 33 min ago:
I suffered chronic insomnia most of my life and seen my fair share
of experts and read a few books about it. There are definitely
treatments for the majority of insomniacs.
Sleep deprivation is often caused by alcohol, inconsistent
sleep/wake times, high color temperature lighting (>3000K) in the
hours before bed, failure to spend time outdoors in natural light
in the morning, temperature too warm (68F is ideal), caffeine (or
other stimulants) in the afternoon, associating the bedroom with
tasks other than sleep and sex, or simply spending too much time in
bed.
Following doctor's advice for the last one: Start by going to bed
at, say, 1am and waking up at 6am. Follow this without fail for a
few weeks. You'll be exhausted but keep at it. Eventually you
should find yourself falling asleep quickly. If you wake up
exhausted, pull back bedtime by 10 minutes. Do this for a week.
Rinse and repeat until you are waking up at 6am refreshed. That is
how you determine how many hours your body needs to sleep, and how
long you should be in bed. Helped me.
zoeysmithe wrote 14 hours 46 min ago:
I'm autistic with delayed sleep-wake cycle. For autistics DSWPD
is pretty common. There's just no fixing that for the vast
majority of us, we're just expected to follow strict schedules
and if we are underslept, too bad for us.
ND people get this pretty badly. 2023 study: The incidence of
sleep problems in ASD patients ranges from 32 to 71.5%,
especially insomnia, while an estimated 25â50% of people with
ADHD
Insomnia is different, but tbf, insomnia for many people can't be
treated well or if not at all. CBT is helpful if you look at the
studies and ignore the follow up studies showing relapses between
40-70%. We can stuff people with melatonin and hypnotics but
after a while that no longer works. So looking at this, it looks
like things like drugs and CBT can help 70% of insomnia sufferers
but the relapse rate is as high as 70%, so we're looking at
people who can actually be cured as low as 15-20% of total
insomnia sufferers.
Its not caffeine or screens for us, its just how the machinery of
the human body works. This is like telling a depressed person to
just 'cheer up.' I'm glad that worked for you, but your story is
just an anecdote, and the science for this is still pretty dismal
unfortunately.
The science can't work because at this point we're going against
our nature. A lot of people cannot subscribe to a modern
industrialized sleep schedule because its not natural for us to
have extremely strict sleep and wake times.
randerson wrote 8 hours 52 min ago:
Thanks for elaborating. I have an autistic child, and you
might've just explained why my kid has more energy at night
than during the day. She tends to fall asleep around midnight
(but at least gets a solid 8 hours of sleep from there). We're
lucky to have a school with a late start time.
chasebank wrote 17 hours 7 min ago:
"Chronic sleep deprivation is the larger issue. And how we really
don't have treatments on how to fix that"
Sure we do, however, not everyone is willing to hike 20-30 miles a
day and sleep in a tent. It's not practical but it is very
effective.
zoeysmithe wrote 17 hours 5 min ago:
Physically exhausting yourself isnt a solution. Its tangential to
the real issue. Its a bit like suggesting you can solve anxiety
caused by trauma by drinking large amounts of alcohol everyday.
No, instead we should be treating trauma. Its like putting
autistic kids through rough ABA therapy, no instead we should
finding accommodations and support for autistic people.
People have natural sleep rhythms. Society should conform to
that, instead capitalism demands we conform to what it deems
profit maximizing.
sureglymop wrote 14 hours 39 min ago:
I agree with you. I regularly have strong insomnia and I have
tried physical exhaustion.
It usually works for the first few days of doing it but then
it's like my body (probably moreso my mind) gets used to it and
it doesn't help with sleep anymore.
Arguably it feels even more unhealthy because it's like my body
is fully exhausted and tired but my mind won't let me sleep so
no restoration can happen.
chasebank wrote 17 hours 0 min ago:
Not physically exhausting yourself is the real issue. It's our
natural state as humans. We're not meant to be staring at
screens having discussions about chronic sleep deprivation on
an internet forum, we're meant to be outside moving our bodies.
Mizza wrote 17 hours 23 min ago:
Memory loss from sleep deprivation is an evolutionary advantage. If
you remembered how rough the first few months of new children are,
you wouldn't do it again.
debo_ wrote 17 hours 42 min ago:
This kind of fear is a quick route to insomnia. One of the most
effective ways to reduce sleep is to worry about it.
grumpy-de-sre wrote 17 hours 28 min ago:
And when that happens, of course HN has the answer
HTML [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15997016
debo_ wrote 17 hours 14 min ago:
I think CBTI is pretty horrible but I'm happy it works for some
people.
There's so much helpful stuff out there now it's rather a
blessing.
sarchertech wrote 17 hours 44 min ago:
Iâm on my 3rd (sheâs 1 week old today) at 42. With the first 2 it
was only terrible for the first couple months. Once I just got used
to going to sleep at 9:30 I was mostly fine.
grumpy-de-sre wrote 17 hours 32 min ago:
We're expecting our first in a few months.
NGL I'm low key wondering if my messed up natural rhythm of 9pm-4am
is going to be potentially handy.
Tade0 wrote 16 hours 52 min ago:
As a father of two I would say "nope", primarily because you
won't be deciding the rhythm. Best you can do is coordinate sleep
with your partner so that there's at least one somewhat
functioning parent at all times.
As I'm typing this my 1.5yo is napping. I had maybe 6h of sleep
but I'm after (part time) work and at home already, so I should
probably nap as well.
Can't. My adult body won't go to sleep right now even though I'm
feeling drowsy because it's too bright, too loud and chiefly I
already had too much caffeine in the morning and I have like 15
minutes until I'll have to head out to collect my older child
from preschool.
My SO is knocked out cold at the moment though, so I'll be
relying on her this evening.
zurichisstained wrote 17 hours 2 min ago:
I have a similar natural rhythm, or I should say "had". For the
first year, especially the first few months, it was a godsend
(for my wife, especially), but now that we're in a fairly
consistent sleep routine with our two year old (~8pm-7am), I've
shifted to something more like 8pm-1am out of necessity.
Although... I was up until 4am and got up at 6:30am and feel
surprisingly great, so it still happens from time to time. :)
micromacrofoot wrote 17 hours 36 min ago:
Yeah that's the trick, sleep asap
arethuza wrote 17 hours 47 min ago:
I remember this quote from when we had young kids:
"Insanity is hereditary. You can get it from your children."
And then as soon as they are in their 20s and reasonably self
sufficient we had to get a puppy to keep me sane!
spockz wrote 17 hours 44 min ago:
Long days and short years.
Did you have empty nest syndrome?
arethuza wrote 17 hours 28 min ago:
More like empty head syndrome - but getting a dog was the best
thing I've done in years.
aethrum wrote 17 hours 47 min ago:
Probably negatively correlated cause you have someone to interact
with in your old age/better chance of community :)
skeeter2020 wrote 16 hours 29 min ago:
Also I think of (hopefully at least one of) my three kids as a
diversed retirement portfolio :)
rtaylorgarlock wrote 18 hours 9 min ago:
Long live healthy sleep for brain health, and thank goodness light
exercise helps this same glymphatic system.
cestith wrote 14 hours 21 min ago:
ISTR that light exercise also helps with quality of sleep.
HPsquared wrote 11 hours 38 min ago:
It stands to reason.
stOneskull wrote 10 hours 29 min ago:
It lays to drain.
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