[HN Gopher] Two nights of broken sleep can make people feel year...
___________________________________________________________________
Two nights of broken sleep can make people feel years older, finds
study
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 281 points
Date : 2024-03-27 11:28 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| A week of broken sleep is enough to change my whole personality.
| I end up hopeless, self-destructive, and convinced that I'm going
| to die imminently for some reason. Just this conviction that my
| heart is going to wear out any day now. It's such a bizarre
| experience, especially to finally get sleep and wake up with such
| energy and positivity.
| eqmvii wrote:
| Classic symptoms of anxiety from the sleep deprivation, no?
|
| I've also found that there's a lag on recovering from sleep
| deprivation, where the first night of good sleep often leaves
| me feeling foggy and lethargic the next day. After 2 or 3, that
| energy and positivity returns - not sure if that's
| idiosyncratic or not.
| maksum wrote:
| I feel exactly the same way. The first night of real rest
| feels as if my body "caught up" to how sleep deprived I was
| and I often don't accomplish much that day.
| d--b wrote:
| How about 20 years ? Just curious...
| sph wrote:
| https://imgur.com/gallery/4e4G5
| jdawg777 wrote:
| I would be curious as to how they are measuring the subject's
| perception of their age. Are they just asking them how old they
| feel? How do they get meaningful results?
| sp332 wrote:
| The link to the paper is halfway down the article.
| https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2024.017...
| jdawg777 wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| > Subjective age was assessed using a single-item question:
| 'On some days you may feel older or younger than your
| calendar age. What age do you feel right now?
| akira2501 wrote:
| How would any of these people _know_ what older actually
| "feels like?" It's hard to believe they felt this surrogate
| question would reveal anything useful, let alone, that the
| numeric values associated with it were worth averaging.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Good point. The study would be better if they tracked actual
| biomarkers like HRV, RHR, blood pressure, etc. rather than
| asking the question, how old do you feel.
| vaylian wrote:
| See also: Sleep deprivation is torture:
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dreaming-in-the-digi...
| lynx23 wrote:
| I can think of a much more fitting headline for that article.
| The international community not reacting to the blatant human
| rights violations proudly performed by the U.S. speaks volumes
| about opression and bullying tactics. How did the comedian I
| heard just yesterday express it: "You lend money to the USA,
| because if you dont, they come and get it."
| edu wrote:
| I'm the dad of a 7 month old baby. I think I feel around 100
| years older than I actually am.
| inference-lord wrote:
| 100% having the same experience. It's mind bending how tired
| you can get.
|
| We recently all had the flu, 2 nights of the baby having a
| fever and both of us being sick and also having a fever was one
| of the most testing things in my life.
| objektif wrote:
| Try having a kid with febrile seizures. Mine runs 105 fevers
| casually for 5 to 7 days. We have to check her very often to
| make sure she is not going into a seizure.
| 2024throwaway wrote:
| Sorry.
|
| But it's not a contest.
| objektif wrote:
| Oh no did not mean it that way. Not that I want a trophy
| for sleeping less lol. My point was as a new parent
| things can get a lot worse in terms of sleep deprivation.
| I was not prepared for it.
| verisimi wrote:
| Best advice I heard on this, is for partners to take turns to
| get sleep if possible. Perhaps it's obvious, but we didn't do
| that initially. You really only need 3 hours or so (in my
| experience) and the insanity starts to subside.
| david422 wrote:
| My wife and I had a spare bedroom - we used to alternate
| nights down there when our child would scream all night.
| forgotmyinfo wrote:
| I've never seen a more zombified human being than when a friend
| had a fussy baby who simply would not sleep. Two hours a night
| was her and her husband's norm, sometimes. Godspeed, I hope you
| can get some rest soon. (Also, congratulations on the new baby!
