It may be relatively less common but the slow death it inflicts is highly unpleasant, especially for the people around you. I strongly prefer to die of a heart attack.
The worst part is that there isn't a well-defined point where you can say "I'd like to have a medically-assisted suicide" that isn't going to upset people (assuming it were legal). By the time you reach it, you quite possibly won't have the cognitive capacity to request it.
My dad is a good example of this. He was very adamant he wanted to die if he became debilitated by dementia. Unfortunately he ended up having three strokes in quick succession while being diagnosed for vascular dementia and is now a totally different person (with zero recollection or connection to his previous personality or memories, as far as anyone medical can tell) living a pretty miserable life in a facility with 24/7 care, zero language abilities, etc. There was no singular moment he could have made the call. He was entirely cogent one day and absolutely not the next.
I would be very happy to sign off on his wishes, but there is no legal or medical route to do so, so whatever is left of him gets to suffer until his body gives up. I support them introducing some mechanism for this one day and would likely use it myself (all my ancestors went through dementia).
I don't believe there should be a "point" where you can say that. Medically-assisted suicide should be available for everyone. Of course with a prolonged evaluation period.
I took the parent to be saying something like "even if medically assisted suicide were available as an option without restriction, there is no point at which you would decide to do it because the onset of dementia is so gradual." That is, it would be difficult to make the decision (for some/most people at least) while you were still having lucid moments where you could still have some quality of life. And by the point where you have completely lost it, you are no longer of sound mind to consent to a medically assisted suicide.
I think one way to go is to do this early, with a clear bound. For example, one might set a rule that if they can:
* no longer compute ∫x²dx
* remember the capital of France; and
* recall where they were born
Then they have crossed that threshold.
Personally, though I don't want to be killed. At least by my values, killing is not okay. I think there are much better things to do, such as:
- Being frozen in Antarctica, in case medical technology improves in a century or two to the point where I can be revived and cured.
- Go some place where I will surely die, but where I can still do some good (running a school for girls in Afghanistan when the US was there is a good example)
- If none of that is possible, do something interesting and dangerous. For example, if my brain is going anyways, experimenting with drugs and dying by drug overdose seems like a decent way to go.
And to be abundantly clear, that's my opinion and my values. I'm not trying to decide for anyone else. I don't think these sorts of decisions should ever be forced, mandated, or imposed.
Footnote: Thresholds are hard to define. I did have one relative with complete loss of short-term memory who seemed to be having a wonderful life. They were happy, friendly, and told grand kids wonderful stories from decades past. It helped that they had a very easy-going personality. On the other hand, they didn't know how they got to where they were, or what we were talking about five minutes ago. They also didn't have any recent memories (e.g. if a relative had been married within the past half-decade or so, they wouldn't recognize the spouse). There was a point where I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have passed any reasonable threshold, but they seemed to be living a very full life surrounded by a big family who loved them. On the other hand, if my brain was where their brain was, I'm pretty sure I'd be completely miserable.
> - Being frozen in Antarctica, in case medical technology improves in a century or two to the point where I can be revived and cured.
Given that cryonics is currently essentially just a scam, you might just as well. For all practical purposes, it's equivalent to killing. (Legally, you need to have just died though, in most Western countries, so I think you don't actually have this option.)
Or you meant just traveling there, going on an extended hike from which you don't return because you just purposely one day didn't get out of your tent. That's not a pleasent way to die though, and nobody is going to go there 300 years from now to unthaw you.
> - If none of that is possible, do something interesting and dangerous. For example, if my brain is going anyways, experimenting with drugs and dying by drug overdose seems like a decent way to go.
How do you know that a drug overdose is a pleasant experience? You could be hallucinating the most terrible things in the world for as it may feel like an eternity. Unless you are talking about sleep medication, but then again, just taking a bunch of sleeping pills is not different from a "classical" suicide.
The cryogenics industry is a scam, but I'm more optimistic of the progress of the potential progress of technology. I'm not going to describe what's going to happen, since I think there's an infinite number of options, but I'll give one scenario:
- Machine learning advances, and we have LLM-like/SD-like models for the human brain, which can reconstruct a plausible brain from limited data.
- DNA preserves pretty well (and again, see above for restoring from degradation).
- There is an archive of what I look and behave like
It's not beyond the realm of plausibility that in a few hundred years:
- "Frozen in Antarctica in a concrete container" will preserve enough data to reconstruct a person
- We'll have bioengineering technology to do so
- There will be enough curiosity about what people were like a millennium ago to try
Will it work? Probably not. However, it somehow moves this out of "suicide" into "morally acceptable" under my values.
> How do you know that a drug overdose is a pleasant experience?
Perhaps I'm more interested in interesting experiences than pleasant ones. Again, you're trying to map your values onto me.
How is going to Afghanistan and manage a school something you should once once you reach advanced dementia? You’d think that it would make some good? To whom?
Setting a rule is difficult because in n+1 years of dementia you've effectively started to become another person, and at some point you don't know if that person will honour the rule you made, or even be aware of how incapable of satisfying it they have become.
Unlikely: Organ donor is only an option in some circumstances. It's more typical with young people and accidents than elderly. There's no age cut-off, but for example:
1) The organs need to be fresh (e.g. you died in the ER).
2) The organs need to be in good shape (e.g. not sick)
Irrelevant: It doesn't solve the fundamental question of values and ethics. I am against actively taking a life, including my own. I am not against putting my life at risk, especially for a good cause.
Even with prolonged evaluation, there have been events where doctors are killing people who in the current state of mind changed their mind and resisted the entire time in front of their families.
I'm of the opinion humans will never be able to not abuse such a system. We easily see now the data on assisted deaths before tax holidays.
