[HN Gopher] Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in...
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Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice
Author : hdevarajan
Score : 343 points
Date : 2024-03-16 06:01 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jamanetwork.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jamanetwork.com)
| greggsy wrote:
| Is anyone more knowledgeable able to interpret the paper beyond
| 'brain waves wash toxins'?
|
| Are they actually responsible for the observed activity, or do
| they merely trigger some 'flushing' mechanism inherent to the
| cells? Or, are the waves a result of that process?
| malux85 wrote:
| Wouldn't it be cool if we could periodically trigger waves like
| this to refresh the brain and maybe require less (or no) sleep!
|
| I have no expertise in this area I'm just a dreamer :)
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| Dreamers have no problems here :)
| vasco wrote:
| For companies it'd be a dream. 1/4 more awake time is 1/4
| more time to buy stuff and watch content and ads. Or work
| longer hours. Gonna go back to sleep now.
| kyleyeats wrote:
| Definitely get some sleep. Your post suggests you're
| getting less than five hours a night.
| samstave wrote:
| the immediate use doesnt have to buy more shit.
|
| it could be used in endurance/focused events. high stress
| relief, traumatic brain injury - like immediate induce afte
| cte event in foot ball
|
| head trauma in car accident
|
| ODs etc...
|
| -
|
| When I was a baby, and I would get ill, my mom would calm
| me and put me to sleep - and I would sleep for an extended
| period and my mom would say that I would wake up fully
| well.
|
| If this could be induced in infants going through trauma's
| such as a surgery, where inducing natural brain-flush
| instead of pumping a tiny body full of "medicine" this
| might be great for their long term mental development
| outside of having medicines in them when growing extremely
| fast.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Sounds like a win-win.
|
| Let's say my discretionary spending is 30% of my income, it
| goes up by a third, and I need to work 10% longer hours.
| Okay, so I adjust to a 44 hour work week and I get an extra
| 30+ hours of free time? Great!
| barkingcat wrote:
| the trigger could be like a sequence of flashes or certain
| pulsing of sound frequencies, it'd be like hacking the
| nervous system via unsanitized inputs
| foota wrote:
| Have you read Snow Crash?
| gitaarik wrote:
| Meditation?
| loopz wrote:
| That's been in use for thousands of years already: yoga,
| pranayama and meditation.
|
| There are courses one can take where one learns this, like
| Art of Living and any other that follows the same traditions.
|
| Yes, there's research on that, and new studies should
| absolutely gain from this study. Not entirely sure you'll
| observe the same effect, that depends on meditator, but you
| can fall asleep during practice.
|
| I have over a decade experience with it, and have also
| participated on a study on breathing exercises and epigenetic
| effects from that versus blind control.
| zadler wrote:
| Which exercises would you say trigger movement of
| cerebrospinal dluid in the brain?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM5_dgKDsrc
| mattlondon wrote:
| I think the point of replacing sleep is to save time.
|
| Replacing hours of sleep with hours of yogo or mediation
| seems like you are not gaining anything.
| frereubu wrote:
| I think the point would be if you could replace ~8 hours
| of sleep with ~1-2 hours of meditation. I very much doubt
| it's a like-for-like replacement, but it might go some
| way to reducing the need for full sleep, e.g. 2 hours
| meditating + 2 hours sleeping = 8 hours sleeping.
| hahajk wrote:
| Is the idea that yoga/meditation are more efficient than
| sleep at redistributing the cerebral fluid? That would be
| very surprising.
| loopz wrote:
| What people really require for sleep vary a lot. But
| there are claims some people practicing very intensely,
| need only 4-6 hours of sleep at night. That's rarely a
| goal in itself though, as it's not a means to become more
| efficient or "save time", in a traditional, linear way of
| thinking at least.
|
| However, the goal of meditation can be very diverse,
| since there are many different techniques, each with
| their own aims and side-effects. Generally, the main goal
| is often to calm the mind, make the body relax and let go
| of stress. There are many more benefits though, which you
| only realize when doing personal and experiencial
| practice over longer periods of time. It's not like the
| effects are the same for each person even, so it's more
| like a discovery process rather than do A, B, C
| techniques for X, Y, Z gains. However, there's a baseline
| of methods and general health, which is what it's usually
| used for. Very few people are suited to be munks or
| living in secluded communes like that. But it can be Very
| nice to be on a 1-2 week retreat now and then.
| sonofhans wrote:
| "You should meditate 10 minutes each day," the teacher
| said. "But I can't find 10 minutes every day!" said the
| student. "Then," replied the teacher, "you should
| meditate for 60 minutes each day."
| ArthurAardvark wrote:
| It's hilarious to me that these practices are laughed off,
| trivialized through memes and hyper-objectivity (science
| can't evaluate their value in a practical manner -> "Lulz
| hippie-dippie nonsense for ditzy/ungrounded women!!!!" --
| Western dolt). Its insane considering their benefits...that
| are of course tragically perfect for those who would never
| participate
|
| Of course that's a huge generality, I'd say it may be 1 out
| of 5 people like that in the US, but its the fact that it
| is not constrained to any particular
| demographic/background.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I've seen actual psychiatrists suggesting meditation or
| yoga as additional ways to help with certain issues (eg
| anxiety) along with medicine, and the benefits of say,
| just conscious, controlled breathing as is involved in
| both are obvious to anyone who has a temper.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if the idea that it's completely
| useless because it can't be scientifically observed in a
| traditional sense is highly correlated with people who
| think that mental health issues aren't real in general.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| It's dismissed like any other woo woo bullshit: strong
| claims, no evidence.
|
| Where's the evidence that yoga and meditation accomplish
| the effects of sleep and how strong is it?
| swores wrote:
| I can't find free access to the full paper, but here's the
| abstract (afraid I'm not knowledgeable enough to add to or
| explain any of it):
|
| " _The accumulation of metabolic waste is a leading cause of
| numerous neurological disorders, yet we still have only limited
| knowledge of how the brain performs self-cleansing. Here we
| demonstrate that neural networks synchronize individual action
| potentials to create large-amplitude, rhythmic and self-
| perpetuating ionic waves in the interstitial fluid of the
| brain. These waves are a plausible mechanism to explain the
| correlated potentiation of the glymphatic flow1,2 through the
| brain parenchyma. Chemogenetic flattening of these high-energy
| ionic waves largely impeded cerebrospinal fluid infiltration
| into and clearance of molecules from the brain parenchyma.
| Notably, synthesized waves generated through transcranial
| optogenetic stimulation substantially potentiated cerebrospinal
| fluid-to-interstitial fluid perfusion. Our study demonstrates
| that neurons serve as master organizers for brain clearance.
| This fundamental principle introduces a new theoretical
| framework for the functioning of macroscopic brain waves._ "
|
| _https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38418877/_
| salawat wrote:
| >Chemogenetic flattening of these high-energy ionic waves
| largely impeded cerebrospinal fluid infiltration into and
| clearance of molecules from the brain parenchyma.
|
| Sounds like unsync'd brain waves, (being awake) impedes
| cerebrospinal fluid flow through the brain.
|
| When asleep, neurons sync their action potentials, acting
| like a ionized fluid pump, moving old dirty cerebrospinal
| fluid out, and allowing new, clean in.
|
| Interestingly, when they synthesize that type of ionization
| using other means, they saw the same increase in fluid
| movement.
|
| This is my best attempt at translating. Hopefully within 1-2
| football fields. The author leaves choice of American or the
| rest of the world to the reader to decide.
| samstave wrote:
| I wonder if this state could be ultrasonically induced to
| have a "sleep helmet" which can calm and align rhythmic
| waves? and induce an artificial flush or "power nap"
|
| --
|
| Well, thats basically the trope of every Cybernetic design,
| with the connectors comming out the back of head/spine...
