[HN Gopher] Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)
___________________________________________________________________
Instinctive Sleeping and Resting Postures (2000)
Author : alecst
Score : 302 points
Date : 2024-03-17 00:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| imperialdrive wrote:
| Excellent read right before shuteye.
| verisimi wrote:
| Really interesting post. It is also quite counterintuitive - I
| personally think a lot of people are injured in sleep (including
| myself), and some of the postures indicated look like they could
| be very challenging/dangerous. Maybe the injuries come from lying
| on soft mattresses and a hard surface would be better as it
| provides more immediate feedback of bodily stress..?
| lolitan wrote:
| Soft mattresses are really not suitable for sleeping. From my
| experience.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Is this considered unusual? I've used minor variations of all of
| these except the sleeping on the shins posture, and I'm from
| Europe, not some African tribe.
| arketyp wrote:
| I very predictably have nightmares whenever I fall asleep flat
| on my back, sleep paralysis kind of things. In Germanic
| mythology the mare is a demon who sits on your chest, so my
| conclusion is that I'm not alone in this.
| twowatches wrote:
| I can't understand how anyone can sleep on their back. They
| snore and can't breathe it's like they're dying it's pretty
| obviously wrong.
| agos wrote:
| not everybody who sleeps on their back snores and can't
| breathe?
| saberience wrote:
| Surprise, surprise, people are different to each other. I
| pretty much can only sleep on my back, no other positions
| allow me to fall asleep. Also, I don't snore.
|
| But I'm also very much in shape with no excess weight,
| snoring is generally correlated with ill health and being
| overweight.
| kqr wrote:
| Worth pointing out the false dichotomy here. I sleep
| better on my side, but I _fall asleep_ better on my back!
| So ideally I 'd go to bed on my back and then have
| someone push me over to my side once I'm sleeping...
| toast0 wrote:
| I'm an expert snorer and can snore in any position.
| Probably central apnea, which only activates when most
| comfortable; previous sleep study showed nothing,
| presumably because I wasn't totally comfortable. I'd self
| medicate with a cpap if they were sold without a
| prescription. B1 with dinner/before bed helps, oddly.
|
| Also, my previous cats preferred to sleep on my chest, so
| they trained me to sleep without a lot of motion.
| Currenrly, one cat likes to sleep on my legs and overheats
| them, resulting in a lot of movement at night; the other
| cat will only briefly visit at night, but will help me stay
| in place for naps on the couch.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Yeah fr. The first one he showed I was like, duh... that is the
| most obvious way to sleep possible
| flurb wrote:
| When I was 16, I inherited a bit of money. Not a large sum at
| all, but enough so that I could afford a new bed, a bookshelf and
| some nick-nacks from my local furniture store. Being 16, I didn't
| exactly put much thought into how kind my new mattress would be
| to my back down the line, and so I managed to find the firmest
| mattress known to man.
|
| At first, it was hard to sleep on, but I'm lazy, and so I kept
| it. That was a good decision. Today, I have a much softer
| mattress, and let me tell you, I'm suffering.
|
| Whenever I go camping in the summer, where I'm not in need of any
| insulation, I usually opt for just a simple, thin, foam sleeping
| pad, and it works wonder. The first couple of nights it's usually
| quite rough, not uncomfortable mind you, just hard to sleep as
| it's not as superficially comfortable, but after the initial
| acclimation my back's so much better.
| tetris11 wrote:
| When I was 28 at my peak fitness days, I opted for a firm
| mattress believing it would strengthen me as I got used to it.
|
| I never got used it. The slightest sound from outside would
| wake me. Sleeping on the side was a daily chore. I learned to
| sleep on my back and snore like a lion.
|
| Switched recently a soft mattress with shoulder support. Sleep
| on my side like a baby.
| taneq wrote:
| This sounds easy to a/b test. Just sleep on the floor for a
| month, then your squishy mattress for a month, and document
| everything. (A month is just a guess, one or two weeks seems
| like transitional effects would dominate, hopefully after that
| you'd see more of the ongoing effects?)
| FredrikMeyer wrote:
| I find this article quite insubstantial. He lists alternative
| sleeping positions, but no sources backing up the claim that
| "western sleeping positions" (whatever that is) are worse.
|
| Also only _one_ citation, and that is to back up the claim that
| there are 200 primates.
|
| Nice pictures though - I feel happy that I can sit (relatively)
| comfortably in the squatting position (as an European).
| talonx wrote:
| It's a pity that not more published research is available on
| this.
| kqr wrote:
| I think this clause near the end was what made the article make
| sense to me:
|
| > This observation must be recorded to allow further research
| in this direction
|
| This is just one person noting in public what could be a
| correlation, and then all the rest (confirming correlation,
| establishing causation) is up to someone else!
| roenxi wrote:
| This appears to be a journal article. Why should it have
| citations? This is an arena where people are supposed to be
| doing primary research. "I have a PhD and this is my opinion"
| is probably at least 20% of academics.
| lou1306 wrote:
| I can't possibly imagine sleeping posture being such a a
| pristine research area that there is _no_ prior work on the
| topic
| roenxi wrote:
| There is a search bar right above this article if you want
| to look that research up. This is some physiotherapist
| recording his opinion; based on field experience. I'm going
| out on a limb and saying none of the other researchers in
| the field have been writing about his experience so there
| isn't anything to cite.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Primary research does not include simply stating "this is my
| opinion" - and this article also does not consist of someone
| stating their opinion, it is someone claiming to describe
| widespread behaviors and explanations for them.
| sowhat389 wrote:
| Journals publish articles beyond primary research:
| https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-authors/article-
| type...
| looping8 wrote:
| It also feels a little strange in writing. Examples:
|
| "Figure Figure11 shows a mountain gorilla lying on the ground
| on his side without a pillow" - Of course it is without a
| pillow, it's a mountain gorilla! What is this clarification?
|
| "To start with, some Westerners have to hold on to a
| doorframe." - Would it not be better to say "you may have to
| hold on" or "newbies"? It is not like Westerners have some
| special physiological feature that makes them do it, it's about
| lack of practice.