| :))
| gambiting wrote:
| I feel you - our son had about 6 months(from ~4 months old
| until 10 months old) where he just wouldn't sleep for more than
| an hour at the time, then would wake up screaming and it took
| at least 30-40 minutes to put him back to sleep. I think in
| that period me and my wife were actual zombies, just didn't get
| any sleep at all, there was a point where I thought to myself I
| haven't had more than 2 hours of continious unbroken sleep for
| few months, and that there is no way this can be healthy lol.
|
| Also, I know saying this now doesn't help, because at the
| moment you are in one of the most "intense" periods of their
| development where they need all of your attention but give
| relatively little back - but that _will_ improve. They will
| eventually sleep better and they will start telling you how
| much they love you and kiss you goodnight - and then all of
| those early months are forgotten :-)
| tutfbhuf wrote:
| I can relate, sleep deprivation can have serious health
| effects. We did night shifts on cycles every other day, where
| one parent slept through the night on the couch with hearing
| protection, while the other stayed with the baby in the
| bedroom. This method worked out quite well. The advantage is
| that the parent who slept on the couch has more energy during
| the day for the child and can enjoy the time more, which is
| also beneficial for the child.
| fullstackchris wrote:
| so... what are you supposed to do if you have a full time
| job?
| n4r9 wrote:
| I have an 8 month old and am full time while mum's on
| maternity leave. When the baby was ill recently, at times
| he wouldn't sleep unless he was being held by a standing
| person. I'm not kidding - there were nights where sitting
| or lying down as gently as possible would wake him up. We
| ended up doing half-night shifts where I'd have him from
| 8pm to 2am and then mum would take him from 2am-8am. I'd
| wake up at 8am, put him in the carrier for a nap while
| mum napped as well (30-60 mins) and then start work.
|
| How parents in the US do it when maternity is only 12
| weeks unpaid... I have no idea!
| Loughla wrote:
| I caught shit from my ex-employer when out latest was
| born because I wanted to take 2 weeks off. 2 weeks. It
| was part of my review that year _before I even took the
| time off._
|
| I left that company the same day. We lived VERY lean for
| a year or so while I figured out a new direction. Thank
| Christ for a supportive family.
| n4r9 wrote:
| That's just awful. As a new parent I'm so much more
| keenly appreciative of these kinds of struggles. I found
| 4 weeks of pat leave and a very gentle re-introduction to
| work very challenging, let alone bringing up an infant
| without an income. I'm glad that you had family around to
| support you and that you did indeed find a new direction
| (which it sounds like you did).
| gambiting wrote:
| As a dad I only had 1 month of paternity leave and I
| still found it incredibly difficult to go back to
| work(not because of work, but because my son needed a lot
| of support and I wasn't able to provide it). 2 weeks
| would be literally impossible, I think I'd resign.
| MrDresden wrote:
| And coming from the nordics I wonder how the parents in
| the rest of Europe do it when there is barely any
| paternity leave.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Yes, I'm very jealous of what you get, "up north". Some
| companies in the UK are generous - I hear Google (or at
| least DeepMind) provides 3 months - but some dads in my
| antenatal class only got a single week off. And some of
| the mums went back to work after 6 months, putting the
| baby in nursery at that age.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Answer A (because capitalism is for sociopaths): Sleep
| train
|
| Answer B: Work harder on the days you have energy.
| tutfbhuf wrote:
| It will be a challenge for a few months, but as other
| parents pointed out, it will improve over time. My advice
| is, if you plan to have kids, then try to reduce any
| other factors of stress, such as work-related, as much as
| possible, because your kid requires full attention,
| especially in the beginning.
| mcntsh wrote:
| This is why I love Germany, because you don't have to ask
| questions like this. You have the right to take a year
| off (or more) as a father and mother and the state pays
| you.
| a_e_k wrote:
| My experience as a working parent has been that you just
| have to muddle through some days one way or the other.
| (But taking longer shifts like GP mentioned works _way_
| better than trying to split the difference within a
| single night.)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| We just slept with our son in bed and didn't have a fraction
| of the problems in this department.