I've thought about it a lot. I want to die while I'm still enjoying life. So I can say goodbye to family and have them remember the person I was, not the shadow I became.
Yeah same day might be a bit excessive, come to think of it. Probably give it a week or so to set up a get together. Like a "living funeral" or something.
And on it goes. Nephew really wants to say goodbye but has to finish studying for finals so a week turns into a month. For those who enjoy life, these decisions are easy in theory just like losing weight. And much harder than imagined when attempted to carry out.
I mean in general it makes sense. As you age your body becomes more brittle, injuries take longer to heal, some you might not recover from at all.
Also psychologically you will have experienced more injuries so you will instinctively avoid doing the same again.
My point was rather that if you know you will die a slow painful death, but not now,and you don't want to commit suicide, you could try riskier stuff that you always wanted to try but would be too dangerous.
Problem is that it's not all-or-nothing. Lots of activities have failure modes that leave you severly disabled for the rest of your existence, even unable to do any of the standard suicide activities or even speak/write.
That's all worse than having another decade of a good life.
Or perhaps even a broken hip that never heals is not too great. Now you won't just get dementia, but you'll do so while you can't even go to the toilet yourself even on your clear days.
This is an ideal use case for chatbots. Hook your carbon monoxide controller to an LLM trained to administer a reverse Turing test. I'm kidding, but not really. Our family is dealing with this and I am considering wiring this up for personal use down the road.
It would also help if conservatives and believers would stop to work against the right to assisted death. It should be a human right to end ones life if so desired.
> It should be a human right to end ones life if so desired.
Why? I have no opinion one way or the other, but what makes you feel that this particular action should be afforded the protections of the term "human right"?
Yes they are. Materials used for safer, less painful suicide methods (such as helium) are made purposely hard to get. Plus the authorities will lock you in a psych ward if they find out about your intent.
Yeah, that's sort of the conclusion I've come to in the last ~6 years. There are so many likely-true benefits to exercise that it almost doesn't matter if a few of them turn out to be false, since no matter what you will probably still benefit from the net result.
The "neurobiological effects of physical exercise" page on Wikipedia gets submitted on HN frequently with few votes, but man is it a fascinating read. Beyond the well-known runner's high, you get cognitive improvements in both short and long term. It even slows down Alzheimer's after you get it, allegedly.
Exercise is no panacea, but people really don't realize how many things it (allegedly) can do, even with super short durations you see in these interval training regimens. Don't force it on people with ME/CFS, sure, but most of us really can and should set aside an hour a week (or less, if you do SIT instead of HIIT).
Well look, the sales pitch for SIT is that you get most of the HIIT goodness at three minutes per day of exercise. Now to hit the required intensity… how much is an indoor bike anyways?
I know doctors that refer to alzheimers as type-3 diabetes. Their gut instinct long ago was that it was indirectly related to insulin regulation. I don't remember exactly how much more (its a large factor), but being overweight and/or having type 2 diabetes makes it much more likely to get alzheimers.
Instead of coffee being a net positive, it actually takes caffeine 4X the time to process through my body. It also increases my cardiac event risk (most normal metabolizers it does not).
I can drink a cup of coffee at 8am and it still impacts my sleep the following night. My blood pressure remains really elevated (20+ points for systolic) the entire day.
All these decades I’ve been ingesting coffee thinking it’s a “net positive” - not for my genotype.
When the reality is I sleep like shit, my blood pressure is through the roof, I feel awful for a day or two of drinking a single cup, and it all makes sense now.
Even with just 30mg ingested this morning at 8am, I still feel very wide awake at 9pm.
When I totally detox from caffeine, go through the headaches, I ultimately feel calmer, and I get the best, deepest sleep.
Is there a way I can get this kind of analysis done and retain control of all the data that gets created? I have been interested in learning details about my genotype for a while, but not at the expense of having 23andMe keep a copy for whatever purpose they desire now or in the future.
I work in human genetics and largely wonder the same thing. Short of sequencing your own genome, I'm not enthusiastic about most privacy policies.
To add context, I also am involved in public large-scale genetic studies (as a participant who has provided genetic data) such as All Of Us. There, I have no misapprehension that people will be studying my data.
I'm just saying that on the commercial side of things, I haven't found a satisfying consumer-facing way to pay for sequencing as a service (where I'm not trying to sequence at scale) without any strings attached.
Yes, find a local sequencing provider and arrange to do a SNP chip or whole genome sequencing. In the contract ask that they delete your data after delivering it to you. This will be:
1. Expensive - probably at least 2 - 3 thousand dollars.
2. Require you to do your own analysis.
Obviously you can't be 100% sure they will delete your genomic data, but they have no incentive to keep it.
Or find a European genetics laboratory that offers this service.
Even though you may not be European, the lab will need to follow the much stricter data protection policies of the EU and will probably not have a different handling for non EU customers (but ask them).
I write this as someone who has worked at one of those in the EU.
Since you are in the field, would you give some names of such labs in the EU? The quality of results when searching for "European genetics laboratory" aren't great.
> the lab will need to follow the much stricter data protection policies of the EU
But will they still retain it indefinitely on a server somewhere? If yes, it will leak eventually. Or the government will lobby to get access to it to "protect the children".
Re 2: do you know of tools that don't involve the cloud and allow you to do such analysis? Ideally FLOSS. I could only find DbSNP and SNPedia but they are datasets, not sure if there are tools built on top of that like Promethease.