| kijin wrote:
| A pillow doesn't need to be a factory-made product that you
| buy at a store. Plenty of humans make pillows out of natural
| objects when sleeping outdoors. I can totally imagine a
| mountain gorilla using a chunk of wood, or even a body part
| of another gorilla, as a "pillow" if it makes them feel more
| comfortable.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Yeah im sure there are many tribespeople with pillows. It
| feels wierdly racist that this guy is acting like people in
| societies like this just live instinctually like gorillas
| and don't actually have the universal human trait of
| creating and relying on manmade tools.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| He's viewing humans and gorillas as primates, not viewing
| tribespeople as gorillas.
|
| Tribes people don't live instinctually. They have
| culture, like us. The critique here is our culture could
| benefit from observing how their culture does it.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| The thing that makes it not racist for me is that he's
| clearly trying to point out that, as primates, in non-
| Western surroundings and when not socialized to prefer
| soft beds with fluffy pillows we tend to adopt similar
| sleeping positions as other primates do. It would be very
| racist if he had adopted a sneering "look at the lowly
| primitives" tone, but he's trying to show that these
| sleeping positions have helped him immensely and he's
| suggesting that we might research sleep positioning more
| as there seem to be differences in the two populations
| under comparison.
|
| You can look at the COVID pandemic for an example of how
| body positioning has helped change how well people can
| breathe. Proning of severely sick patients substantially
| improved outcomes. That's literally just rolling the
| patient from their back to their stomach. So there might
| be something interesting there that we can learn if we
| pay attention. And he's trying to say "we can learn
| something from these people if only we pay attention."
| navane wrote:
| My dog loves pillows. But he doesn't move them. If he's
| laying down, and a pillow-like object is near, he'll use
| it. But if the sun moves, he'll move, without the pillow.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Humans are environment-changers. That's why dogs teamed
| up with humans. Humans seem to spend a lot of time doing
| strange and seemingly useless things, like banging rocks
| together and looking at shiny boxes, but at the end of
| the day there is always extra food and the environment
| around humans is full of mysteriously comfortable
| objects.
| slow_typist wrote:
| If our dog wants to rest and a fleece or wool blanket
| happens to be in reach, it will pull it in position (and
| sometimes even fold it) in order to rest its snout on it.
| But admittedly it does not move the blanket
| substantially. I have yet to understand how it decides
| where to rest though. There is a lot of places and none
| seems to really dominate the other ones.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| In order to protect skin on your face from acne or wrinkles
| I think it preferable to sleep on a pillow
| malfist wrote:
| I don't think gorillas are too worried about acne or
| wrinkles.
| adrian_b wrote:
| I have read your comment before reading the article, and at
| that time I have thought that you must be right.
|
| Nevertheless, after reading the article I have seen that the
| clarification about the gorilla sleeping without a pillow
| made perfect sense in its context, because it has not been
| added to provide any additional information, but it was added
| for emphasis, in a context where the sleeping positions in
| modern environments were contrasted with their correspondents
| that are common both in non-modernized environments and for
| similar primates.
|
| Moreover, I interpret his phrase "To start with" as having
| the same meaning as your suggestion "newbies".
|
| Using a door frame in the beginning is indeed good practical
| advice for achieving the full squat position for those who
| are not used to it.
| watwut wrote:
| It did not made sense to me, because I am not a gorilla.
| They have different bodies. They look kinda similar in body
| shape, but they climb treat the way I will never be able to
| no matter how much I train.
|
| So, gorila sleeping position implies exactly nothing for my
| sleeping position.
| helboi4 wrote:
| Funnily, as a brit, I have always had the ability to sit in a
| deep squat comfortably and it's not even from tons of
| practice. I only even realised that its unusual to be able to
| do and that it may be good for you when I was about 21. By
| which point there were many people who couldn't do it
| already. I certainly hadn't been practicing it throughout my
| teenage years.
| frereubu wrote:
| I'm a Brit who can squat too, and I think it has quite a
| bit to do with not weather shoes at home and wearing
| "barefoot" shoes / zero-drop trainers outside. I have a
| hunch that it's lengthened my calf muscles and achilles
| tendons, which makes squatting much more comfortable. I
| couldn't really do it before switching to barefoot shoes.
| throwaway828 wrote:
| Having lived in Asia for 10 years I observed that I had
| gained the ability to squat, quite comfortably too, that
| I never had on arrival.
|
| Funny old world.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Of course it is without a pillow, it's a mountain gorilla!
|
| That doesn't follow at all. Gorillas are well known for their
| habit of making nests. Making pillows isn't difficult.
| elric wrote:
| Indeed. Many animals build nests. It's not a skill unique
| to humans at all. Finding something comfortable to rest on
| isn't a particularly difficult skill to master.
| olalonde wrote:
| I'm a human and I don't think I'd be able to make a
| (comfortable) pillow...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Go pull a bunch of grass, and put it in a pile. You now
| have a working pillow.
| olalonde wrote:
| That doesn't sound comfortable. I'd probably rather sleep
| on my arm than a pile of grass...
| avery17 wrote:
| Im sure if you spent your whole life sleeping on the
| ground youd work something out to make it more
| comfortable
| watwut wrote:
| It can be actually comfortable.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| You (most likely) have two comfortable potential pillows
| distal to your elbows...
|
| (I don't use any of these positions, but I most commonly
| nap on a heated wooden floor in an insect-free
| environment. Oddly enough, I also support my temple on
| the dorsal surface of a wrist; it had never occurred to
| me that in addition to comfort, it keeps both ears free?)
| jacobolus wrote:
| > _It is not like Westerners have some special physiological
| feature that makes them do it, it 's about lack of practice._
|
| Lack of practice _causes_ a "special physiological feature":
| ankle inflexibility. For some people it would take a
| significant amount of time stretching the ankles every day to
| recover enough ankle flexibility to squat, and that could
| perhaps still be insufficient, as joint mobility is
| established based on the range of motion used in childhood.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to outright dismiss it because it is
| not a systematic/empirical study (and the author explicitly
| mention that). In the case of posture, stretching & training I
| think there's several exercises out there that doesn't have a
| rigorous empirical study to back it up, yet can be explained to
| be good/bad from our anatomical understanding of the human
| body.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Well, unfortunately in this article there are claims that can
| be explained to be completely false from our anatomical
| understanding of the human body - such as the idea that it is
| impossible to snore with your mouth closed.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| I thought the 'impossible to snore' note was because of the
| downwards spine position, where the soft palate cannot
| collapse. Not because the mouth is closed.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| > I don't think it's fair to outright dismiss it because it
| is not a systematic/empirical study
|
| That's how science works. Show sources/data/experiments or
| gtfo
| roenxi wrote:
| Science requires a level of common sense and intuition.