|
| Like a continual wash which keeps you in this suspended
| hyper-aware, but calm, rested and focused mental state.
|
| This is why cyborgs have such incredible reflexes.
| eschatology wrote:
| I was thinking if we could directly tap and pump fresh
| cerebrospinal fluid and eliminate sleep
| brandensilva wrote:
| It seems neat in theory but I imagine the brain having to
| operate an additional 8 hours a day might actually
| accelerate mental decline faster as we age given you
| would be using it 1/3 more but it is an interesting
| concept.
| 0xFEE1DEAD wrote:
| Have you seen the video on hn a couple of weeks ago about
| the scientist using ultrasound to halt the progression of
| Alzheimer's and to treat addiction?
|
| Most fascinating video I've seen in a long time.
|
| Edit: If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend
| checking it out https://youtu.be/7BGtVJ3lBdE
| randcraw wrote:
| IIRC, the goal of that effort is simply to violate the
| blood brain barrier, which may have therapeutic value
| only under very tightly managed circumstances since
| violating it likely will yield at least as many demerits
| as merits since the BBB is essential to keep the brain
| free of blood-borne toxins.
| samstave wrote:
| manipulating the blood-brain-barrier is exactly what ALL
| ssris and medicines affecting the brain do.... DMT, LSD,
| MDMA etc all deal in these molocules.
|
| If we can create/prevent blood-brain-barrier-"Portals" as
| it were, via ultrasound - and do so like we do with the
| gamma knife but with sound waves, it would be more
| harmonious with our nature. (3/6/9 tesla rhythms and all
| that)
| samstave wrote:
| Thanks! Super interesting... however - I think our
| understanding of how to properly aim it, and make it
| resonant in the same way that mythical ancients a read to
| as have - We dont yet understand the frequencies of
| being.
| brandensilva wrote:
| I wonder if this could help insomniacs. I had some pretty
| extreme burn out earlier this year that mentally made it
| so I couldn't sleep. I had to remove as much stress from
| life as I could and plan an aggressive routine of not
| working, relaxation, exercise, sleeping exactly on time
| and personal therapy with my wife to get my mind to shut
| down at night.
|
| It is pretty grueling how bad it feels to not sleep so a
| cap like this would at least make it so the build up
| doesn't kill you from over collecting old fluid
| excessively.
| Staple_Diet wrote:
| As someone in this field (research field not football
| field) I'd say that is an excellent layman explanation.
| parpfish wrote:
| I wonder if these waves also help in "resetting" the
| distribution of ions among the CSF so neurons will continue
| to have the proper ion gradients for firing their action
| potentials?
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| > Here we demonstrate that neural networks synchronize
| individual action potentials to create large-amplitude,
| rhythmic and self-perpetuating ionic waves in the
| interstitial fluid of the brain
|
| This line is the money shot. An action potential is the
| variable electrical charge of a neuron, and they maintain
| that charge by containing a certain concentration of ions
| relative to the surrounding cerebrospinal fluid. This paper
| proposes that neurons synchonise their charge state, which
| forces ions to flow in or out of the neurons in bulk, the
| movement of these ions causing the cerebrospinal fluid to
| move around, clearing out the accumulated debris.
| niemandhier wrote:
| I'd expect that it's probably not the ion movement but the
| global electric field, maybe even mechanical effects in the
| axons.
|
| If you look at the Goldstein-Katz equations you see that
| the conductivities play an as important role as the
| concentrations.
|
| Most of the voltage change is driven by changes in
| conductivities and not concentration changes, the ion
| movements across the membrane should be negligible.
|
| Off course you have the free ions outside the cells than
| diffuse in a field gradient.
| walleeee wrote:
| *Goldman-(Hodgkin-)Katz equation
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Do these wave of stimulation cause dreaming as a side
| effect?
| MrDrDr wrote:
| The paper shows a correlation between the observed 'brain
| waves' and the 'toxin removal'. From the abstract: 'These waves
| are a plausible mechanism to explain the correlated
| potentiation of the glymphatic flow through the brain
| parenchyma'. I think the main objective of this paper is to
| justify more funding to explore this phenomenon, to establish
| causation (beyond correlation).
| theaussiestew wrote:
| In another comment I talked about how I observed a phenomena
| similar to the one described where neuronal activations would
| create waves, I've quoted it here. I would summarize it as 3D
| waves of light, resulting in a spherical enamation that
| readjusts the physical substrate of the mind and body.
|
| ""
|
| I tried to observe the phenomena yesterday again and couldn't
| observe it but it was very specifically this in the past:
| spherical orbs of white light expanding from a centre. There
| were many of these, and my perception was that the nature of
| this geometric expanding shape was healing. To describe it more
| clearly, many years ago I felt that the perfect geometric
| spherical nature of these expanding waves were designed to
| gently round off rough edges. To make an analogy, imagine
| kneading some play dough over and over again. When you use your
| hands to do so, every time your hands make contact with the
| play dough, the play dough changes shape slightly because of
| the contact between your hands and the play dough and it gets
| softer. Now apply this concept to the idea of energetic waves
| making contact and passing through the material substrate of
| the brain and the rest of the body (yes I observed the waves
| applying to more than just my mind). It was my physical and
| conscious perception that as the spherical waves emanated from
| some center, they gently readjusted the physical substrate that
| they passed through. And because there were so many of them in
| different spatial locations, this readjustment was incredibly
| refined.
| achow wrote:
| More details at Washington Univ' site:
| https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/neurons-help-flush-waste-out...
|
| Could not find any free access to the paper, even though the
| Univ' says _" This work was supported by the National Institutes
| of Health (NIH); the BJC Investigators Program at Washington
| University; and the Neuroscience Innovation Foundation."_
|
| These kind of grant funded research should be accessible at the
| least from the Univ' websites.
| VagabundoP wrote:
| Checked and it was published through Nature:
|
| Jiang-Xie, LF., Drieu, A., Bhasiin, K. et al. Neuronal dynamics
| direct cerebrospinal fluid perfusion and brain clearance.
| Nature 627, 157-164 (2024).
| https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07108-6
|
| Every Uni should have access through your library system.
| gapan wrote:
| I think the point was that every member of the public should
| have access to publicly funded research at least through the
| university's website, rather than at least everyone currently
| in universities should have access.
| samstave wrote:
| AaronSwartz+1*
| lloeki wrote:
| Swartz. Schwartz is an actor.
| baubino wrote:
| I agree but I also know (as a university employee) that the
| reason they don't do this is because then they would have
| to pay for and manage the hosting of hundreds of thousands
| of articles. From the university's perspective, managing
| and hosting articles is exactly what publishers do, so
| universities cede that work to publishers. What is needed
| is a public database of all publicly-funded research.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Sounds like a good cost for the government to subsidize.
| achow wrote:
| How hard or expensive is it to embed a PDF link in the
| Univ news article. It maybe less harder and expensive
| than the stock image that they have used.
|
| Stanford maintains an extensive catalog of research
| papers:
| https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/in00000064276
| fragmede wrote:
| some sort of scientific hub, one might say
| jimberlage wrote:
| At first I was like, "oh, that's a reasonable
| perspective," and then I thought about it more and it
| kinda isn't?
|
| When I buy a keyboard, the manufacturer doesn't run a
| shipping company, so they use $x from the purchase price
| to subcontract shipping. (They tell me it's separate at
| billing, but they don't make me ring up DSL myself
| either.)
|
| When I hire an electrician, they buy materials from Home
| Depot, so they use $x from the purchase price for
| materials. (They sometimes break down the bill into
| materials and labor, but they don't make me drive to Home
| Depot myself and buy every part.)