Re WGS there are a lot of well established tool chains that are FLOSS (eg https://github.com/bcbio/bcbio-nextgen). You could run alignment and variant calling on a beefy workstation. A laptop would potentially work. Easy to test this with publicly available raw data. Another option: The sequencing provider often will run alignment and some default variant calling for you. Annotating and analysing these variants can be done on pretty much any computer, all with open source software. A SNP chip is even easier to deal with as the computational requirements are less.
Interpreting the results is a more manual process. Really depends on what you are interested in.
There are thousands of sequenced human genomes available to access for research purposes (1000 genomes project, UK biobank etc) so one additional genome adds no marginal value.
Why to delete anything sellable? I always do all kinds of illegal copies of somebody's PD on all places I ever worked as employee. Typically by stealing some papers from garbage because photographing takes too much time per one 'drop'. With enough wit of choosing workplaces I use to have some incomes from my strategy.
you will not get the richness of detail that 23andme provides though, since the results are mostly based off training data from other submissions to 23andme. Which is why it gets better over time; I was shown to be 20% Chinese, but now 4 years later my profile there reads that I'm completely Korean
Knowing your geographical ancestry - which, to me, seems slightly ridiculous, versus knowing some genetic predisposition for disease or problems like the one discussed above with caffeine or, say, ibuprofen, don't seem to be comparable in the slightest.
The easiest test I can think of given GPs description is to take your blood pressure, abstain from coffee for a week (?) and then take a new blood pressure. It's not an RCT so it won't be definitive, but it may suggest to you whether further investigation is likely to pay off.
(Unless, of course, other confounders affect blood pressure unrelated to this effect. But for me personally, my blood pressure is usually fairly constant, at least compared to a 20 mmHg drop.
> The easiest test I can think of given GPs description is to take your blood pressure, abstain from coffee for a week (?) and then take a new blood pressure.
That entirely depends on how strong the caffeine dependency of OP is. For someone like me it would be anything but "easy" for first 2-3 days at least due to withdrawal symptoms (headache, poor concentration, tiredness).
Several months ago I saw a study claiming that decaf coffee prevents withdrawal symptoms, even if you know it's decaf. I was getting headaches pre-coffee in the morning, and tried it, and it worked so well I quit caffeinated coffee without any trouble. Just felt a little slow and sleepy the first week.
Sorry, I misspoke, and that's my experience. I still had slight symptoms, but they were reduced by at least 90%. I'd found it pretty difficult to quit coffee before, but switching to decaf was effortless.
Related question: I have my genome but I find that the reports on polygenetic scores that you receive from [popular consumer WGS sequencing provider] are lacking accuracy. Is there a platform/ community of personal genetics enthusiast that crowdsources such analysis?
I haven't done a DNA test before, but I assume the identity verification is lax at best.
Would it be practical to just generate a "burner" persona to attach your test to? Yes your data technically will exist, but will be effectively anonymized
Totally anecdotal, but have you tried coupling it with L-Theanine?
I've become extremely caffeine sensitive over the last few years -- anything more than about 80mg has me off the walls for the entire day. But ensuring I get L-Theanine along with it essentially blunts the response quite significantly and allows me to function normally.
I'd recommend checking out your CYP2D6 too. Proper recommendations haven't yet reached the clinic, so if you want personalized medicine then you'll have to educate yourself. Caveat, for dozens of reasons, differing genotypes won't necessarily affect drug pharmacokinetics, even if the metabolic pathway suggests it should.
I have the nonfunctional genotype: Some effects. I can't metabolize codeine into its active drug, so it's just a trash useless drug to me that was prescribed a few times in the past to no effect. Additionally, DXM cough meds stays with me a crazy long time so I have to increase dosage interval else I get high off it. No doubt affects other common medications.
There is a test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmpliChip_CYP450_Test if anyone knows more the Wikipedia page needs updating. Maybe there's more tests now. Just seems crazy none of these tests seem to be routine yet to keep in patient file. This is not 'new' stuff anymore.
It's not just about time-to-sleep, it's about sleep quality.
My only suggestion would be to fully go off of caffeine and rate your sleep quality off of caffeine.
I went years of drinking caffeine. So much so, that I had forgotten what deep sleep really felt like until finally removing caffeine from my daily routine.
It's a massive difference in sleep quality. With caffeine, the sleep is superficial. I get up to urinate a lot more. Lighter sounds can wake me up.
Without caffeine, I find myself sleeping so deeply, that my body stays in the same position, and I can wake up to tension in certain areas because I haven't moved for hours. The deep sleep feels amazing.
How old are you? Caffeine has affected me much more strongly as I’ve aged to the point where I just do freshly ground decaf now. Some of the methods to remove caffeine don’t completely ruin the flavour these days so if you love coffee it can be worth trying…
It's good to try different things. Try a month without caffeine, alcohol or other stimulants for a month to find a baseline. Then you can find what's good for you.
I have a friend psychiatrist who told that she had given the standard first question and advice for over decade for sleep problems: "How much you drink caffeinated beverages? Maybe you should drink less" before she took the advice herself.
She was amazed how well she slept without caffeine even when she didn't think she had sleeping problems or difficulties. She just didn't remember what it was to sleep really well anymore.
I haven't been tested but I read about this, and I think I may have something similar. One cup of cold-brew coffee and I'm good for the day. I don't start getting caffeine withdrawal symptoms (headache etc.) until mid-day the next day.
I used to drink caffeinated soda throughout the day, quitting around 5 hours before bedtime, and I had constant sleep issues. I stopped that around 10 years ago and switched to my one-cup-per-day system. Now I sleep fine.
Very interesting! I generally avoid coffee after the morning since I know I'm sensitive to it, but your link points to the specific gene I have that causes it. I wonder if I should reduce my caffeine intake even in the morning. Is there a good way to find out other relevant genes without uploading my 23andMe data to unknown websites?