| lolinder wrote:
| This should be obvious, but you also had a different child.
|
| Our oldest child wouldn't sleep until we got him not only
| out of the bed but the bassinet all the way out of the
| room.
|
| Our second child slept like a baby pretty much whenever.
|
| Our third did fine in the bassinet, but now that she's
| older and transferred to the nursery she wakes up if even
| the slightest bit of light comes in through her door.
|
| Kids are wildly different from one another from a very
| young age. I wouldn't assume that your cosleeping is the
| _cause_ of your having fewer sleep troubles. If anything it
| might be the reverse.
| skrbjc wrote:
| Makes you wonder where "sleep like a baby" comes from,
| because it definitely seems like only some babies are
| great sleepers.
| yayitswei wrote:
| Older babies do tend to sleep very soundly though!
| edmundsauto wrote:
| It could also mean that you wake up every 2 hours and
| crap your pants crying! That's why it's such a great term
| - it can mean almost anything.
| gambiting wrote:
| One thing I learnt a while ago is that every child is
| different and that everyone(me included!) love to
| extrapolate their own experiences on everyone else.
|
| But yes, in hindsight I would probably try some form of co-
| sleeping, even though everyone around us was advising
| against it(too much of a risk).
| Balgair wrote:
| I've dug into the studies on the co-sleeping risks.
|
| It turns out that co-sleeping is a risky thing _if you
| are on drugs or are drunk_.
|
| If you are 100% sober, then it's perfectly fine. If you
| are high, or have had a drink, or are on some sort of flu
| medication (NyQuil, _then_ the risks start ratcheting up.
|
| So, since we're most worried about the parents that do
| drugs and drink around their infants, the common advice
| is to no co-sleep. It makes sense, I totally agree with
| that tack, but if you are willing to be 100% sober of all
| drugs and alcohol, then try co-sleeping and see how it
| goes.
| nineplay wrote:
| I didn't co-sleep with my first because of the warnings
| about co-sleeping. Instead I'd fall asleep in my office
| chair with my feet propped up on the coffee table.
|
| Finally realized that I was going to fall asleep
| somewhere and did the same research. Co-sleeping sober (
| and with a healthy BMI ) is safe and often better than
| sleeping somewhere else. We don't all have the money and
| space for cutesy recliners.
| meindnoch wrote:
| I'm in the same shoes, and I often wonder why evution haven't
| solved this yet... Like, babies' chance of survival should drop
| if their parents are sleep deprived. There should be a
| selection pressure for well-sleeping babies.
|
| Or is it about ensuring that mom and dad don't make a sibling
| that takes away the baby's resources?
| dgfitz wrote:
| I think that is part of the "it takes a village" saying.
| Communities/grandparents (of the baby) were all either in the
| same abode or most likely very close.
|
| Having run the same gamut three times, the best advice I ever
| got was: chunk sleep. Let the wife sleep for 4 straight
| hours, and then tag out, where the awake person sleeps
| if/when they can. I know nursing can gum this up, but either
| pumping, or just doing the formula thing, it's worth it.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| The current situation of 2 parents alone in a box ("house")
| with baby is severely unnatural. I don't think there is an
| evolutionary explanation because in this regard we are out of
| spec.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > I'm in the same shoes, and I often wonder why evution
| haven't solved this yet
|
| It did! But we, in our infinite wisdom, got selfish and we
| now live alone. Fight nature and she fights back!