|
| When the public hires academics to do research, they have
| administrative overhead and have to hire a publisher, so
| they use $x from the grant for administrative overhead
| and...
|
| Abdicate responsibility for the $y needed for publishing
| and pretend the public didn't intend for part of the
| grant money to go to that??
| melagonster wrote:
| Publishers are not supported by government. and
| government only require publish.
| samtho wrote:
| You may have missed the point here.
|
| OP was saying that publicly funded research needs to
| have, built in to its budget for the research, enough
| money to make the findings publicly available. The
| publishing mechanism is largely arbitrary here, only that
| it must be budgeted for.
| civilized wrote:
| Hosting is a long-solved problem. High-quality
| repositories have provided free, universally accessible
| document hosting to the academic world _for decades._
|
| The arXiv is a nonprofit organization run by Cornell that
| hosts preprints, and I wouldn't be surprised if it holds
| more stuff than all the for-profit publishers combined at
| this point. The barriers to uploading on the arXiv are
| very low - all you need is to be at a recognized academic
| institution or endorsed by someone who works for one.
|
| Resources like arXiv have made official publishing
| largely superfluous for spreading knowledge in the parts
| of academia that understand and care about the value of
| spreading knowledge for free. Analogous archives exist
| for (at least) biology, medicine, psychology, and
| economics.
|
| https://info.arxiv.org/about/index.html
| VagabundoP wrote:
| I agree publicly funded research should not be siloed in
| anyway and should be in the public domain.
| achow wrote:
| Yes, it was published through Nature.
|
| But what stops Univ' site to have original research paper
| available for download? Nature magazine is just a
| distribution channel (they did not sponsor the research so
| should not have exclusive rights on it).
|
| Left college long time ago; and do not have access to any
| library system.
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| If you email the authors they might be happy to send you a
| copy - scientists tend to be in favour of the free exchange
| of information, there's no restriction on them sharing
| their paper if they choose to, and they don't get royalties
| from journal subscriptions so they have no vested interest
| in paywalling their research
| bayindirh wrote:
| Not all of them. I sent a couple of such mails, to only
| get back the freely available summary PDFs back. Even
| with the same checksum with the ones on the web.
| cj wrote:
| Yep. My dog was part of a study at UC Davis. All I was
| able to get was an abstract.
| 0xEF wrote:
| True, but I'd say it's still worth the email asking. I
| used to work in the mental health field requested
| paywalled research papers on cognitive and developmental
| disabilities pretty regularly, and about 80% of the
| people I contacted sent the paper to me without much
| question.
|
| The more we all do it, the more expected the practice
| becomes and with any luck, these money-grubbing journals
| will take note and start offering copies at a minimal fee
| or time-limited access.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Of course. I'm a big proponent of Open Access. OTOH,
| Elsevier seems to give 50 days of Open Access via share
| links. I didn't know that.
|
| I was away from academic arena for some time. Looks like
| I'll be returning soon-ish.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Copyright Transfer Agreement. The moment you send the paper
| to Nature, you can only publish the draft you sent in.
| Unless you pay for publish, editorial costs are paid by
| selling access to that paper.
|
| If you want to publish in an Open Access manner, you need
| to pay the costs. Or if your country wants to license it
| for Open Access, your country pays the costs.
| achow wrote:
| The final draft that was sent is good enough, maybe all
| that one needs.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In my case, the edited
| versions of (my) paper had more experiments, refined
| images and was more complete.
|
| The paper was not bad to begin with, but the
| edited/revised version painted a more complete picture
| which shouldn't be possible without a set of external
| reviewers.
| pca006132 wrote:
| If I understand correctly, for most publishers you are
| allowed to host a copy on your personal web as well as
| the university library catalog?
| bayindirh wrote:
| AFAIK, this comes with distribution limitations like to
| your department and students in the university. There's
| an exception for arXiv generally for publishing
| intermediate revisions, but not the final one.
|
| Elsevier has a nice summary at [0]. At the bottom there's
| "Publicly share the final published article". It's "YES"
| for Open Access and "NO" for subscription (classical)
| model. There's a rather detailed "Scholarly Share" which
| allows sharing with researchers, but not to any
| researcher, as I aforementioned on top.
|
| [0]: https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-
| standards/copyri...
| pca006132 wrote:
| Never knew this before! Thanks for sharing.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| More discussion about this paper on ALZ forum:
|
| https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/do-sleep-rhythms...
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| All NIH funded research is freely open access by law.
|
| In this case it seems the authors didn't pay the (crazy
| expensive) Nature open access fee. They will have to upload a
| free PDF to PubMed manually, but have up to a year to do so,
| and don't seem to have done it yet.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Is Nature's open access fee really that crazy? Last time I
| checked it was a few thousand dollars.
|
| And it's paid once, to make the whole thing open perpetually.
| It certainly seems better than having the people interested
| in reading it pay $30-40 each.
|
| Of course, this is also based on the few times I've heard
| researchers talk about the ways they could spend their grant
| money. $2k to Nature sounds like a great deal by comparison.
|
| Note: Worked for Nature in the past.
| hx8 wrote:
| Yes, I wouldn't expect someone to pay a few thousand
| dollars to Nature when PubMed will do the same job for
| free. I think the role of academic journals is decreasing
| as open and tech-savvy solutions to information sharing and
| screening are being deployed.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Is this news? Lookup glynphatic system. I thought it was known
| that it flushes out waste products during sleep.
| tunnuz wrote:
| Same, but the way I read it is that now we know the "how".
| DANmode wrote:
| Only commenter mentioning the glymphatic system, and spelled it
| wrong.
|
| Gonna say it's still news!
| pulse7 wrote:
| So garbage collection is not such a bad idea after all...
| aendruk wrote:
| Where sleeping is an acceptable cost.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| 1/3 of compute time spent on garbage collection is pretty
| inefficient!
| DANmode wrote:
| Have you _seen_ this volume of garbage?!
| steve1977 wrote:
| Maybe it's comforting to think that the time is not only
| spent with garbage collection. That's one part of sleep, but
| by far not the only one.
| pjerem wrote:
| Well if it gives you an uptime of 80-110 years, that's pretty
| useful.
| lelanthran wrote:
| Only in f it's exclusively for GC.
|
| If it's opportunistic GC, then it's simply running when
| nothing else is.
|
| IOW, we may need the sleep for a different reason, and that
| is when the load is low enough to allow the GC to run.
|
| Assume that we can trigger this while awake. This doesn't
| mean that we don't need to sleep for some other reason.
| flancian wrote:
| What if it's garbage collection and NN training/backprop
| time?
|
| Then it starts sounding like a great deal to me at least.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| It didn't get the memo on big 'O'.
| forinti wrote:
| GC with a time window. Maybe there's a paper there.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| So, if we could induce those brain waves we wouldn't need sleep?
| Maybe in the future our AirPods will have a "rejuvenate" feature
| which plays tones that cause sleep like brain waves to go through
| and clean out our neurons.
|
| Probably not... I think our brains are like LLMs. We train them
| on sensory input we perceive over time, building up a data model
| that is unique to us. The models may generate similar results,
| but each person's brains are wired as differently as the raw
| binary data stored in ChatGPT vs Llama or Gemini. Thus the
| cleaning mechanism is probably unique per person as well.
|
| But I don't really have a clue. It's just a logical inference.
| samstave wrote:
| induction may cause a feeling of restedness, but unless the
| actual fluid pumps out the waste, you'd likely get diminishing,
| perhaps even damaging results if you over use it... like and
| "sleep spell" it has a cooldown that is needed for actual
| biological pumping time
| Jolter wrote:
| I have an idea: if you induced those brain waves, you would
| technically be asleep. So you would not actually be magically
| given more awake time.