Same here. I've quit coffee about 15 times in the last 10 years.
EVERY. SINGLE. TIME, the result is the same: high blood pressure, bad sleep, constant lethargy (which can only be fixed by consuming more coffee), frequent headaches... all goes away after one week of detox.
Hmmm maybe time for me to activate that health portion of my 23andme. I thought it was just silly stuff included but stuff like this would be interesting and useful.
From what I understand (far from an expert), 10 hours on average (meaning sometimes more) sounds biologically unnecessary, and possibly will yield diminishing returns past 7-8.
Of course, everyone is different and maybe there’s a reason you may benefit from more.
But I wonder if sleeping more than ~8 hours is a symptom of something else (and possibly contributing to why your parents don’t like it).
Curious if someone else more knowledgeable than I weighs in.
Also, it probably wouldn’t hurt to bring up with your doctor (e.g. annual evaluation). I usually bring up anything that I feel is considered “not normal” (whatever that is).
I somehow need nine hours of sleep. With eight or less I am groggy and have trouble concentrating. I am also very sensitive to not getting enough sleep anyway. My partner sometime ls comes to bed late and only sleeps for four hours. The next day she might be a bit sleepy but is fine. I wouldn't be able to think or do my work.
Your partner may delude themselves into feeling "fine", but I'd guess it's more that they feel no different than the last time they did it. It's not even a conscious thing necessarily (although I have met people who proclaim, just a little too loudly, they only need <X hours of sleep in some sort of weird macho "ironman" flex).
It's possible; there are a VERY FEW people on the earth who need way less sleep/night than normal, but like multitasking it's a super small % and the number people who think they are in that % but aren't is massive.
Like the number of people (in the US, at least), who think they're in the "better than average" set of drivers.
Your sleep reqs will vary on activity. A lot of lifters swear by 9 hours. It seems to make sense when you work all day, lift, and otherwise stress out a lot.
Yeah, as someone with crappy sleep (this night for example I slept 4 hours, with only 36 minutes deep sleep according to my smartwatch), this kind of headline doesn't cheer me up one bit :(
I guess things are what they are, though. Good that we uncover knowledge like this.
It should be no surprise, that it is not good for your health, if you do not sleep well. So fixing whatever it is preventing you from good sleeping really should be priority number 1 if you want to maintain or restore your health.
Easier said than done, of course, but reducing coffeine, doing more sports and avoid bringing the smartphone into your bedroom would probably be a good start.
Yeah, I have been trying to do that for many years, because obviously poor sleep has plenty of bad outcomes, not only long-term but also including immediately obvious ones.
But for some of us, it's hard. I have taken measures like exercising, having dinner earlier, trying to read for a while before going to bed, etc. and they do help somewhat, but the truth is I seem to be too sensitive to stress. When a backlog of tasks accumulates (which, in my job, is most of the time) I start ruminating about work in bed, sometimes this gets compounded by gas and reflux (I once thought this was about food, but no, I have long found out that it's totally about stress, if I'm on holiday I can eat like a horse and never get gas and if I'm stressed I can get it from pretty much anything) and there goes my night's sleep.
My work is pretty stressful (and hard to reduce the workload) but I don't think I can just blame the job, as this happens even when the backlog isn't such a huge deal objectively speaking, and I can handle it. But it seems that I'm just bad at disconnecting from things. In fact for example if I have a morning flight the next day I always sleep like crap, not because I have any fear of flying at all, but my mind is just not at rest thinking what if the alarm clocks fail (which never happens), etc. I know it won't happen, but the thought keeps me awake anyway.
I had some success with meditating and breathing exercises.
But mostly really doing everything, I possible could do, to reduce "open problems".
And developing a "don't care so much" attitude. The world likely won't burn, if I make misstakes. Shit happens. I do what I can.
"if I have a morning flight the next day I always sleep like crap, not because I have any fear of flying at all, but my mind is just not at rest thinking what if the alarm clocks fail"
And one time I actually forgot to set the alarm, but I still woke up exactly one minute before the alarm was supposed to wake me up ..
Hi, I've had the same experiences (ruminating about job when I should be sleeping), and listening to SF/fantasy audiobooks in bed seems to help a lot. If you're invested in the story, it stimulates your imagination and crowds out all the everyday worries.
For me, while it's true that work and other kinds of pressure are able to create the stress that causes bad sleep, I am perfectly capable of getting stressed for no reason at all.
The good news is that this seems to be getting better as I age.
People with treatment-resistant primary insomnia should go ahead and make their peace. If CBT-i, calming exercises, or the small stable of medications (all of modest efficacy and some themselves implicated in dementia among other risks) don't work for you, then there's not much that can be done.
We don't have very powerful tools to help with sleep, which is a damned shame seeing as insomnia is a consequence or cause of so many problems.
I chose not to partake in any of those things knowing I really need my 9-10 hours. Genetic lottery blessed and cursed me in different ways, and my sleep requirements are one that will dictate my choices in life can't be the same as short sleepers.
I was sleeping 6-7 hours through highschool and I can vividly remember it being the worst period of my life, standing in the shower each morning overwhelmed by the thought "I want to sleep so bad I wish I was dead, because that's like, an infinite satisfaction of the desire to sleep." Don't misread this it wasn't a dark thought at all, I was just THAT tired.
Am I the only one making the hard choice- choosing good sleep forever?
There are certainly periods of work and early parenthood that make sleep difficult, but that shouldn't be true for more than a few years.
Unless you're grinding away at a once in a lifetime opportunity, you shouldn't be sacrificing years of your life to poor sleep to work 16 hour days or something. Make sleep a priority and learn how to set boundaries.