| Famously: https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094
|
| It is fine, indeed should be encouraged, to put some papers
| in the system that don't have formal data but do record
| common-sense observations. If people don't like them, then
| they can trump opinion with data in the scientific process.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Don't forget the "repeat" part. Sources and data are great,
| but if they can't be replicated by others, the it's not
| verifiable.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| That's how _some steps of the_ science work, specifically
| the empirical studies. Empirical validation,
| falsifiability, and repeatability is all in that ball-park.
| But it 's a part of the process and not all of it.
|
| If that's the only thing you want to consider, sure. As a
| layman it's probably a good principle, and more so in
| engineering. But you'll have to shave off some significant
| works of science from history if you do that.
|
| You can read more about those steps at
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
| mo_42 wrote:
| Einstein and Higgs predicted phenomena that were tested
| years resp. decades after their publication.
|
| A theory is also a contribution to a field as long as it
| tested (not necessarily in the same publication).
|
| Even an observation to a field can be a contribution if it
| helps people generate new theories and then test them.
| guappa wrote:
| In their defence: building a particle accelerator is a
| harder and more costly task than watching people sleep.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| Experiments are the part people fixate on. Science begins
| with observation.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| Yes. But just publishing your observations is not enough.
| And this seems to be a published paper, which I find very
| weird.
| diydsp wrote:
| First, you might want to refresh your understanding of
| the scientific process. Its first step is
| "Observation/question."
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
|
| Next, the acceptability of journal papers without
| conclusive experiments varies across fields. In some
| fields, such as observational sciences (e.g., astronomy,
| ecology, sociology), observational studies are common and
| valuable contributions to the literature. These studies
| often involve collecting and analyzing data from real-
| world observations, surveys, or existing datasets without
| the need for controlled experiments. In such cases, it is
| perfectly acceptable to publish papers based solely on
| observational data.
|
| When you say, "is not enough," the question I respond
| with is "enough for what?" It's fully acceptable to
| publish a paper with observations in order to stimulate
| interest and encourage further research in the area. It's
| not necessary for a journal to require final results.
|
| Finally, consider some of these famous and important
| papers which were published as observations without
| conclusive results. Should they have held back and waited
| until conclusive results were available?
|
| 1. Edwin Hubble's "A Relation between Distance and Radial
| Velocity among Extra-Galactic Nebulae"
|
| 2. Albert Einstein's "The Foundation of the General
| Theory of Relativity"
|
| 3. Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species"
| begueradj wrote:
| As a North African, I instinctively understand and firmly
| believe everything mentioned in this article about sleeping is
| true.
|
| From my perspective, the way I see your comment is this: give
| me scientific evidence that walking is beneficial to my health.
|
| We lose our identity when we disconnect from Nature. I even
| read a post recently here in HN where it was said that "Urban
| humans have lost much of their ability to digest plants":
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/03/human-gut-bacteria-t...
|
| That's where we are.
| jawns wrote:
| > I instinctively understand and firmly believe everything
| mentioned in this article about sleeping is true.
|
| Well, yes, but that's a standard quality of B.S. It's
| plausible, and intuitive. When you actually start trying to
| prove it out, though, you discover it's wrong.
|
| True, there is a category of "no duh" scientific findings,
| like walking is beneficial to one's health, that do align
| with our intuition. But where science really shines is when
| the evidence points to something counterintuitive.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Even the "walking is beneficial" part is not just "duh".
|
| I mean, what is "walking". What distance? What pace? There
| are negative health effects from walking too much. The
| general idea is that moderate exercise is the best, too
| little is bad, too much is also bad. But where is the peak?
| It seems that walking is beneficial to the average city
| dweller, which aligns with our intuition, but what about
| foot soldiers?
|
| And where does the intuition that walking is beneficial
| comes from? Walking is tiring, it is not something we do
| naturally if we can avoid it, not very "intuitive". That's
| the problem by the way, because we can avoid it in modern
| society. I think the intuition comes from the fact that we
| get told over and over than walking is beneficial, so much
| that we made these thought our own, i.e. that's
| conditioning. And the reason we are told that is because it
| is backed by observation and science.
| navane wrote:
| Freakonomics!
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| The poor people in my country squat when they're resting. I was
| taught early on as a kid that I shouldn't sit like that because
| that's what "poor people do".
|
| I really regret listening to that piece of advice. As I observe
| my baby daughter, I realize how natural that squatting position
| is, and how much knee and hip mobility we really have.
| fredrikholm wrote:
| Often the limiting factor is ankle mobility, as not being
| able to drive the knee in front of the toes means falling
| backwards as the center of mass never reaches mid foot.
|
| It's why weightlifters have elevated heels, and why great
| squatters tend to have short femurs (and/or be short in
| general).
| whalabi wrote:
| Yeah I had the same response. He makes lots of anecdotal claims
| about tribespeople's back trouble but where's the data? It's
| mildly interesting nonetheless.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| There's also so much talk about penis protection, I would love
| to know if women use different sleeping positions at different
| rates than men
| sandspar wrote:
| I'm not saying it's an either/or choice, but I'd rather trust
| articles written by obsessed old dude experts rather than
| articles written by "publish or perish" academics citing 100
| other p-hacked "publish or perish" articles.
| talonx wrote:
| Very interesting. The author of the paper is around, at least
| according to the internet, at 90+ years of age and still
| practising physiotherapy.
| ajb wrote:
| And is also totally blind! [1] Which must have made taking
| these observations much harder.
|
| [1]https://www.csp.org.uk/frontline/article/thank-you-csp
| danjc wrote:
| Also thought that but the article is dated 2000.
| talonx wrote:
| Yes, but there is a report of him being around around 2022
| also - https://web.archive.org/web/20220128114020/https://why
| y.org/...
| kasperni wrote:
| Also, tribespeople don't spend most of their waking time sitting
| in front of a computer or TV.
| kurren wrote:
| These and other anthropological elements are very well described
| by Esther Gokhale as the basis of her method (which has been a
| life changer, at least for me).
|
| You can find more on her website or book "8 Steps to a pan-free
| back".
| twowatches wrote:
| I'm fairly sure the cause of back pain is sitting at desks, not
| the position I'm sleeping in.