| rpozarickij wrote:
| I'd think that the brain isn't the only part of the human body
| that needs sleep/rest. Becoming immobile for such a long amount
| of time must have a much larger systemic purpose given that
| this is how our bodies evolved.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Your spine contracts during the day and releases while you
| sleep at night.
| theaussiestew wrote:
| That's a really interesting scientific finding. From a personal
| experience, once I closed my eyes and actually observed this
| phenomenon. I could observe many spherical waves of light each
| pulsating, and not only that but I could feel the effect of each
| wave viscerally. It definitely felt healing. I wasn't sure what
| this was, was it the vibes of meditators around the world? Maybe
| this research finding is what I was observing.
| dynisor wrote:
| Are you perhaps describing phosphenes?
| theaussiestew wrote:
| No I'm not. Please see my other comment where I make a
| physical analogy to why spherical expanding waves of light
| may be healing and restorative.
| quesera wrote:
| Reflexively, that doesn't make sense. I cannot imagine
| perceiving ionic CSF flow with my eyes.
|
| But thinking about it more, maybe there is something to it? I'm
| wholly unqualified to speculate here, but I know computers and
| computers are exactly the same as everything in the real world,
| so let's go! ...
|
| - When restful and with my eyes closed, I definitely "see"
| waves move across my field of vision. My eyes see "black" (or
| dark gray) with slightly lighter edges that move and act like a
| wavefront in a fluid. There's distinct flow, and (minor)
| swirling and interference. I've seen these since I was very
| young, and I have no idea if it's a common thing or if it has a
| name. It must. I've mentioned it to a very small number of
| other non-experts but no one has ever recognized it. (I also
| sometimes see tiny colored tiles that light up in moving masses
| -- again rarely mentioned but never recognized, probably an
| unrelated phenomenon...)
|
| - I do not think these are simply phosphenes, because there is
| no external proximate stimuli. Though I suppose we all live in
| environments saturated with EMF, most of the time, and a proper
| test would require being in a very remote area (and that's
| probably not enough). Though if I can "see" the presence of
| EMF, I'm totally making some phone calls to Charles Xavier's
| people.
|
| - I've theorized that this was fluid in my eye (eyelid is too
| thin) moving around and refracting what little light is getting
| through in a dark room. But it also happens when I am
| completely still (though nothing in the body is ever completely
| still), and it also happens in complete darkness.
|
| - The "shape" of the waves does not resemble anything that
| could be related to blood vessels in the eyelid. And again,
| complete darkness.
|
| - So, is it possible that it's actually this ionic flow of CSF
| through the vision-sensing part of the brain? Not _actually_
| light coming through my eyeballs at all, but fluidlike
| electrical variations in the parts of the brain itself which
| are sensitive to the electrical signals normally coming from
| the optic nerves?
|
| I have no idea. But it's an fun new angle to consider in the
| idle moments while I watch the waves flow before I fall asleep.
|
| (That said, please feel free to correct my wild speculation if
| there's an obvious explanation that has not intersected my
| completely-unrelated fields of study! :)
| Nemi wrote:
| Ok, I have never told anyone this, but I also sometimes wake
| up and "see" like a waterfall effect over my vision. It only
| happens very rarely and only for less than a minute after I
| get woken from a deep sleep. It is not unlike a moving
| sensation or water moving over my eyes. I realized that it is
| probably fluid moving over my visual cortex and being
| interpreted as vision. Seems weird and I have nothing to back
| it up on, but it has happened multiple times over my lifetime
| and the sensation is exactly the same every time.
| theaussiestew wrote:
| I'm not talking about the vague flow of amorphous material,
| I can perceive that too but it's not what I'm referring to.
| I made a follow up reply where I describe specifically what
| this phenomena is and my hypothesis on the mechanism behind
| the healing.
| theaussiestew wrote:
| I deliberately didn't use the word "see" when phrasing my
| response. I used the word observed because it was an
| observation, not a seeing. And I'm not describing a flow of
| vague amorphous whitish material, I know what you're talking
| about and I'm not describing that.
|
| I tried to observe the phenomena yesterday again and couldn't
| observe it but it was very specifically this in the past:
| spherical orbs of white light expanding from a centre. There
| were many of these, and my perception was that the nature of
| this geometric expanding shape was healing. To describe it
| more clearly, many years ago I felt that the perfect
| geometric spherical nature of these expanding waves were
| designed to gently round off rough edges. To make an analogy,
| imagine kneading some play dough over and over again. When
| you use your hands to do so, every time your hands make
| contact with the play dough, the play dough changes shape
| slightly because of the contact between your hands and the
| play dough and it gets softer. Now apply this concept to the
| idea of energetic waves making contact and passing through
| the material substrate of the brain and the rest of the body
| (yes I observed the waves applying to more than just my
| mind). It was my physical and conscious perception that as
| the spherical waves emanated from some center, they gently
| readjusted the physical substrate that they passed through.
| And because there were so many of them in different spatial
| locations, this readjustment was incredibly refined.
|
| I was slightly disappointed to see my comment down voted but
| I'm not too surprised. I stand by my description as an
| accurate and well considered, rational description of what I
| had observed in the past.
| nprateem wrote:
| Perhaps it's how meditation balances the sympathetic and
| parasympathetic nervous systems. But yeah, I know when my
| mediation is deepening because the rhythmic pulsation up my
| spine into my base brain begins.
| theaussiestew wrote:
| I'm not talking about the general effect of meditation which
| is to relax the body and increase the flow throughout the
| body. I was talking very specifically about this concept of
| spherical expanding waves of light. To make an analogy, it
| resembles a moderately white light expanding from a centre.
| See my other comment where I describe how such a phenomena
| could be healing and restorative using a physical analogy.
| huppeldepup wrote:
| There is an mri greyscale clip that shows this process I saw a
| couple of years ago but could never find it back. It showed
| spinal fluid "washing" the brain. If anyone knows where I can
| find it, please link.
| speedylight wrote:
| There's this one I just found - [https://player.vimeo.com/video
| /370150539?background=1](https...
| huppeldepup wrote:
| That one is the default google answer, but not the one I saw.
| Mine had a spine attached and there was no highlighting, the
| fluid movements were distinguishable in the scans.
|
| Thank you for trying.
| xeonmc wrote:
| this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8cgZn3aW3o
|
| or this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPEOviBqr_c
|
| EDIT: also
|
| https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=785729915751081
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| We need to figure out what activity or thought creates waves most
| similar to the cleaning function.
|
| Maybe it's dreaming? Dreaming by my experience is tedious and not
| restful... I have 4-6 dreams every night and never feel like I'm
| truly asleep.
|
| Shouldn't be hard to figure out with an EKG and a decent graph to
| see what your aiming for.
| pjerem wrote:
| It's not dreaming that is tedious. My understanding is that the
| brain always dream but that you only remember your dreams if
| you wake up during them. So, remembering 4-6 dreams would mean
| that you wake up (probably unconsciously) multiple times per
| night. It's probably what is tiring rather than the dream
| itself.
|
| Disclaimer : I have no source and I may be wrong. It's my
| understanding.
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| I don't feel physically tired in the mornings. I ran in high
| school 8-10 miles a day and would collapse, waking up dream
| free.
|
| Now I wake up refreshed but I'm sick of watching the same
| rehashed combinations of dreams. I can do lucid dreaming, but
| I'd just rather not dream at all
| deprecative wrote:
| You always dream. That's the thing. Unless something is
| seriously wrong you dream every night. You might not want
| to remember them but you'll dream all the same.