Unless his life is also a luxury, deep sleep is a nessecity. Those other things can take a back seat, unless it's an emergency situation concerning the wife, kids, etc.
A modern family man is also no use dead or when performing badly due to lack of good sleep.
I average 8.5 hours an night, have 3 and 5 year old kids, get up with them half the mornings, eat with them 6 nights a week, gym 3 times a week, run a popular open source project, cofounded a startup (and a staff+ IC until recently) and do my share of chores at home. I’m sure that’s not possible for everyone/everywhere but a non-trivial number of privileged middle-class parents in tech (like me) have convinced themselves it is impossible when it is not.
Admirable. I have similar age kids, average about 6-7 hours of interrupted sleep a night. They wake up between 5 and 6 am, asleep between 7-8 and I often don't go to bed myself until 11pm. I'm writing this comment while sitting next to my 3 year old who has woken up at 11:14pm and called out for comfort to get back to sleep.
I do 50% of the cooking, chores, school/daycare drop offs, work an 8.5 hour day 5 days a week, and have effectively zero time for any personal or extracurricular pursuits. I barely get any time alone with my wife as it is and if I gave up any of the moments we can snatch in between kids awake and asleep I don't think there'd be much of a relationship left. Once a fortnight I get a night to myself but often end up socialising. How do you do it? What's different about your life?
My guesses for things different about my life (not suggesting anyone should do any of these):
- my kids have been sleep trained to not wake up so early. They used to and now they don’t.
- if my kids wake up in the night: I put them back to bed (repeatedly if necessary) and don’t stay with them unless they are literally vomiting or need other medical attention
- I don’t work 8.5 hours a day 5 days a week. I didn’t when I was employed and don’t now
- my wife and I alternate week nights when we’re out the house. One of us can feed/bath/bed both kids by ourselves.
That tells Google about your sleep patterns (and more) which in my opinion is a no-go. This type of data should only be shared on a consensual basis and only with those who use it for your benefit or (truly anonymised) fit research purposes. Building a profile for advertising and whatever other nefarious purposes is not for your benefit. The same is true for other "connected, individualized" devices like Apple's iThings and others.
> Building a profile for advertising and whatever other nefarious purposes is not for your benefit.
"Your sleep data is handled responsibly. Your coughing and snoring sound data doesn't leave the Nest Hub, only sounds events are sent to Google servers. Consistent with our commitment to privacy in the home, your sleep data is not used for ad personalization."
"This also includes answering clearly if your home sensor data sent to Google is used to show you ads. And so we commit to you that for all our connected home devices and services, we will keep your video footage, audio recordings, and home environment sensor readings separate from advertising, and we won’t use this data for ad personalization. When you interact with your Assistant, we may use those interactions to inform your interests for ad personalization. For example, if you ask, “Hey Google, what’s the weather today?” we may use the text of that voice interaction (but not the audio recording itself) to show you personalized ads."
> For example, if you ask, “Hey Google, what’s the weather today?” we may use the text of that voice interaction (but not the audio recording itself) to show you personalized ads."
That is to say, they use sound data - in processed, not raw form - to build a profile for advertising and whatever other nefarious purposes not for your benefit. That's on top of interns listening to some of the audio to ensure the service works as expected, that is to say recordings of you having sex will be passed around the office.
OK, I think you didn't understand the whole statement or are twisting it to meet your narrative. It sounds like you have an axe to grind, so I won't really go further.
“the data from the sensors don’t leave the device. Instead we extract events and interactions from this data and send back home to do whatever we wish with it.”
The policy you link makes statements about “hey Google” but for me it’s still very unclear what apply to this sentence vs others it records. May be my far from perfect english understanding.
Even if I determine my sleep quality…then what? If it’s bad, and I am eating healthy, workout and don’t have apnea what am I supposed to do with this information?
You could try different combinations of beds, pillows, blankets, white noise, blackout curtains-- there are lots of different ways to adjust your sleep environment to do a bit of trial-and-error to find out what helps.
I found that I sleep best with blackout, loud white noise, a very soft pillow under my head, and a firm pillow beside my legs so I can sleep on my back with one leg bent and resting on the leg pillow. The bent leg thing is not something I've ever heard of anyone else doing. I just had to figure it out by trying a ton of different ways of arranging my limbs in bed-- previously I had really struggled with hip pain during the night no matter how I slept.
There are a lot more things to check/do besides "eating healthy, workout and not having apnea".
For example, the times when you eat matter (even if you eat healthy to begin with). The light levels matter - is your bedroom pitch dark? Noise levels matter. Temperatures matter a lot. Things like sleep position could play a role. Pets sleeping with you waking you up at night. And several other things besides.
Or you might have a condition that prevents you from sleeping well, even if it's not apnea. Might be stress. Or something that needs medical treatment, or a vitamin deficiency. You might also need supplements such as melatonin.
My personal theory / opinion in how I know I slept deeply is whether I had a dream that felt like a fairly long period. There was a point in my life where I literally had no dreams and slept like I was passing out. I realized that this was greatly affecting my long term memory. I went and made incremental steps in getting my sleep better and thankfully was able to start dreaming again, and even got to some points where my dreams became lucid, like being in inception. Anyways that's just my personal indicator on whether ive been sleeping deeply.
You're talking about REM sleep, not deep sleep. The article is talking about (I believe) the N3 stage of non-rem sleep, which is when the surrounding space around cerebral arteries expand and cerebral spinal fluid outside those arteries with flush out toxins
During this stage of sleep, neurons also fire in unison at a slow frequency on the order of 1Hz
I don't think that happens in REM sleep, which actually looks more like wakefullness than the N3 stage, but with certain aspects of cognition shut off (like the rational part, and the motor activation part)
Thanks for pointing this out! This definitely makes. me wonder if there's a way for us to tell whether we had adequete deep sleep without using an app or some external machine. My points about REM/Dreaming was that I could notice these things naturally without aid.