| safety1st wrote:
| I'm skeptical that there's anything especially unhealthy about
| sitting at a desk even for long periods of time. What's more
| plausible to me is that back pain comes from having a weak back
| and it's more about what you're _not_ doing, which is training
| your back muscles. Over the course of about a year, weight
| lifting eliminated a range of aches and pains I 'd developed
| throughout adulthood, including back, wrist and knee pain. For
| the back it's all about deadlifts. In hindsight it seems
| obvious, all the muscles supporting my spine are visibly larger
| and demonstrably more powerful, carrying my body around is a
| much easier job for them now. Sinking into a padded chair after
| a few big lifts also feels fantastic and now feels like a perk
| of my job lol
| helboi4 wrote:
| I dunno. I never had chronic back or neck pain until I
| started working office jobs. When I was at university, I
| spent periods sitting at desks, but was never strapped to one
| for 8 hour shifts. I would sit down at a desk for max 4 hours
| at a time apart from during extreme crunch periods, and would
| spend the rest of my day walking around, lounging and
| chilling in different positions, excercising, etc. As soon as
| I started working at an office it became noticably harder to
| reach an over-10k step count daily, and even though I
| continued going to the gym and doing heavy back days, my left
| trap has become completely hardened up, and I've occasionally
| had lower back pain too during stressful times. I'm totally
| unable to train upper traps because they are literally like
| bricks. When I have a weekend where I walk and lounge a lot,
| or am off sick, or go on holiday, my traps feel significantly
| better and my workouts are better. It's a lifestyle where you
| are unnaturally in one position for too long that causes
| this.
| Notatheist wrote:
| >I'm skeptical that there's anything especially unhealthy
| about sitting at a desk even for long periods of time. What's
| more plausible to me is that back pain comes from having a
| weak back
|
| I figure few habits will give you a weaker back than sitting
| at a desk for longer periods of time.
| anentropic wrote:
| Yeah I think it's exactly this.
|
| A lot of people end up thinking it's about ergonomic chairs.
| An un-ergonomic chair will make things bad pretty quick, but
| supportive ergonomic chairs are part of the long term problem
| IMHO.
|
| And deadlifts are not the only solution. I started out using
| just a backless stool and it helped a bit (can't slouch!),
| but what really sorted me out was using the "lumbar machine"
| at the gym for a couple of years. When Covid came along I
| couldn't go any more so I started doing "the plank" at home,
| that plus the "side plank" and some push ups have kept me
| going the last four years. And it's totally free and I can do
| them basically anywhere e.g. on holiday.
| kqr wrote:
| > A lot of people end up thinking it's about ergonomic
| chairs. An un-ergonomic chair will make things bad pretty
| quick
|
| I'm still fairly young so I probably shouldn't be so quick
| to say - maybe I'll have to eat my hat in the next decade
| or two - but I feel like this is also one of those "it's
| not the thing but how you use it" type situations. I have
| always used un-ergonomic fairly spartan wood chairs and
| stools without problem.
|
| What I do, that I don't see everyone else do, is adjust my
| position a lot. Since I find the chair slightly
| uncomfortable, I have like a million different positions I
| can sit in and I rotate through them naturally throughout
| the day. I haven't seen any science on it but it would make
| sense that variety helps prevent damage caused by prolonged
| exposure to one position.
| safety1st wrote:
| That might help to some degree, but I bet actually
| exercising your back muscles regularly will have a larger
| effect.
|
| I mean I'm sure of it. It seems like common sense we've
| forgotten. Stress the muscles, eat a generous amount of
| protein, they will grow and get stronger. Do stuff that
| doesn't stress them as much, they will stay weak and that
| will lead to complications.
|
| Similar to how the discussion around obesity has become
| so complicated, in a country where the #1 cause of death
| is heart disease. It is not complicated, obesity leads to
| heart disease, to reduce your risk, you must become less
| obese. Yet we insist on complicating the topic.
| awongh wrote:
| It's crazy to think about how little we actually know about how
| the human body functions- not even to say what an "optimal" sleep
| position might be, but even a high quality study on how different
| sleep positions might affect the physiology of the body. I have
| yet to find any real serious scientific analysis of this.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| The Soviets tried, but we didn't want to hear what they had to
| say:
|
| https://bldgblog.com/2007/02/sleep-labs-of-the-soviet-empire...
| lukan wrote:
| "not even to say what an "optimal" sleep position might be"
|
| As with most things, maybe there isn't one optimal solution,as
| otherwise we all would have found out about it, by now and all
| use it?
|
| Human bodies and minds are quite different.
|
| So what is comfortable to one person might not work for the
| next person. Maybe people have pain in the back or in the neck,
| forcing them into other positions. People with stomach problems
| rather lie on their stomach. Some people people sleep alone,
| others together.
|
| I know my sleeping position varies a lot and there is no single
| best one for me.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| I love sleeping in the "lookout posture". I get very restful
| sleep. However after a couple of days it leads to a lot of pain
| in my back. I'm guessing some tendons get overstretched. No idea
| how to work around it though
|
| I should try the reverse with the elbow outward. Seems doable.
| The Tibetan kneel seems a big too hardcore though :)
| kqr wrote:
| I have actually used that Tibetan kneel once! I was exhausted
| and had to sit on the floor for a while and then I just fell
| asleep like that. It surprised me enough that I've tried to
| recreate it but it seems I can only do it when I'm _really_
| tired.
|
| Maybe it's a matter of habit and I can learn to do it if I try
| often enough.
| tejtm wrote:
| @dang please macro expand previous
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18024260 Sept 19, 2018
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32531484 Aug 20, 2022
| delichon wrote:
| I bought a very strange mattress six months ago. This isn't an
| advertisement -- I can't strongly recommend it -- but it's called
| SONU Sleep. It has a "channel" along the top that you can lower
| your arm into when sleeping on the side. I got it due to
| persistent shoulder pain from side sleeping. Gradually I've
| adjusted to it and am now sleeping better.
|
| But that's an argument against my usual paleo heuristic: this
| sure isn't how we evolved to sleep over millions of years. I
| wonder if I'd sleep well in orbit.
| anonu wrote:
| If you're sleeping better, why cant you "strongly recommend"
| it?
| vasco wrote:
| > Forest dwellers and nomads suffer fewer musculoskeletal lesions
| than "civilised" people
|
| > I tried to carry out surveys to collect evidence but they were
| meaningless, as tribespeople give you the answer they think you
| want.