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| Might be a symptom of my good memory? Shame. I like the
| memory but not the dreams
| dbtc wrote:
| meditation
| bloqs wrote:
| Modafinil does exactly this.
| smolder wrote:
| Huh? It cleans the brain? Care to elaborate or provide a
| source?
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| It certainly keeps you alert. Removes the 'sleepy/tired'
| feeling. But it might not clean the brain.
|
| It might change the comfort level of 'clean' you brain
| finds acceptable before commanding the janitor out of his
| closet.
| drowsspa wrote:
| I almost never remember my dreams. When I do, it means I had a
| really bad night's sleep and I don't feel rested.
|
| 4 to 6 dreams every night sounds exhausting. You should
| probably check it out with a doctor, it seems you're
| subconsciously waking up too often during the night.
| v7engine wrote:
| could someone eli5 this for me pls.
| samstave wrote:
| Think of it as whilst awake all the experience and sensory
| input, nutrients(or lack) you experience throughout the day
| result in basically the brain doing all its activites and
| various parts, functions and syncopated waves/rthyms etc get
| out of phase.
|
| Much like you occasionally reboot your machine to flush and re-
| align memory etc...
|
| When you sleep, your sensory input systems are handed a
| surrogate (dreams) whist the rest of your brain gets back into
| phase with itself, and the idea is that this allows for an
| 'alignment' of sorts within the brain which allows for the
| cerberal fluids to more porously flow through the brain and
| carry away ionic and other molecules which freely float through
| the brain.
|
| As the rain washes the paths and the streets after a windy,
| dusty day...
|
| To allow for a fresh path where the previous wake-cycles
| experiences in molocules can be more properly absorbed into the
| brain and your neurons can 'take in' what happened all wake
| cycle.
| v7engine wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| Any recommendations on how long should I sleep for this
| process to kick off and get completed? Or does it happen all
| the time I am sleeping?
| samstave wrote:
| It happens all the time in the appropriate phase of sleep.
|
| So just get as much sleep as your body is saying "HEY
| BITCH!"
|
| Also - you _will_ have more beneficial sleep in fully dark,
| no-screens (or other magnetic objects (cell phone, under
| pillow, for example) near head.
|
| make sure you dont have sleep apnia (make sure you have
| clear deep breathing when sleeping)....
| alexnewman wrote:
| Imagine I said this in a nice way. Haven't we known this for a
| while? Specifically during deep non rem sleep. For the lazy,
| what's new here?
| pkoird wrote:
| Kinda tangential but I've noticed that my most satisfying and
| restorative sleep is always followed by tons of eye goop the
| following morning. Maybe a kind of brain-waste?
| Hendrikto wrote:
| This has probably way more to do with how much REM sleep you
| get, which is said to be the most restorative sleep.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| After learning this and reading about lion's mane reversing
| plaque induced dementia in rats I started taking it as "brain
| washing detergent" before bed. It gives me some wildly vivid
| dreams and I always wake up more refreshed.
| slowmotiony wrote:
| How much?
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I scoop about 2-3 grams
| tacocataco wrote:
| I take herb pills, and I get crazy dreams if I don't drink
| enough water with them. Try chugging more water before bed or
| when you take the pills.
| robg wrote:
| If you have any doubts about sleep quantity and quality, worth
| reading about the glymphatic nervous system, which is so newly
| discovered likely you didn't learn about it in school.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4636982/
|
| In short it explains, mechanistically, why poor sleep affects
| daily cognition, mental health, and age-related declines. Robust
| scientific theories explain more of the evidence. The glymphatic
| nervous system explains why sleep is so key to surviving and
| thriving. Maiken Nedergaard will end up winning the Nobel for its
| discovery.
| Hrun0 wrote:
| > which is so newly discovered
|
| It says that it was published in 2015, or am I missing
| something?
| infecto wrote:
| Am I missing something? 2015 for a paper feels relatively new
| enough that people might not know about it and it might not
| be in school books.
| Culonavirus wrote:
| People learn in school, then after they estabilish their
| career, they have kids and other interests and this and
| that and they get intellectually stuck. Don't grow. Don't
| learn new things in their field of (supposed) expertise...
| I see this ALL THE TIME. Now if middle aged programmer
| refuses to learn new things, it's annoying to work with
| them, but you'll survive. If a middle aged physician
| refuses to learn new things, you're kinda fucked. Sadly,
| the amount of physicians out there who don't keep improving
| is pretty large given the importance of their job. Yes, the
| "pretty large" part is mostly anecdotal - my experience and
| experiences of my friends and family - but if I see the
| stuck programmers in my field, I'm pretty convinced there
| must be quite a few of the stuck physicians.
|
| So yeah, 10 years in medicine? Seems like a brand new paper
| to me. I expect that knowledge to bubble its way to your
| average physician some time around 2040.
| Aeolun wrote:
| That's why I am on hackernews though? If nobody posted
| that paper 8 years ago I'd be surprised.
| yorwba wrote:
| 5 years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20622712
| d_sem wrote:
| You are missing the context of age demographics. For example:
| in the United States of America about 63% of the population
| is over the age of 32 which represents roughly 200 million
| Americans which graduated Highschool before the year 2010.
| telesilla wrote:
| And the majority of whoever is teaching university or even
| high school right now probably graduated themselves before
| 2015, when the article was published.
| dEnigma wrote:
| > so newly discovered _likely you didn't learn about it in
| school._
|
| So with the slow pace knowledge makes it into the school
| curriculum, you likely wouldn't have heard about it in school
| unless you just left the system a year or two ago (if even
| then).
| robg wrote:
| Exactly, my kids are in elementary school and I've been
| talking with superintendents and high school principals.
| It's straightforward to teach kids about the brain as a
| muscle and sleep as critical to rest and recovery to best
| power cognition. The glymphatic system gives a clear
| mechanism and yet I haven't found many places where it's
| being taught as a core part of how to best use your brain.
| Sleep is still considered a nice to have for brain
| performance, not a driver of working smarter.
| Hrun0 wrote:
| Ok I think I got confused. I thought OP meant that they
| will win the Nobel for this specific publication.
|
| I guess I should have slept more
| thfuran wrote:
| I'm about the median age in the US and wouldn't expect anyone
| less than a decade younger than me to have been taught it in
| school unless they went for a degree in a related field, and
| possibly not even then. 2015 is after I finished grad school
| and something like a decade after I'd last taken a class
| where it might have been taught if it had already been around
| for enough years to make it into the curriculum.
| robg wrote:
| Great points, I got my Ph.D. in neuroscience 20 years ago.
| There were disparate theories for why we sleep but no
| mechanistic description. Most of the research not
| specifically relevant to my own took 10-20 years to become
| influential. I'd be surprised if most textbooks for
| neuroscience-related fields being published today are
| including the glymphatic system, including psychology /
| psychiatry and medicine.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I wonder if eventually once this is more thoroughly researched
| there could be a way to induce constant cleaning instead of
| having to do it while unconscious at night? Or at least reduce
| the hours required. If we could solve this we could just stay
| awake perpetually and instantly gain a 30% longer lifespan as
| it were.
| someplaceguy wrote:
| > I wonder if eventually once this is more thoroughly
| researched there could be a way to induce constant cleaning
| instead of having to do it while unconscious at night?
|
| Hopefully without having to induce those brainwaves,
| otherwise you might be able to do it during the day but you
| wouldn't exactly be conscious. But there's also the question
| of whether those brainwaves are doing more than just cleaning
| the brain.
|
| I think some types of learning and memory formation also
| happen during sleep, right?