It might be possible to get that indirectly through cognitive tests taken throughout a person's life and see how they progress
Sleep quality deteriorates rapidly after age 45, at least from what I was told by the Dreem2 tech support a while ago. My understanding is this involves the amplitude of brain waves during primarily the N3 stage, while physical exercise has been shown to enhance that amplitude, e.g. walking 3 miles a day
The Dreem2 headband does have the ability to enhance the amplitude and duration of N3 brain waves also, by using timed pulses of pink noise in a feedback loop
Though I don't think that feature was available to consumers inside the USA cuz of FDA regulation BS
get a minimal activity monitor, without any "smart" functions. you can get ones that charge for 15m every 5 days now. (trying not to promote a particular product)
Is there something I can just keep next to my pillow? Or something like that?
I don't like wearing (and don't wear) watches or any kind of bands/rings/etc at all - they feel like a constant weight and then there's sweat, and pressure, and all that.
Before Apple bought them and discontinued the product last year, the Beddit sleep monitor was the best option for me. I’ve had mine for years and use it religiously. It’s a small sensor that goes on your mattress. You may be able to find one still for sale. It’s far more practical than wearing an Apple Watch to bed.
My experience with them is mixed. I’ve had a couple of theirs and they’ve been markedly inaccurate in some categories. For example, reporting I was not in bed when I actually was, or vice verse on other nights. As a result, the sleep hours were off. I still love it for the temperature control (set to manual, not their ‘auto’ algorithms), but if it can’t reliably report something as simple as whether I’m in or out of bed, then accurately judging sleep stages should be even less likely.
My oura ring has been far more helpful in identifying patterns leading to less quality sleep. For example , by highlighting elevated resting heart rates and asking me if I ate later that night, consumed spicy foods or alcohol, etc. That said, it’s not terribly durable. After a couple years it refused to accept firmware updates. Then a few weeks ago (after maybe 3 years of use) it stopped connecting to the app altogether and support tickets are going unanswered. This is greatly disappointing but I may spring for a replacement anyway because of how helpful it’s been in correlating lifestyle choices to sleep parameters (& quite consistently so).
Agreed on preferring my oura vs my eight bed for sleep tracking. Just found out that their web interface gives you a lot more analytic tools than the app, check that out if you have not already.
You can also get a less accurate but potentially still useful reading with only the phone in some apps. You'll get false negatives because it can only really measure movement but if it says your sleep is shit it probably is.
Your skepticism is justified. Oura publish their data, and to quote them:
>Oura ring was 96% accurate in detecting sleep compared to polysomnography, 48% accurate in detecting wakefulness, 65% agreement in detecting “light sleep,” 51% agreement in detecting “deep sleep” and 61% agreement in detecting REM
So it's basically wrong with sleep categorization about half the time.
From the study: "Most devices (Fatigue Science Readiband, Fitbit Alta HR, EarlySense Live, ResMed S+, SleepScore Max) performed as well as or better than actigraphy on sleep/wake performance measures".
The Garmin watches have been replaced by newer versions with upgraded sensors. Garmin's tracking isn't perfect, but each version has made small improvements.
Many have already pointed that there have been studies to measure the accuracy of sleep analysis by wearables. They aren't that great. If you have a concern, you should definitely seek out a polysomnograph, and wearables should not be a replacement for that. However, you can't get a polysomnograph every night, and wearables are probably the best option for regular analysis. Just because they're not that great doesn't mean they're useless, and doesn't mean they won't improve.
Most devices (Fatigue Science Readiband, Fitbit Alta HR, EarlySense Live, ResMed S+, SleepScore Max) performed as well as or better than actigraphy on sleep/wake performance measures, while the Garmin devices performed worse.
My son just had one, and they said they found nothing. But looking around, apparently most sleep studies in USA just look for sleep apnea. By default they don't actually look for anything else.
You need at least an EEG to have even a remote chance of getting good data. No smartwatches or rings will do the trick. Zeo was a good one, but discontinued 10 years back.
Deep sleep generally occurs at the same time each night (that is, it is to some extent anchored by the circadian clock). To get more and better deep sleep, go to bed at the same time every night.
Since deep sleep tends to dominantly occur early in the night (within the first two hours of falling asleep), you’ll basically lose out on it anytime you go to bed abnormally late.
(In the Hindu medicine system there is an adage… “an hour of sleep before midnight is worth two hours, after midnight it is worth one hour, after sunrise it is worth zero hours.” I suspect the circadian anchoring of deep sleep is the prime determinant in this heuristic’s truthfulness.)
Alertness early in the day seems to do the trick for me. I think of deep sleep as reaction to how alert I was earlier in the day. So on days I make an effort to activate myself early in the day, I will fall into longer deep sleep that night (2+ hours according to my fitbit). If I just kind wake up and laze around the house without getting much activity, then I I get under and hour of deep sleep, even with the same amount of total sleep.
What seems to work for me is immediate sunlight exposure right when I wake up, 5 - 10 mins of being outside, 16 oz of cold water right around that time, 2-5 mins of an activity that gets my heart rate up (jumping jacks, burpees, jump rope). If I can muster it, a cold shower also helps.
There are other things like getting exercise, avoiding caffeine after a certain time, avoiding light exposure prior to bed, avoiding alcohol, sleeping in a cool room that I think also help. But for me it's the making myself super alert right when I wake up that has the biggest bang for my buck.
