Nedergaard (lab head here and main findings of this effect since 2012) is going to win the Nobel for this line of research. When I got my Ph.D. 20 years ago in cognitive neuroscience we knew three main deficits to a lack of sleep but couldn’t connect them mechanistically:
1) loss of daily performance metrics
2) increased risks of mental health concerns
3) increased risks of cognitive declines
The glymphatic nervous system, like any great scientific theory, unites disparate findings under a common mechanism. Not getting enough sleep is akin to not running your dishwasher or washing machine long enough, the gunk accumulates.
And for all the parents out there, pediatric recommendation is 10-12 hours a night for kids 6-12 years old and 8-10 hours a night for kids 13-18 years old.
It makes me think of long COVID and CFS, where patients complain of a lack of "unrefreshing sleep" and "brain fog". A lack of perfusion resulting in waste not being sufficiently flushed out could possibly result in those symptoms.
Just turn off the privacy invading features. LG’s options are pretty great, I’ve seen little bloat, and get the native apps for streaming services just fine.
The ones that stand out to me are industries like pharmaceuticals and energy exploration, where the data silos are the point of their (assumed) competitive advantages. Why even the playing by opening up those datasets when keeping them closed locks in potential discoveries? Open data is the basis of the Internet. But whole industries are based on keeping discoveries closely guarded for decades.
Even the best performers need structure and guidance - a coach. Without coaching, high performers can meet all sorts of suboptimal fates…
Why don’t tech companies generally employ coaches? Yes you can get an “executive” coach, but not widely and really depends on the culture for the perceived purpose. Coaches aren’t widely available for helping people using (and not abusing) their brain’s gifts every day.
Try a can of coconut milk and a cup of pecans or cashews blended in 4 cups of water. It’s a good vegan base. Inexpensive and most flavors can be layered on top.
Awesome! I know of efforts to leverage focused ultrasound to shorten sleep cycles and improve mental health. There’s so much more possible in neuroscience, great to see this work is gaining steam.
I think you are referring to slow-wave enhancement wrt "shorten sleep cycles", which probably isn't the right way to look at it.
We've been developing slow-wave enhancement for the past 4 years using auditory stimulation.
The problem with using focused ultrasound to accomplish this (I believe), is that the focal point creates heat, and I don't believe we want to be consistently creating hot spots of neurons in the brain.
Other methods (acoustic, visual, haptic) have proven efficacy by "tricking" the brain into increasing slow-wave delta power, and tMCS (magnetic) coaxes the neurons into a slow-wave pattern - though this is not realistic outside of a clinical setting atm.
Absolutely there is tons happening in neuroscience (lots here in Sydney, Aus), and focused ultrasound has it's place, but as a daily use, I'm not there with it yet.
For treatment of depression, for diagnosis, etc, absolutely. Though in depression treatment, SAINT protocol tCMS is very impressive.
I don’t know how much is public, the method I’ve seen “bounces” around and aims for a more global effect. Like a sonicare for the brain. No idea if it will work long-term as intended, but seems worth trying.
Neuroscientist here, been teaching my kids since they were really little to power down: lights off, slower and slower breathing, time to say goodnight to our adventures and thoughts as we’ll have more tomorrow. They are consistently asleep by 7-ish.
Curious if anyone here was taught how to fall asleep by their parents or school? We teach our kids so much, but we don’t seem to teach the importance of sleep as well as we teach the importance of brushing your teeth or nutrition.
I taught both of my kids. Dark room, by themselves, door left open a gap so they could hear us talk. Only stayed with them a few minutes to calm down before i left the room if they had falled asleep by then or not. This was just how i felt it had to be done and even though my wife had doubts it worked out extremly well. Or maybe i was just lucky.
I’ll just add a datapoint that nothing like that works for me. I’ve tried every ‘sleep hygiene’ regime, every technique etc. for 15 years or so after finishing University (and scraping through due to what I later realised was basically chronic sleep deprivation) and literally none of it helps a jot for me.
There’s so much going on with circadian rhythms and the difficulty of trying to go against your natural rhythm can be (in my experience) almost unbelievable to someone who hasn’t experienced having actual disorders in that area.
For some people it’s just not ‘knowing how to sleep’ or an issue with discipline, but for a decent number there’s actually deeper causes that are incredibly difficult to fight against (my sleep doctor literally advised me that I might have the best success in the long term moving somewhere where the culture is to wake later!).
Growing up I had developed a habit of keeping my fingers in my ears to shut out noise in order to sleep. And side sleepping.
Then growing up, I observed my brain was in overdrive. This was circa 2010 and I would spend 7-9 hours online everyday.
I would conjure up things to discuss in my brain and that would consume good chunk of my sleep time and render me tired in mornings.
So, I set out to do the impossible.
I trained myself to shut off my mind. Not think, not to imagine, not to go off on a tangent and build imaginary stories.
That helped a lot.
I am able to fall asleep in 20-30 seconds now thanks to this.
Also, about 7-8 years ago I started listening to audiobooks (thanks MaM) and I found a nice quirk. I am able to follow a story (if I want to) as long as I can actively listen every word. If I start skupping, I will fall asleep.
I found the 20-30 seconds time after recording a start time for a boring book, then listening to the book and trying to fall asleep and next day see how much I can remember. If I do, means I was awake. That gave me an average 20-30 seconds for really boring stuff.
Same for when I am not listening to audiobooks. That time I have to be extra careful and not think.
I'm not saying any of that is wrong but is it really necessary? My kids are older but they've been in competitive travel club sports for years and most days they're tired enough in the evening that falling asleep is no problem. We don't bother with anything about lights or controlled breathing or whatever.