| LoganDark wrote:
| > Hopefully without having to induce those brainwaves,
| otherwise you might be able to do it during the day but you
| wouldn't exactly be conscious. But there's also the
| question of whether those brainwaves are doing more than
| just cleaning the brain.
|
| ...Lucid daydreaming button, anyone? Maybe not lucid if
| it's the exact same as normal sleep, but I'm sure that if
| such a thing more exist, you'd be able to adjust exactly
| how it affects your brain.
| plasticchris wrote:
| But your brain is disconnected from your body during
| dreams, to keep you from flailing around. Sometimes you
| even wake up before the block is lifted and can't move.
| So controlling such a device would be difficult.
| LoganDark wrote:
| You're describing sleep paralysis, right? It's not so
| much a disconnection as it is an inhibition. Attempts to
| move most of your muscles are blocked, but external
| stimuli still get in. You know, once upon a time someone
| started the washer while I was presumably in REM, and I
| started to hear something in my dream. When I woke up, it
| only took me a couple minutes to realize that what I had
| been hearing in the dream was some greatly slowed-down
| version of the washer that had just been started, since I
| guess my dream time was travelling faster than real time.
| I think the only reason it didn't wake me up is because
| I'm used to sleeping through the sound of the washer
| running and may even normally filter it out. That's just
| the first time that someone managed to turn it on in the
| middle of my actual dreaming phase.
| plasticchris wrote:
| Yeah, that's right. I had it once before I knew it was a
| thing and could see, hear, feel, but not move. Quite
| terrifying at the time, even if it resolved pretty
| rapidly.
| LoganDark wrote:
| I've been trying to induce it willingly for around a
| decade at this point. Same for lucid dreaming. Haven't
| really managed to do either one, not sure if I am capable
| of it either. Oh well.
| someplaceguy wrote:
| > But your brain is disconnected from your body during
| dreams, to keep you from flailing around
|
| Tell that to sleepwalkers!
| LoganDark wrote:
| I believe there are two "obvious" theories on how
| sleepwalking may occur:
|
| - Sleep paralysis doesn't properly activate, and someone
| accidentally transfers the motion of walking into real
| life. proprioception may pass through to the dream, they
| might perceive a dream environment that allows them to
| navigate the real one. (i.e. righting themself from bed,
| staying upright while walking)
|
| - They aren't fully asleep, but they aren't awake/aware
| either. I've had my fair share of people telling me that
| I said or did things after waking up and before
| immediately going back to sleep, and those are things I
| don't remember doing at all, probably because they
| weren't properly recorded in memory because my brain was
| not fully awake. (Some of these cases could have been DID
| though.)
| calirepublik wrote:
| Check this out, I just saw a reference to this recently:
|
| https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/noninvasive-brain-wave-
| treatmen...
| robg wrote:
| More efficient sleep is possible with ultrasound. But keep in
| mind that the glymphatic system seems to expand as other
| systems contract. The waves are tied to brain activity
| slowing down, can't have one without the other. That said,
| could intersperse active times of the day with naps. But naps
| alone don't seem sufficient as good sleep.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| To what degree is it more efficient? For example could you
| halve your sleep requirement? That would already be huge.
| krisoft wrote:
| > The waves are tied to brain activity slowing down, can't
| have one without the other.
|
| But why? Is this knowledge onservation based ("that is how
| it is in the organisms we studied") or is it a theoretical
| limit?
|
| Dolphins for example seems to get by without fully going
| unconscious. (I'm talking about the literal marine mamals,
| not a chronotype or anything like that here.)
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| Philips has a headband product called DeepSleep. They claim
| it increases your deep sleep by playing some sort of sound
| during your sleep that induces more deep sleep. For some odd
| reason, despite being a Dutch company, the product was only
| sold in the US. I spent a lot of money having it imported to
| Netherlands.
|
| Unfortunately I can't tell whether it works. I rely on
| headphones and earplugs to block out sounds during the night.
| Sounds such as cars and airplanes outside, or other people in
| the house going to the toilet, tend to wake me up unless I
| block out those sounds. And the handband is not compatible
| with headphones or ear plugs.
|
| I wish there is a better solution.
| skinner927 wrote:
| It appears to be discontinued
| Terr_ wrote:
| If there is any magic bullet, it'll be something biological
| evolution can't easily jump-to or stumble-upon. Otherwise I
| think it would have happened already, given the risks of
| sleep and the rewards of an expanded activity (or at least
| awareness) cycle.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well it's not unheard of that some people won the genetic
| lottery and are more efficient at it, functioning normally
| with only 3, 4 hours of sleep every day. There's definitely
| room for improvement for those of us that need 8 or 9 lmao.
| Hell even reducing it to just 7 or 6 would be such a
| massive gain.
| Terr_ wrote:
| For "Short Sleeper Syndrome", it remains to be seen what
| the long-term tradeoffs are.
|
| Kind of like how someone might excel at a specific test
| because of a lesser sense of pain, but that lack of
| feedback loop can be detrimental in the long run as they
| keep injury themselves without noticing.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| It makes me sad as my SO struggles a lot with sleep. It's been
| years since she's had a good nights sleep.
|
| Sadly her issues are mostly psychologically rooted due to past
| trauma, while all the treatments seem to be geared towards
| "simple" physical issues. She's tried contacting various sleep
| clinics here and they've all said they can't help.
|
| She struggles a lot with falling asleep, she's exceptionally
| sensitive to sound and vibration while trying to sleep or
| sleeping, and if she falls asleep she almost always have
| nightmares, which significantly reduces the quality of the
| sleep even if they don't always wake her up.
|
| One issue is that when you're that close to the limit of what
| is no longer bearable, it's hard to just try things. For
| example, I've been thinking exposure therapy might help for her
| sound and light sensitivity, but she's not convinced it'll help
| and doesn't want to try potentially sleeping even worse for
| many weeks. Which I understand, but...
| JoshGG wrote:
| Sounds so hard.
|
| I've experienced that a moderate or intense exercise regimen
| can help a lot with sleep.
|
| If she hasn't tried therapies directed at trauma and recovery
| that may also be helpful.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| It's brutal.
|
| She did start exercising some years ago, and it did
| improve. But then real-life issues triggers her anxiety and
| it's back to square one.
|
| She's tried therapy for a long time with little result.
| She's very smart, but most likely has ADHD, so for example
| mindfulness and similar doesn't seem to work well (either
| "boring" so she loses focus, or too "obvious" without
| actionable content).
|
| Though we recently found a therapist which she really
| resonated with. It's slow work but I think it's been
| helping.
| thatcat wrote:
| Has she tried cannabis? It prevents dream memory formation
| and can help with nightmares
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Not yet. It's not legal here yet, though recently it's
| softening up.
|
| But we've talked about it, though mostly to reduce her
| anxiety. If it can help with nightmares as well, then would
| indeed be quite interesting.