This is anecdotal, n = 1 kind of stuff though. And I don't do it every day, and it doesn't work 100% of the time. But I definitely notice that I am far more likely to get a lot of deep sleep when I do those things than when I don't. Hope it helps you in some way.
I’ve struggled for a long time to have a good sleep routine but over the last few months I’ve found some things that actually work for me, to the point where people now think of me as one of the early people at work. I don’t know if this will specifically help deep sleep but my hunch is that for me it has.
What’s worked for me:
- A good memory foam pillow and a new mattress
- Using light as well as sound for my alarm clock. I have my smart lights gradually turn on in my room over a 15-minute period in the morning and have an alarm set on my watch.
- Counterintuitively, having a TV in my room.
So my night routine now is that I’ll retire to my room, get ready for the next day (put clothes out, go over my reminders/notes if I feel like it, etc), then lay in bed and watch a video or two, then dim my lights to a setting I only use for the last part of the night (bedside lamp only at minimum brightness). It’s turned out to be a surprisingly-good sleep hygiene cue for me. I’ll usually then wind down with some more videos but I’ll inevitably start feeling drowsy and then it’s lights-out and the TV gets switched off.
I also switched showering from the morning to the evening and I also make sure to change out of my work clothes when I get home.
This means that in the morning I have very little to think about. I have to just plant my feet on the floor and get moving. Since everything’s already prepared I can do this pretty mindlessly. I don’t drink a coffee until I get into the office.
After a few days of forcing myself to get up like this consistently, it actually started feeling weird not getting up when I first wake up with the morning lights on. I love travelling in to work before the crowds and having quiet time in the office to get work done. Another awesome benefit is that I can relax the routine a bit on the weekend and yet still get up at a reasonable time to have the whole day to do stuff, while at the same time still feeling like I ‘slept in’.
I always considered myself a ‘night owl’ but this experience has made me reconsider. If I don’t have a good routine my sleep pattern will drift later and later and I’ll feel crap all day, whereas keeping this routine I’m getting up earlier and my energy levels feel way more consistent throughout the day, so I don’t know, maybe I’m an early bird that had poor sleep or something.
Yeah a lot of people say take the TV out of the bedroom. But I'll be damned if putting a show on doesn't put me out. I know people say the light is bad, screens are bad blah blah blah. But TBH I think it's the content that is keeping people up, doomscrolling on phones, reading news, etc. I think as long as you turn off the lights when you pass out, that's all you need to do. Don't sit there and binge watch until 2am, either.
And then I look back at my dad. He'd watch TV and fall asleep in his chair every night. The man slept like a log every night. He never used an alarm, he just woke up when he needed to, but wasn't late for work or anything like that. Never seen anybody with better sleep hygiene. But he also had a very physical job.
One subtle thing I only realised while writing that comment is that I don’t ever have the TV as the only source of light in the room before going to sleep. The bedside lamp is always the thing that gets turned off. I wonder if psychologically that makes me associate the lamp as the thing that anchors my sleep and not the TV.
I put some historical show on YouTube on the phone on my headboard and I'm usually out in 5 minutes. I actually like history too, it's not boring to me.
if your TV still has a sleep timer try using it. listening to boring/monotonous stuff at low volume helps me fall asleep too.
they used to be a physical button on the remote but now it's usually in a menu somewhere. i just checked my sony, it's in the first level of the main menu (gear icon button).
I have an Oura ring and got it because I had a sense my deep sleep was terrible. I would often wake up at night and wake up with a headache in the morning as I often stay up late and often would not get enough sleep. Found that magnesium personally helped me incredibly. I now sleep through the night, feels like my sleep is much deeper, etc., and my Oura stats show likewise.
Still the other most important thing is to just go to bed on time. If I jump on my computer before bed I almost always get stuck and go to bed way too late. Hard habit to change but essential.
Supplement right before bed. This stuff is so individualized/your mileage may vary so need to try and see what works for you but I used to do a basic magnesium citrate supplement and now do a triple mag blend with glycinate, malate, taurate.
> I have used wearables to measure, it’s always less than an hour for me
Wearables aren't known for their accuracy (unless it's an EEG headband)
That said, 60 minutes of true deep sleep would actually be normal. Deep sleep isn't something you can, or should, be getting all night. It's a sleep phase that normally occupies about 1/8 to 1/4 of your sleep time.
Given the poor accuracy of wearables, I wouldn't worry about anything. It's more important that you get the appropriate duration of sleep (7-9 hours depending on what you need), avoid alcohol (this one is big), avoid caffeine too late in the afternoon or altogether, and get some physical activity mid-day. Everything else will fall into place.
I have been struggling with sleep for a long time, and I'm finally trying to focus on getting more, quality deep sleep. Because when I do sleep, I feel great. Here's what I've been doing to try to improve things:
Make your bedroom the most comfortable place in the entire world for you. I recently bought a new mattress and blankets and I no longer struggle to keep a good temperature (freezing cold vs sweating all night)... can finally side sleep without my shoulders being sore, and can sleep on my stomach without destroying my back. There are tons of mattresses out there, and there's no single one that is good for everybody. I slept with sore shoulders and back for so long... and for no good reason really.
I put an air purifier in my bedroom. It is now my sanctuary that I can go to where there is no dust, no pollen... or at least it's significantly reduced. I also started taking Flonase, and it helps open up my sinuses. For years I've had swollen sinuses due to allergies, but I've felt otherwise fine. I've woken up freaked out a number of times feeling out of breath, I thought I was dreaming it, or just not awake. But with the allergies, my nose swells shut a lot, and I didn't realize that you don't always just automatically breathe through your mouth when you're asleep.