|
| Could they simply have higher thresholds for complaining?
| leoedin wrote:
| They're also incredibly active compared to any "civilised"
| people. There's a lot of evidence that sedentary lifestyles are
| bad for bodies.
|
| Presumably they're also, on average, younger than "civilised"
| peoples. Life expectancy for an Amazonian Tribe was just 53
| years. https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/how-to-eat-like-an-
| amazo...
|
| Muscle and joint issues are a symptom of aging. If nobody's
| making it to 60, then aging really isn't the same issue.
| kqr wrote:
| Life expectancy of 53 does not usually mean nobody makes it
| to 60. In the early 1900s[1], life expectancy at birth in
| England was 53, but at the same time, as long as you survived
| until you were 20, your life expectancy had increased to over
| 60. If you lived to 50, you could expect to become 70.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/Life-
| expectancy-...
|
| ----
|
| [1]: Not counting the years of the Spanish flu!
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| To the parents point, you sort of made their point. "If you
| made it to x". By having fewer older members of their
| population they likely had few joint problems reported
| overall. I would expect any reasonable study to control for
| this variable but a survey would not.
| chaorace wrote:
| Life expectancy is such a consistently deceptive
| measurement that I often wonder why it's not been replaced.
| Surely there must be more useful ways of quantifying
| lifespans, something like a "median age of currently living
| people"?
| kqr wrote:
| Point estimates in general are deceptive. It's difficult
| to capture the nuance of a full distribution with a
| single number.
|
| I've had some luck with upper and lower percentiles, e.g.
| 5 % and 95 %. These cover 9 out of 10 people, which is
| large enough to be meaningful, yet not so small it's
| difficult to estimate.
| virtualritz wrote:
| This is probably because of child mortality etc.
|
| I.e. the conclusion that people there don't usually live past
| 60 seems like a fallacy.
| cma wrote:
| That is part of it, but there would also be things like
| high mortality during childbirth, and lack of antibiotics
| there at that time.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| At the same time you have no car crashes or other post-
| industrial dangers.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| But you also were much more likely to farm and hunt and
| do manual labor. All much more dangerous than office
| chair
| phyzome wrote:
| Reminder that "life expectancy" is a useless metric if you
| don't specify the base age. Life expectancy at birth, at 5
| years, at 15 years?
| GlenTheEskimo wrote:
| They sure seem to complain a lot about insects on their penises
| bee_rider wrote:
| How many times do you think somebody's penis has to be
| attacked by insects before preventing that becomes the main
| "figure of merit" for evaluating sleeping positions? I think
| it is not very far from 1 time.
| danw1979 wrote:
| I'm sure there are some great points in this paper but this bit
| of un-evidenced bit of speculation turned me off:
|
| > It has been noted that guide dogs working in towns breathe the
| same pollutants as humans yet do not have asthma. Could this be
| because when they lie on their chests the kickback from the upper
| ribs keeps the corresponding vertebrae mobile, allowing the
| sympathetic system to work efficiently?
|
| Or could it be one of the many other physiological differences
| between humans and dogs ?
|
| I think the author notes that this is mostly a collection of
| anecdotal observations, but linking a primarily inflammatory
| disorder like asthma with musculoskeletal problems is a bit far
| fetched in my layman's opinion. Sounds a bit like chiropractic
| quackery to me.
| dmix wrote:
| He lists his profession as a physiotherapist so probably
| crossed into the chiropractic side a bit, some of his personal
| photos are a little hippy-ish.
|
| The article is also premised on one large appeal to nature
| (tribal people untainted by modern society do it therefore it
| is natural and therefore good).
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
| tlb wrote:
| Appeal to nature is bad as a source of ultimate truth,
| "nature does it this way therefore it must be better." But
| it's good as a source of hypotheses, "nature does it this
| way, perhaps we should try it?" This paper seems more like
| the second.
| Townley wrote:
| Also notable: some dogs do get asthma, and cats have asthma
| commonly
|
| https://www.webmd.com/pets/cats/asthma-symptoms-cats
| admissionsguy wrote:
| To add to the anecdotes, I have been sleeping on a flat rice
| straw tatami matt (without anything else) for 2 months. It's
| pretty hard and I have bruises on my ribs, but I have way less
| back and neck pain than before. I usually fall asleep in position
| similar to Figures 4 and 5 in the paper.
|
| The reason I started doing this is that after moving to a new
| house I bought an expensive memory foam mattress which made my
| back hurt every morning.
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| For my entire life I slept in one of those postures ("the
| lookout"). I had a bunch of problems (pain in the chest, pain in
| the back, some problems with my knees not loaded symmetrically,
| my feet getting "extended" for quite a long time causing problems
| with Achilles). I also had a problem with restlessness -- these
| positions cannot be maintained for long without moving, I would
| be changing my position very frequently.
|
| Couple of years ago I have injured my ACL and had to learn to
| sleep on my back. Now I am much happier sleeper. Now I generally
| do not move at all during night (I wake up exactly as I have
| fallen asleep and my sleep tracker tracks way less movement). All
| of the pains gone.
| nightowl_games wrote:
| Pillow or no pillow? Hard mattress? No mattress?
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| I use a very thin pillow when sleeping on my back. I find
| sleeping without pillow a bit uncomfortable. Although I am
| sure I could get used to my head being pushed back a bit, I
| still dislike the head just resting on the hard mattress and
| trying to naturally roll left/right. The pillow helps me keep
| my head looking straight ahead (almost vertically).
|
| As to mattress, I prefer a mid-to-hard latex mattress with a
| cover.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| In the article, the lookout position involves the lack of a
| pillow. One can imagine that the additional height of the
| pillow would cause you to raise your head, lower your
| chest, and arch your back, potentially causing the issues
| you reported.
|
| That being said, this is an article of anecdotal
| observations by a physiotherapist - it is not the result of
| any kind of study.