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| +1 to this. As a long time cannabis user who is quite
| skeptical of many of the purported health benefits, this
| is one I'm not at all skeptical about. It's actually just
| the other side of the coin of the degraded short/mid term
| memory that is a well known downside of habitual cannabis
| use. But as someone with frequent, vivid nightmares when
| I'm sober, I can attest that cannabis effectively blocks
| my ability to remember most dreams - which again is a
| mixed bag, as I enjoy recalling happy or neutral dream,
| but when I'm stressed being able to basically opt out of
| vivid nightmares is a huge boon.
| pdntspa wrote:
| In my experience you need a pretty high tolerance and smoke
| pretty regularly for it to start preventing dreaming. When
| I intentionally reduced my tolerance to very low levels I
| started having dreams again.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i mean if you are consuming daily in the evenings you
| will develop a high tolerance
| swed420 wrote:
| As someone with a tolerance, I've learned that consuming
| too close to bedtime will cause me to have difficulty
| falling asleep, and also not enter REM sleep.
|
| However, by consuming throughout the day on a daily basis
| but stopping by late afternoon or early evening, my sleep
| and dreaming is vastly improved.
| vanattab wrote:
| The reason you don't dream is it prevents the rem cycle.
| It might help in falling asleep but your sleep quality
| suffers.
| tonis2 wrote:
| Bad gut health screwed up my sleep, after working on it it
| got better. But if im not careful with what I eat, my sleep
| quality is screwed again
| magicalhippo wrote:
| While I don't doubt that for a second, she's had her issues
| before when she didn't care too much about what she ate,
| compared to last few years where she's been actively eating
| healthy.
|
| There's certainly a correlation for my self though.
| canadiantim wrote:
| She should try ketamine. Sounds like it's exactly what you
| say, past trauma, that's holding her back from a good nights
| sleep. Ketamine has done wonders for someone I love and I
| would wholeheartedly recommend it. The person in my life who
| benefited greatly from it only needed one weekend (2
| relatively low to medium dose sessions of ketamine) and she
| was cured of her ptsd.
|
| Also strongly recommend weighted blankets, especially for
| someone like your SO.
|
| All the best eh
| magicalhippo wrote:
| We've investigated ketamine treatment, which does indeed
| sound very interesting. However very few clinics here that
| offer it, though it seems to have improved recently.
| Definitely will follow up on this.
| canadiantim wrote:
| I'm from Canada but still I went to one in Iowa, called
| Driftless Integrative Psychiatry. I can whole heartedly
| recommend it, the therapist is an absolute gem of a human
| being. It's maybe on the bit more expensive side but it
| was a one off expense and has been one of the best
| decisions we've ever made.
|
| There's lots popping up now though. Even in Canada I
| thought we'd have trouble getting support from our family
| doctor but she was actually supportive so now if we look
| to do any more can just get referral from the GP here and
| do it in toronto.
|
| Definitely do hope you give it a try, might be just what
| your SO has been looking for. Also seriously don't
| discount the weighted blanket!
| Horffupolde wrote:
| You just need one clinic there that offers it. Why is the
| relative number relevant?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I'm sad that you were downvoted. I've suffered from
| depression episodes throughout my life, which could often
| lead to a "doom loop" of waking up every night between 2-3
| AM (early morning waking is a common feature of
| depression), and then the insomnia made my depression
| worse.
|
| I had been in therapy for nearly 15 years, and I while I
| wasn't on antidepressants long term, I had taken them for a
| couple episodes in the past. For my most recent episode
| (partially brought on by a particularly bad prolonged
| string of insomnia) I was having constant suicidal
| thoughts. I went in and had a ketamine session - I'm
| reluctant to talk to much about the details of my ketamine
| trip, because one theory I have for why it worked well for
| me is that I didn't have any preconceived notions about
| what I'd experience, and I specifically didn't want to get
| my hopes up.
|
| The next morning I was singing in the shower. If there was
| ever a substance that I believed "miracle drug" fit the
| bill, for me it was ketamine. It helped me develop a whole
| new outlook on life and how I related to myself. I know
| that I was very lucky (my psychiatrist says I am a
| "ketamine responder") and not everyone has that same
| response. For me, though, I firmly believe ketamine
| treatment saved my life.
| zachkatz wrote:
| If the problem is psychological trauma, wouldn't therapy be
| the obvious solution?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| The root cause is psychological, but it's manifested itself
| in physical changes. She's hyper-sensitive to certain
| sounds for example, which causes her to not be able to fall
| asleep, or to abruptly wake up. Mostly low frequency
| sounds, so hard to block.
|
| But yeah, as I mention in a reply to a sibling comment,
| she's tried therapy for years without much progress, though
| recently making some progress on that front.
| ajb wrote:
| I am sensitive to low frequency sounds . The thing that
| seems to work for me is to play thunderstorm sounds, with
| isolating earphones. Because this sound has a high degree
| of randomness across the frequency spectrum, and its
| spectrum varies randomly over short timescales as well,
| external noise is masked even if it's still audible -
| because the brain can easily fit it into the thunderstorm
| pattern, and so doesn't get triggered by it.
|
| Your milage may vary of course
| verticalscaler wrote:
| I know it really sucks and have struggled with it myself
| for a long time. Two things really worked for me.
|
| Try these: https://www.loopearplugs.com/products/quiet
|
| And at the same time have some calming barely perceptible
| background noise from a speaker somewhere in the room.
| White noise, brown noise, lofi, whatever works. Make sure
| the bedroom has blackout curtains and soft light.
|
| As for cannabis, she doesn't have to smoke it.
| Appropriate edibles will knock her to sleep. Doesn't have
| to be a permanent thing either, breaking the cycle and
| getting good sleep for a few weeks is life changing and
| may be the start of a virtuous cycle instead.
|
| I recommend both of you enjoy this video together:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK2iXQm4LJs
|
| Good luck!
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Thanks, much appreciated.
|
| Just saw they very recently approved some canabis oil
| drops for medicinal use here, so that might also be an
| option.
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| How healthy is she in general? Does she eat well? Exercise?
| Have a consistent night routing? Has she tried melatonin?
| What about sleep apnea?
|
| If she's sensitive to sound and light, what has she tried to
| address that? Like blackout curtains?
|
| I find it a bit odd that sleep clinics would turn her away so
| readily.
|
| I understand the struggle though which is why I asked so many
| questions, because all of these things have factored into my
| quest for better sleep. The psychological stuff is hard.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > I find it a bit odd that sleep clinics would turn her
| away so readily.
|
| I don't. I've had significant problems with insomnia in the
| past, and in general I've found that sleep clinics really
| only focus on two issues:
|
| 1. Restless leg syndrome
|
| 2. Sleep Apnea
|
| Beyond that, there really isn't much they can do besides
| (1) recommending standard "sleep hygiene" stuff, or (2)
| drugs, which all come with various tradeoffs.
| karencarits wrote:
| Psychoanalysis might be useful, it is my understanding that
| it can deal with complex issues where simpler forms of
| therapy fails
| scrps wrote:
| Has she considered PTSD? It sounds a lot like it and there
| has been promising work around PTSD from what I have seen in
| passing.
| QuantumGood wrote:
| Promethazine (1) helps some people, myself included (UK
| Sominex). And occasionally, phenibut.
|
| (1) https://www.inhousepharmacy.vu/p-1189-phenergan-
| tablets-25mg...
| milesvp wrote:
| I've been watching a lot of healthy gamer youtube channel,
| the host likes to really geek out on brain science. One of
| the big take aways I've gotten watching him, is that sleep
| serves a layered purpose psychologically (and physically as
| per this article), that you work through social problems,
| then physical problems, then consolidating memory, sort of in
| that order.
|
| One of the study tricks that the host figured out, was that
| if you want to memorize something, you should get rid of all
| the other things you don't want to learn, and that journaling
| is amazingly good at that. Basically if you write down all
| the things you don't want to remember, it sort of leaves
| space to move things to long term memory.
|
| I say all this, because I've been experimenting with
| journaling at night, and it really helps with some of the
| restless nights where it feels like something is keeping me
| awake. It's not a magic bullet, and it takes effort, but it
| may help to write down the things bothering your partner
| prior to sleep to allow for some of the "less important"
| processes to happen.