I also started going to bed an hour or so earlier. Not so much with the intention of going directly to sleep, but I kinda spend some time preparing for sleep. It gets me away from the computer, and gets my thoughts away from work. I tend to take my time making my bed, picking out clothes for the next day, etc.
Also having an extra hour reduces the anxiety that I need to fall sleep right now, or I'm gonna feel like shit tomorrow. Getting into bed early, and not trying to sleep seems to make me feel sleepier much quicker. It's almost like I try to bore myself to sleep a bit... Or when you wake up at 3am, you realize that's okay.
And a big one for me is exercise. I am like a wound up dog. And if I don't burn off some energy during the day, I apparently try to burn it off by tossing and turning all night. I have been doing only 30 minutes a day about 4-5 times a week. Nothing super strenuous. I fucking hate exercise. But it helps me sleep much deeper.
Also cutting back on weed helps big time. Sure it helps you pass out, but it interferes with your REM sleep. You don't dream until the weed wears off. Which is what I believe affects your memory the most with weed.
Not a sleep expert, but you can do sleep study to see if you may have sleep apnea . If you don't have that, then its about managing your health , environment and stress. Make sure you're not too over weight which can effect your sleep. Make sure your room is cool and not stuffy or hot. Wash your sheets reguarly, nothing beats sleeping in fresh sheets. Look into a better mattress or pillow. Lastly another game changer for me is a weighted blanket. It makes me feel like i'm protected and comforted.
Exercise so you're naturally fatigued ... don't eat before bed. Try and reduce noise/light from the room you sleep in. Don't look at TV or phone before bed.
And fuckin hell. You see the doses they use in these studies? 300mg is a huge dose. Weed shops only tend to sell 10mg doses. And even the stuff you find at drug stores... it's like 25-50mg per capsule.
In my 20s if I hit 3-4am awake, I'd often just not go to bed at all. This happened at least once or twice a month. Into my 40s, my regular go-to-bed time was around 2am.
Now I have my watch trying to get me to sleep from midnight to 7am every day.
> A new study suggests it may be sleep, and in particular deep sleep. That’s the stage when the body repairs bones, muscles and the immune system. It’s also when the brain consolidates new memories. If you burn the candle at night, you’ll be more susceptible to illness and more likely to forget things you recently learned.
Wait, I thought it was REM sleep that was responsible for memory consolidation and learning? Can someone clarify?
"Alexey Guzey’s Theses on Sleep gained a lot of popularity and acclaim on LessWrong and among people I follow on social media, despite largely consisting of what I think were weak arguments and misleading claims. I found that a bit surprising, so I decided to write a post pointing out several of the mistakes I think he’s made, and reporting some of what the academic literature on sleep seems to show." - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sbcmACvB6DqYXYidL/counter-th...
Natália Coelho's post on Guzeys criticism of Matt Walkers book is scuffed with inaccurate methodologies, and redundant circular arguments, counter to popular understanding of sleep mechanisms
(I'm kidding, but I couldn't resist pointing out how meta the dialogue around sleep has gotten)
This is going to sound far fetched, but hear me out - I am 55. When I was young I slept like a rock, like most people. Fast forward to a few years ago and I could barely get through the night. I would wake at 3:30am and just not be able to get back to sleep. During the day I was exhausted and in a mental fog.
I had other symptoms too:
* Heart palpatations, especially at night. My brain interpreted it as anxiety. It wasn’t
* Extreme sleepiness, both after meals and at bedtime. Yet, when I would try to go to sleep I would often lay for an hour.
* Constipation
* When I lifted weights, I would start strong but then would be exhausted after one or two sets. I would rest, but my muscles never seemed to recover during my workout
* Excessively thirsty all the time
Note that I did not think these were all related. On the contrary, most of these I didn’t even realize were a problem really. I just thought that was how I was. Then I read something (I think it was a comment on HN) that mentioned something about potassium deficiency. I researched it and realized that it can cause many of those symptoms that I had. I started taking some slowly at first (you read about all the dangers of too much potassium) and I immediately noticed some improvement. Turns out that you need 4700mg of potassium in your diet and only 1000mg of sodium, but that is often inverted in the modern diet.
I suspect I have a undiagnosed kidney issue that does not allow me to retain potassium like normal people. That, coupled with my high sodium diet made it so that I is constantly flushing out my potassium when my body is trying to get rid of the excess sodium.
I now take potassium throughout the day, primarily a couple of hours after meals and before bedtime. (I also take magnesium at bedtime)
The transformation in my sleep has been nothing but amazing. I used to be one of those people that constantly talked about getting enough sleep. I would regularly sleep 9 hours and still feel like I barely got enough. Now I sleep about 7 hours and feel fantastic. I wake up refreshed and my head is so clear during the day. I still wake up at night (to pee), but I always get right back to sleep.
I suspect that your brain uses electrolytes in the flushing process when sleeping. I have a pet theory that the prevalence of alzheimers and other cognitive decline is due to our high sodium and low potassium/magnesium diets. I always understood the value of vitamins and minerals, but did not appreciate the fact that electrolytes are like the gas and oil of a car engine. They are used daily, but deplete and need to be constantly renewed. Your engine can run when your electrolytes are out of whack, but so many basic functions are compromised. It is not just about running and sweating.
I want to make the required disclaimer to talk with your doctor about this and be careful, as too many electrolytes can be as bad as not enough, so don’t be stupid. I will note that I did talk with my doctor and, though he was receptive, he just wasn’t equipped to explore this level of granular topic. He was used to seeing people that were two steps from death, so when he saw me as an outwardly fit 55 year old, he thought I was doing fine.