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| It is really thin pure goose down pillow. Folded, it is
| less than 1/4in when compressed. I don't think the height
| of the pillow makes a huge difference.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| (This is my preferred type of pillow as well - an old,
| thin down one - and I can tell the difference when I
| sleep with or without it.)
| rapunkill wrote:
| As a back sleeper, get a pillow or cushion under your
| knees/legs. Otherwise the arch of your back is in constant
| stress when you sleep and can lead to back problems. You can
| guess how I know.
| pcrh wrote:
| Amazing demonstrations of casual racism in that article. It reads
| as if it was written in 1850 rather than 2000.
|
| There's no plausible reason to suppose that Tibetans or
| "tribesmen" have more natural sleeping positions than "civilized"
| (i e. White) people.
| lonelyasacloud wrote:
| > There's no plausible reason to suppose that Tibetans or
| "tribesmen" have more natural sleeping positions than
| "civilized" (i e. White) people.
|
| So Tibetan tribal society is likely to have exposed its members
| to the same level of furniture and mattress adverts as the
| average American or European then?
| pcrh wrote:
| Tibetans traditionally sleep on beds that are not much
| different from European beds.
|
| The porters shown in the article are "camping", so to speak,
| i.e. _not_ in their typical sleeping postures.
| dsalzman wrote:
| The interesting point of this article to me is not the positions
| but the sleeping surface. Due to my newborn I've been sleeping on
| the floor on a thin yoga mat for over three months and my back
| and joints feel great. The pressure from the hard ground is like
| stretching while you sleep. Took a few weeks to get used to it
| though.
| sameoldtune wrote:
| I have a Japanese futon mat[1] under my bed that I roll out if
| I have muscle soreness. If it weren't for my partner (who
| insists on sleeping in a bed) I would sleep on the floor 100%
| of the time. After getting used to floor sleeping I can never
| feel truly relaxed in a bed-I feel like the padding is putting
| pressure on my lumbar spine.
|
| [1] https://www.futonbedsfromjapan.com/
| itronitron wrote:
| The text referencing Figure 2 seems to mistakenly swap the top
| and bottom images.
|
| _When the legs are in the reverse recovery position (fig
| (fig2,2, bottom), the penis lies on the lower thigh and is
| protected. In this position the Achilles tendon of the leading
| foot can be inserted in the gap between the big toe and the first
| lesser toe to help correct a bunion._
|
| Note that the top picture in Figure 2 shows the Achilles tendon
| of the leading foot between the big toe and adjacent toe of the
| trailing foot. I would conclude then that the top position is
| actually the one that protects the penis.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Figure 1 also has the images the wrong way around, though it's
| harder to see because they're meant to be side-by-side. I think
| it's a problem with the HTML conversion.
| ano-ther wrote:
| This came up on HN a while ago already. I tried it out and found
| that quadrupedal lying (fig 5) did help my lower back pain.
| hnbad wrote:
| It's odd that the paper goes to great lengths to talk about
| protecting your penis from insects but at the same point seems to
| ignore women completely - all the illustrations depict men.
| Having met women (shocking, I know), bust size can be a
| significant factor in ergonomics so it would be interesting to
| see how that factors into it. Also anecdotally, pregnant belly-
| sleepers frequently rely on cushioning and people may prefer
| certain sleeping positions after having given birth or suffering
| from certain ailments. I'm also certain that waist size (esp.
| obesity) may alter preferences.
|
| It's an interesting paper but given the lack of substance this
| feels more like a school presentation than something you'd find
| in an academic journal.
| kqr wrote:
| > Also anecdotally, pregnant belly-sleepers frequently rely on
| cushioning
|
| I mean, undergoing pregnancy is in and of itself not great for
| one's health (especially without modern healthcare), so I don't
| know how much that specific thing should be factored into
| healthy lifestyle choices.
|
| In particular, pregnancy puts a lot of pressure on internal
| organs in a way that means one should not be surprised to have
| only one working sleeping position by the third trimester. At
| that point it's governed by Newton and another growing human,
| not choice.
|
| (To be clear, I'm not saying pregnancy is a bad lifestyle
| choice, just that pregnancy is not kind to the human body.)
| hnbad wrote:
| > I don't know how much that specific thing should be
| factored into healthy lifestyle choices.
|
| I'm pretty sure the average human is _not healthy_ , even in
| the societies analysed, especially if you factor in injuries,
| disabilities or pregnancy. If anything the perfectly
| "healthy" able body is the exception to the human experience.
|
| So yes, if we want meaningful advice on healthier sleeping
| postures we should take various illnesses, disabilities,
| ailments and conditions into account.
|
| At least this seems like a fair consideration if we already
| dedicate this much text to reducing the risk of insect bites
| on your penis.
| kaitai wrote:
| Yes, I wondered about this as well. I understand why the author
| might not have observed women sleeping, and certainly wouldn't
| have photos, but one might at least mention it (especially
| given all the attention to the penis). Bust size & placement
| for sure has a significant effect on where arms can be placed,
| among other things.
|
| It seems that the author's observations are primarily from
| various camping-equivalents, more so than home life.
|
| To my sibling commenter, whether pregnancy is or isn't
| "healthy" isn't quite the point, IMO. Various stages of
| pregnancy do occupy a non-trivial part of many people's
| lifespan and significantly change the ergonomics of sleep.
| Given that humans have been getting pregnant for a long time,
| it is a big miss to not even mention that it hasn't been
| considered. Academic training tries to impress on most authors
| that they should mention what they're ignoring and why, not
| least to set up the citation train for the future and support
| grant applications.
| btbuildem wrote:
| The Tibetan caraveneers sleeping on their shins is metal af.
|
| As a bonus, in that position, the penis is protected from
| instects.
|
| Did that little observation, erm, stand out to anyone else?
| malfist wrote:
| Penis and insects are mentioned in quite a few places in the
| study. Author seems very preoccupied with that.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| You never think about ants crawling up your urethra until one
| of them tries.
| Izkata wrote:
| The images for Figure 2 are reversed. Both the caption and the
| description in the paragraph below refer to the bottom image
| while describing the top one.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| "Pillows are not necessary". It is but good position in sleep
| depends on an individual itself. Some people find pillows
| essential for comfort and proper spinal alignment
| bee_rider wrote:
| IMO it would be better for the government to keep this sort of
| general library content on a url that doesn't contain NIH. They
| have the disclaimer,
|
| > As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature.
| Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or
| agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of
| Health.
|
| Anyway, it seems like an interesting collection of anecdotes that
| would be a good place to start searching. I don't see as much
| value in some of his speculations. The bit about dogs not getting
| asthma seems a little out of scope.