| softsound wrote:
| Learning to control your dreams is what I did with my
| nightmares, at some point it becomes so easy you can do it on
| command but... It doesn't always work and requires extra
| energy to stay in control often leaving me falling asleep in
| my dreams which ironically means I don't sleep well. And
| there are still nightmares I get, just had one a few days ago
| that left me too afraid to sleep again. Still, I think it's
| overall a good long term skill about building mental
| awareness. I learned it as a child on my own, and I believe
| adults can also learn it by simply studying their environment
| often and looking if anything else is amiss or "unrealistic".
| Sometimes you can also ask yourself questions before bed, and
| try to use visualization before sleeping or sleeping to sound
| or audiobooks to help you relax too. My family has a history
| of being more prone to spiritual and psychology issues so
| bring aware of family history can also sometimes make you idk
| feel less alone too. Just being able to shift the narrative
| can mean a lot and give you power when you feel powerless
| sometimes, but it can be tough to get there but baby steps
| can make a huge difference. Something I personally did as a
| child when I felt afraid was to visualize a golden warm light
| around me almost like a bubble, it didn't always work but I
| guess it helped to get away from negative thoughts by trying
| to focus on something protective for me. Soft repetition also
| seems helpful because it's predictable so perhaps finding
| something predictable may help too. And maybe looking into
| CPTSD.
| art3m wrote:
| I read about it few years ago in Matthew Walker's book "Why we
| sleep".
| niemandhier wrote:
| _Notably, synthesized waves generated through transcranial
| optogenetic stimulation substantially potentiated cerebrospinal
| fluid-to-interstitial fluid perfusion._
|
| No wonder Musk is interested in this area of research.
|
| This line indicates that with an optigenetic implant you can
| substitute sleep with something more efficient.
| Staple_Diet wrote:
| I'm sorry but your comment is incredibly I'll informed.
|
| Not only because you think Musk is any where near the leader in
| the implant space, but more so that you don't understand
| optogenetics. The device referenced here was transcranial
| (i.e., non-invasive) but regardless optogenetics requires
| tagging specific neurons with an opsin (usually via viral
| vector).
|
| I'm sorry for being curt but this is the 4th or 5th
| neuroscience post in the last 72h that HN have blasted with
| shit takes. If I wanted misunderstood science I'd revive my
| Reddit account.
| deprecative wrote:
| HN is great but it's only illusory that it has smarter people
| than Reddit. We're all just people rising to our incompetence
| to the limit the system allows.
| niemandhier wrote:
| I am very aware how optogenetics works, I wasted some part of
| my live getting channelrhodopsins into cells to trigger
| neurons.
|
| Yes you are right one would probably use transient gene
| therapy tho make a modification like that, but transcranial
| methods are afaik for human adults less suitable since the
| structures lying above the stuff you usually want to
| stimulate are simply too thick, so a hypothetical sleep
| replacement machine would probably need to be an implant.
| That is unless you can use self-refocusing lasers or
| holograms for stimulation, but I do not see how one would do
| this unless you replace most of the skull with glass.
|
| The point with Musk was a joke more or less.
|
| Though it's true that he is probably the only person both
| morally ambiguous enough to even try to build a dystopian
| sleep replacement machine and capable of getting funding for
| it.
|
| Maybe a Reddit account is a good idea.
| Havoc wrote:
| I thought this was the prevailing theory anyway? Is this just
| confirming that?
| koenraad wrote:
| I immediately start to think about the effect of smartphone
| related waves in the room while sleeping.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Brain waves are approximately in the 1hz to 100hz range. While
| smartphone waves are much higher frequency. AC however is
| 50/60hz depending on country. Maybe I'm overly cautious, but I
| have a thick wire that runs right next to the natural spot for
| my pillow I very intentionally put the pillow on the other side
| of the bed.
| tombert wrote:
| I was diagnosed with sleep apnea about six months ago. Once I
| started getting treatment for it (losing weight, cutting out
| caffeine, and an oral appliance) my life started getting
| dramatically better.
|
| I had never taken sleep very seriously prior to that and I feel
| extremely foolish for it. Life is 100x better if you get an
| appropriate amount of sleep. Everything becomes a little easier.
| mad0 wrote:
| How did you recognize that it was sleep apnea? Have you snored
| at night?
| jajko wrote:
| You have dedicated facilities who let you sleep there and
| monitor you. But apnea can be easily seen, the person has
| gaps in breathing during some parts of sleep, gasping.
| Snoring can be one of the symptoms but reverse is not
| automatically true.
|
| My boss was diagnosed with apnea in his 30s. It was so bad
| they didn't believe his first test results and had to redo
| it, off the charts. According to him it literally killed his
| father. Once he started using the device for sleeping he had
| 100x more mental and physical energy, everything was just
| easier.
| tombert wrote:
| I was snoring, and in my case my wife told me there would be
| moments of kind of disturbing moments where I would stop
| breathing and then gasp multiple times a night.
|
| In my case, I was able to take a sleep test from a doctor
| which was basically just a pulse oximeter I wore while
| sleeping.
| feverzsj wrote:
| In case you didn't know, sleeping on your right side maximizes
| the clearance effect, while sleeping on your stomach minimizes
| it.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Wait.. was that in the paper or is there a different source for
| this?
| 10c8 wrote:
| Could you point us to the source?
| feverzsj wrote:
| The Effect of Body Posture on Brain Glymphatic Transport
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4524974/#!po
| =72...
| throw310822 wrote:
| [in mice]
| Solvency wrote:
| And yet sleeping on your back contributes to snoring and sleep
| apnea.
|
| Humans. Just can't win can they.
| bluerooibos wrote:
| Citation? I've always read that for humans it's better to sleep
| on the left, for digestion anyway.
| calibas wrote:
| In some branches of yoga, they strongly encourage you to sleep
| on your right side. I always thought it was nonsense...
| VinLucero wrote:
| I wonder if anyone has done a study yet on how the Glymphatic
| nervous system is impacted by rTMS (repetitive transcranial
| magnetic stimulation) instead of drugs (pharmacological
| solutions).
|
| Anyone deep into this field around?
| k__ wrote:
| Would be interesting to know if the waste that gets cleared out
| is similar to the wastes eliminated by autophagy.
| pwdisswordfishc wrote:
| Great, now how do I sleep inside a mouse?
| jncfhnb wrote:
| I recall a study a while back that suggested sleep flushing
| toxins was the reason lack of sleep was fatal; and that they
| prevented it with some drugs
|
| In rats or something
| ww520 wrote:
| Sounds like the brain is doing garbage collection during sleep.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| Simulation confirmed.
| euroderf wrote:
| Try this metaphor:
|
| Your brain is a movie theater. When it's in use it's all bright
| lights and gripping soundtrack and shiny shiny. But once in a
| while you have to chase out the Observers and shut down the
| projector and then go grab a hose and ruthlessly flush out all
| the tracked-in mud and popcorn remnants and stepped-on gummy
| bears and who the hell knows what other gunk.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| One of the traits/habits I've been fortunate to have/cultivate is
| daily afternoon napping. I can rest my head and fall asleep in
| minutes and then wake back up 15 minutes later feeling
| cognitively refreshed. I've done this since my teenage years and
| throughout adulthood.
|
| Short, intentional, regular napping is associated with a lower
| risks of dementia. This is different from increased, longer,
| napping seen in older adults. Longer naps in older adults is
| associated with Alzheimer's. See this summary:
|
| https://www.alzdiscovery.org/cognitive-vitality/blog/can-nap...
|
| It will be interesting to see if further research in humans can
| pinpoint a plausible causal mechanism in adult for both regular
| night time sleep and intentional short daytime napping. This
| might encourage companies to put in 'sleep pods' or at least
| remove the stigma of adult napping.
| euroderf wrote:
| I find that even just 2 or 3 minutes unconscious still helps a
| lot. The Minimum Viable Nap is pretty minimal.
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