Are they getting enough sleep? If they need an alarm clock, they aren’t. I was surprised that less than 20% of 12th graders in our large metro county report getting 8 hours on school nights. The AAP recommendation is 8-10 hours a night for ages 13-18, that’s just flights less than the 9-12 hours for ages 6 to 12. Deep sleep can be enough to survive but it’s not enough to thrive (for most people).
Probably occasionally sleep deprived. If you have a tournament today and a school project due tomorrow then sometimes you have to sacrifice a little sleep. It's not ideal but it's part of learning time management and how to operate as an adult in the real world. There are always trade-offs.
Yeah all of these modern "hacks" for sleep can be trumped with just being an active person who gets up at a reasonable time, child or adult.
Something I observed while spending time in India with my wife's families is how no one follows any sleep schedule. Everyone from babies, to toddlers, kids, and adults are just really busy all day with various chores (the younger ones with just play of course). Once night rolls around, people just start falling asleep, anywhere they are, even in a crowded room with the lights on and people chatting, and sleep like a rock until the morning. Then you do it all again the next day. Theres also no "sleeping in." By 7:30-8 AM everyone is up and busy with something
I think the idleness of modern culture has created a lot of the "insomnia" we hear about, which is just a mind that seeks some sort of stimulation at night after being disengaged all day.
While I was there it was obviously a gathering, but for any event, and India being so huge, everyone comes from all over the country. They stay for 1-2 weeks minimum, no hotel rooms.
So people are staying 4-5 families per house. Everyone just sleeps on couches, floor mats, moms & babies get the beds. etc...
But besides that its just a community based culture. Family, cousins, neighbors are always over... there are maids/helpers staying over.
> Curious if anyone here was taught how to fall asleep by their parents or school?
Not really. Never had problems with it, except in high school, when I learned the hard way that worrying about how little sleep time you have left is a good way to not falling asleep.
Nah, I can fall asleep any time, anywhere, at a moment's notice, if I'm in a horizontal position. In fact, I can't really stop it from happening, which is why I actively avoid lying down during the day - otherwise I end up with an unplanned nap. My problem is that I can't possibly make myself to go to bed unless I'm really, really tired.
Did you ever go to a sleep lab to have your sleep checked?
I didn't have this so extremely but could sleep pretty much any time during the day. Turns out I have sleep apnea. Now since using a CPAP machine, sleeping during the day is much less of a thing for me.
Going to sleep isn't a problem (for me) it's going to sleep earlier. It's more about the lack of light in the fall/winter. If I get stuck going sleep really late then I literally can either go forward - like stay up until the next night which is really hard as you get older or inch backwards. Light therapy holds promise.
I'm just an average person here, but I teach my kids to have a wind-down routine that is very similar to my own—making a quick plan for tomorrow, reading something, being bored, or starting lying down in bed, telling/listening to stories. Definitely no devices or anything that has an LED light or produces sounds in the bedroom. If you have a work/study laptop/computer in the bedroom, start winding down and let it sleep.
I’m just being honest. Maybe the blue light is what makes me need to listen to a podcast to sleep but I have no scientific evidence to say it’s the reason for it.
From what I have read the blue light is supposed to stop deeper sleep occurring. I just don’t think this is the case based on the stats from my Apple Watch. I get plenty of REM.
Stress and the need to want to have some me time is the greater reason for me not wanting to sleep.
This is called “revenge bedtime procrastination” in the literature.
The reply above’s point is that you’ve don’t have data to say that your phone usage is not affecting your sleep. In fact you have anecdotally the opposite data, an implication that it does affect your sleep.
Well I’m usually asleep in about 30 seconds of putting the podcast on so I don’t think there is some circadian rhythm disaster going on. It’s more like a “revenge bedtime procrastination” antidote.
I know a lot of people who use phones before bed. Not all sleep deprived insomniacs.
In tech, I'm interested in native systems programming, at the moment with C++.
Outside of tech, I do quite a bit of "long" distance running, swimming and e-biking.
When out on a run, it leaves lot of time available for listening on podcasts, mainly technical podcasts.
At the same time, when exercising, I want to publish tidbits I've learned, do projects with raspberry pies, arduinos, make statistics over time series (power consumption, electricity price, internet usage++).
When I'm home, I'm thinking I'll do it later :).
What I'm most curious about, is how people, and I, can stay organized. All information feels like a mess :)
I haven't had any checklist for a couple of months, due to holidays and so on. Earlier I've tried various formats; post-it, small notebooks, notes, paper, trello, notes (iPhone) and keeping it in my mind.
Sometimes the tasks are too large, and will easily take days to complete, which puts me off. Sometimes the tasks are too small, and I do them there and then. Sometimes they are right-sized.
When the tasks are written down, they become 'not important' and 'I can do it later', also they are easier to stow away out of sight :).
Not to mention there are also a couple of hundred open tabs of various stuff I'd like to research... but most of them can be probably be closed.
When it's routine, I've got no problems doing stuff like making dinner, vacuuming, exercising, getting groceries and so on.
But when it comes to projects, and publishing, I feel there is no more juice left.
Thanks Rob. It's been a long time since I wrote this much for a 'human' and not for a 'machine'. I'll try to continue reviving a couple of drafts.
The glymphatic nervous system, like any great scientific theory, unites disparate findings under a common mechanism. Not getting enough sleep is akin to not running your dishwasher or washing machine long enough, the gunk accumulates.
And for all the parents out there, pediatric recommendation is 10-12 hours a night for kids 6-12 years old and 8-10 hours a night for kids 13-18 years old.