|
| Actually, do dogs get asthma? Quick googling seems to provide
| contradictory answers, with the general trend that apparently
| cats get it more often, and apparently dogs get some sort of
| allergic reaction thing that is technically not asthma, but is
| very similar?
| anonu wrote:
| > keep this sort of general library content on a url that
| doesn't contain NIH.
|
| Why? The author makes it clear its purely anecdotal. Someone
| might come across this and decide to do a further, more
| scientific study. I would argue that this is valuable content
| that could lead to better insights on our sleep. Not having it
| on the NIH website would make it less likely to be viewed.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Because inclusion on the NIH website, in the same general
| format as peer-reviewed articles are given, can give it the
| aura of being promoted or at least vetted by NIH, even with
| the disclaimer.
|
| If you look through Snopes there are tons of examples of
| hoaxes and false gossip that end up spreading because they
| are found on an "official" website (or official-looking
| website), even if that official website is just a library
| where anyone can publish.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Totally agreed. I also liked some of the anecdotes in this
| article, but I always have to do an eye roll when I read an
| article that claims that "primitive" cultures don't suffer from
| disease X, and look they do thing Y that modern cultures don't,
| so of course thing Y must be the the reason for the difference!
| Conveniently ignoring the 6387 other stark differences in
| culture, behaviors and diets between the cultures.
|
| I think the hypothesis of how sleeping positions affect back
| pain would be worth studying, but that's all it is, a
| hypothesis.
| m_dupont wrote:
| I tried some of the positions in this article while trying to get
| used to sleeping on the floor in an attempt to fix my back pain.
| These hurt like hell
| anonu wrote:
| I will be trying more of these suggested positions.
| Coincidentally, I had a 5 degree wedge under my mattress to lift
| my head up slightly to reduce snoring. This resulted in increased
| lower back pain. Removing it reduced this lower back pain
| substantially.
|
| In some sense, the vertical use of our vertebrae is a design
| anti-pattern. We evolved from animals that walked on all fours,
| and vertebrae are much better suited for this horizontal
| position. This is why we suffer from slipped discs and other
| ailments that are not common in other animals.
| colloydi wrote:
| More than a few middle-aged westerners would find it impossible
| to sleep with bent knees owing to a high prevalance of
| artherosclerosis (I think).
|
| Also one of the great pleasures of life is turning over in bed
| repeatedly during a lie-in. Don't know whether it's to do with
| lymph circulation and/or detoxifying the brain. More
| investigation needed!
| carpdiem wrote:
| It would be interesting to know how the comfort or suitability of
| these postures is affected by physiology.
|
| For example, even the suitability to obtain a deep squat may be
| affected by things like hip joint geometry:
| https://www.otpbooks.com/stuart-mcgill-hip-anatomy/
| karaterobot wrote:
| I notice that all of the sleep positions are either on the
| stomach or side. I usually go between side and stomach when
| sleeping, and can't really fall asleep very well on my back. But,
| my impression is that most people go between side and back, with
| stomach sleepers being a minority (I've even heard it called
| weird).
|
| This study backs that up (54% side, 37% back, 7% stomach)
|
| https://www.dovepress.com/sleep-positions-and-nocturnal-body...
|
| I wonder if the difference is cultural, or technological: that
| is, do we learn to sleep a certain way, or is it that the
| mattress changes the equation somehow and makes people 5x more
| likely to sleep on their back than on their stomach?
|
| In the past, I've hypothesized that it's cultural, and my just-so
| etiology for the phenomenon is that it comes from TV and movies.
| It's much easier to get a good shot of an actor delivering dialog
| while lying in bed on their back, compared to their stomach, so
| we see people sleeping on their back and learn to do it that way.
|
| This is all just uninformed speculation, and of course it assumes
| the original, linked article is valid at all.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| How do you breathe when you sleep on your stomach? My back and
| hips feel amazing when I try it, but my neck starts to hate me
| from the way I have to twist around to get air.
| ecshafer wrote:
| When you sleep on your stomach you turn your head to the
| side, breathing is easy.
| tejohnso wrote:
| Try putting a pillow under the shoulder that your mouth is
| closest to. A slight lifting of the shoulder might relieve
| the neck strain.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Looks a lot like figure 4 in that article, but with my arms
| wrapped around a pillow. The arms hold up the head, and the
| neck isn't rotated so much that it hurts. There's usually a
| little twist at the hips, and my legs are kinda jackknifed as
| in the second figure 2 picture (I just noticed the caption
| points out how "the penis is protected from insects", ha ha).
| Very comfortable, though my ribs will get a little sore after
| a while, so I rotate with a side sleeping position throughout
| the night.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I am very uncomfortable with this paper to be called scientific
| research. It certainly appears the author had extensive life
| experiences, but does not demonstrate any of the data he
| collected.
|
| > If you are a medical professional and have been trained in a
| "civilised" country you probably know next to nothing about the
| primate Homo sapiens and how they survive in the wild.
|
| Starting off by insulting an entire population and making
| assumptions about what they do or do not know is odd. The
| disrespect continues on how an entire medical field "do not know
| that nature has provided". The author continues on to further
| disrespect by moving medical professionals in to "so called
| civilised people", and makes medical conclusions of "suffer[ing]
| unnecessarily from musculoskeletal problems".
|
| And, this is just in the first paragraph. The second paragraph
| goes into the author's background how he lived amongst tribal
| people, commanded a platoon of African soldiers, and organized
| expeditions to meet native peoples and study their sleeping and
| resting postures.
|
| > I tried to carry out surveys to collect evidence but they were
| meaningless
|
| The author collected evidence, and the evidence was meaningless
| (alternative hypothesis false?) so... he discarded it? Would it
| not make sense to attach it and explain why it was meaningless?
|
| One of the conclusions is
|
| > Forest dwellers and nomads suffer fewer musculoskeletal lesions
|
| but then...
|
| > Arabs in the Sahara will sit in the position shown
|
| How is the Arabs in the Sahara backing up forest dwellers
| conclusion?
|
| NIH publishing this is odd. At least it was not written by
| ChatGPT.
| sdwr wrote:
| How is this not science?
|
| He has a hypothesis - modern sleep devices are not as good for
| the spine as the bare ground.
|
| He suggested a reason why - pressing against the ground during
| sleep acts as therapy.
|
| He has data - life experience, pictures, and demonstrations.
|
| Maybe it doesn't pattern match as science to you, but the raw
| science is all there. A few hundred years ago, this is how most
| science was conducted - by individuals with specific bones to
| pick.
|
| Is it conclusive? No. Is it worth being part of the
| conversation? Absolutely!
| Herodotus38 wrote:
| Remember that the NIH does not publish (edit: to be clearer
| this is the National Library of Medicine which falls under the
| umbrella of the NIH, and its URL), it just organizes articles
| like a local library but on a much larger scale. It's a common
| misconception. This article was published by the British
| Medical Journal as an interesting anecdote from a physical
| therapist. The NIH makes things available for searching but
| does not endorse anything that they have available.
| frame_ranger wrote:
| Rest and vest brahs, rest and vest.
| eightnoteight wrote:
| I never focussed much on sleeping postures, but one day I read
| this article about how acid reflux goes away if you side-sleep on
| your left hand side i.e stomach is at a lower height than when
| you sleep on your right hand side
|
| that really changed my life, it was like, how did I waste 28
| years of my life without finding this trick :D
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I am a subject of the species Sapiens, genus Homo. Subject is a
| civilized example of the species. An unfortunate side-effect of
| being civilized is an encouragement to collect paper, with which
| subject is to trade for essential goods. The method subject has
| devised to collect these trade papers involves sitting on a soft
| yet sturdy apparatus and being bent at an approximately 90-degree
| angle at the hip and knee joints, and looking at a glowing
| rectangle while subject taps on a noisy set of squares.
|
| Of the unfortunate side-effects of civilization, one is risk of
| injury. Of the several injuries subject has sustained in this
| pursuit (including to eyes, fingers, wrists, and elbows) is
| injury to subject's neck. In particular, a musculoskeletal injury
| of the muscles supporting the head on the spine, due to repeated
| stress from looking at a downard angle at glowing rectangle, as
| opposed to looking straight ahead.
|
| This injury did result in up to 11 months of recuperation. During
| this time period, finding a way to rest the neck and head was
| extremely difficult and painful. After completing several weeks'
| worth of paper collection, some attempts were made at
| recuperation outside in nature. Upon attempting to sleep on the
| ground, rest was significantly painful and uncomfortable. Thus
| were attempted many months of trial and error at attempting to
| find positions with which to rest in a comfortable manner, while
| allowing the neck to heal.
|
| At the end of recuperation, the result of attempts at finding
| resting positions was quite unexpected. Rest for this subject no
| longer requires (nor benefits from) pillows when side-sleeping,
| and back-sleeping is easier, though still not preferable. The
| explanation for this change appears to be an adaptation in
| musculoskeletal alignment when sleeping. This subject now
| acquires a particular alignment of head, neck, spine, shoulder,
| chest, back, and hips, that keeps any one body part from
| receiving undue strain. Sleep quality is consistent with sleep
| quality before injury, with the benefit of no longer needing
| props to assist in sleep quality.
|
| The linked article's conclusion appears to be supported by
| subject's experience. Subject additionally notes that a single
| ear is enough to be alerted to most dangers. When sleeping
| outside, or in an enclosed cabin, such things as mice, deer, and
| the occasional canid, do tend to wake the subject, as well as odd
| sounds such as socks falling off the bed onto a plastic bag, or
| elastic bed sheet end-corners snapping upwards. Whether
| non-h.sapiens species are also alerted to the latter sounds with
| one ear open has not been formally evaluated.
| keybored wrote:
| This is so fascinating.
|
| I slept (on my back) on the floor for a while. It was at times
| amazing--I would wake up and feel ready to go. Not like my
| muscles were weak or temporarily atrophied. Like, I didn't know
| that was possible after a full nights sleep.
|
| There seems to be so much potential in just reflecting on an
| considering what a "paleo" approach to something would be. And
| then you can just do that. You don't even need to buy hundreds of
| dollars worth of supposedly ergonomic equipment. Just sleep in a
| funny-looking position. Just squat instead of sitting on a
| chair... if you can bare the social awkwardness or ridicule.
|
| It's so simple. Why do we make things complicated?
|
| Well in part because "modern humans" cannot just _do_ these
| things without becoming regarded as merely a modern human with
| eccentric hobbies. Because that's what you get pegged as!--not as
| a modern human who rediscovered (through YouTube /the Web) some
| ancient wisdom but as a paleo-hipster, just another quirky modern
| human subculture.
|
| And in part that is correct. You cannot be, say, a Western
| Buddhist who has all the know-how and experience of a born-in-
| the-culture (Asian) Buddhist. And in that same way you cannot
| become a non-modern... human.
|
| But wait. Why would you want to? You are who you are. You may be
| a Buddhist from Scranton, PA who has no relation to Asian
| culture. Or an office worker who squats at the office. _But why
| is that weird?_ Yeah you're not a "real Buddhist" in that
| terribly essentialist sense, and you're not a born-in-the-culture
| kind of human who has never used a chair. But why do you have to
| be that in order to make these (eccentric) choices for yourself?
| If it works for you, just go for it you paleo-hipster.
| pedalpete wrote:
| I also slept on my floor for about 5 months - until I saw a
| huge cockroach (common in Sydney) run across my floor and hide
| under my pillow.
|
| I agree, it felt great.
|
| When I moved into my new, almost cockroach free apartment, I
| built my own shikibuton by taking a futon cover and stuffing it
| with a comforter and a thin foam mattress topper. The whole
| thing is about 7cm (2.7 inches) thick. I roll it up each
| morning and have been sleeping like this for the last 8 months.
|
| I also use only 1 thin pillow, and for a while was placing it
| lengthwise along my spine, which is apparently good for fixing
| the hunchback posture of modern humans.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| There are a lot of things that we do that wild animals and wild
| people don't do, and a lot of things they do that we don't do. If
| "do what they do" were a panacea we wouldn't be living like this
| in the first place.
|
| They don't have access to antiparasitic medications, for example.
| Another example, they don't stare at screens ever. Plenty of our
| habits are better for us and plenty are worse, and the same is
| true for them. I'm sure plenty of habits of all people have trade
| offs. We have a higher life expectancy. What's a better metric
| for healthy lifestyle than that? It doesn't mean everything is
| better, but it is a good yardstick for determining if we are
| doing more right than wrong to our health, all in all.
|
| So just "this is how it's done in nature so we are wrong about
| how we do it" isn't a good heuristic. A dog will lay on something
| soft given the opportunity.
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