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It is our own damn fault. Back in the day people slept with
| their kids and being close to their parents meant they felt
| secure and would (1) sleep through the night, and (2) if they
| needed any attention it would be easy to give it to them.
|
| Somebody invented the crib, got rich at our expense, and now
| people can't imagine life any other way.
| alex_duf wrote:
| Isn't co-sleeping a significant cause of death though? So
| maybe our society traded sleep to get a higher survival
| rate
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There are two versions of this story.
|
| "It's very safe to sleep with your baby unless you sleep
| with your baby drunk or on a small couch", and
|
| "It's very dangerous to sleep with your baby especially
| if you sleep with your baby drunk or on a small couch"
|
| That last bit is right and a study found "The risk
| associated with being found in the parental bed was not
| significant for older infants (>14 weeks) or for infants
| of parents who did not smoke and became non-significant
| after adjustment for recent maternal alcohol
| consumption..."
|
| See
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC28288/
|
| Anyone who has shared a bed with a cat or small dog would
| note that you never roll over and crush it.
| arkey wrote:
| Thank you for this.
| lordswork wrote:
| It's more of the fact that we discovered the scientific
| method and measured that cosleeping is statistically more
| likely to kill your child. Even if that increase % is
| small, it's enough for most (western) parents to make the
| tradeoff and suffer through sleep deprivation.
|
| And the tradeoff makes sense -- as a parent, you are
| biologically programmed to go through great lengths to keep
| your children safe.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Some have made the case that "cry it out" is preparation
| for sitting there and suffering while you get bullied in
| school, while your group gets discriminated against, when
| employers treat you like a thing, or when politicians
| scapegoat and steal.
| robocat wrote:
| > biologically programmed
|
| You mean Socially programmed.
|
| Instincts are biological programming.
| lordswork wrote:
| I'd say you have instincts to protect your child.
| n4r9 wrote:
| All I can say is that doesn't jibe with our experience.
|
| We co-slept for the first 2-3 months, then had baby in a
| "next-to-me" for a few months, then moved baby to a crib in
| his own room at 6.5 months. Prior to being in their own
| room, the baby would usually wake up every 2-4 hours, with
| the very occasional 6-7 hour stretch. After going in his
| own room, his sleep began to consolidate and he would
| regularly last from 7-8pm to 4am without needing
| resettling.
|
| We have friends with a 4 year old daughter who co-slept
| until now and have just moved her to her own room. She
| wakes up screaming and needing attention most nights around
| midnight.
| xyzelement wrote:
| As others are saying, how tired you are as a parent is a
| direct inverse function of: how far away your parents/inlaws
| live, how much they prioritize their grandchildren over
| boomer pastimes, and your relationship with them.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| It did: live in extended family dwellings. The modern nuclear
| family (with 2 working spouses to boot) is the problem.
| caporaltito wrote:
| Keep in mind: this period does end at some point. All the best!
| chasd00 wrote:
| To you and the others, just hang in there it gets better.
| You'll get through and come out the other side better,
| stronger, and full of more love than you thought existed.
|
| /father of a 14 and 12 year old boys
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| ^ fully agree. I blinked an my youngest was suddenly 10yrs
| old. The kids all being in double digits is really awesome
| and far less labor intensive than the early months.
| ActionHank wrote:
| Ask your doctor about Modafinil, my GP prescribed it for me
| when my son was born and it was a life saver.
| chasebank wrote:
| For the love of god, sleep train your baby. There are coaches
| online if you need help.
| silveira wrote:
| 2 years and 5 months here. He never slept well, wakes up during
| the night, makes all sorts of sounds while sleeping, and wakes
| up early (5~6 am). Doctor said some kids are like this and it
| may get better over the years. The lack of sleep took a lot of
| my concentration, energy, and memory.
| pdxandi wrote:
| Same here. 3.5 year old and one year old twins. Poor sleep
| and just general fatigue most days. It's hard to convey to
| those who sleep well how challenging it is to be constantly
| sleep deprived.
| jmacd wrote:
| Posting this here, because it was advice given to me by one of
| the founders we all look up to on HN when I had my first child
| (on our 4th now).
|
| "If you are going to have kids and run a company, you all need
| to sleep." and then he introdued me to a sleep trainer/coach.
|
| "No way, we are not sleep training" was my thought, but I
| quickly realized that there is a difference between sleep
| normalization and what we know as sleep training.
|
| The sleep coach gave us a completely customized regime for 2
| weeks. Once the baby is 6 months or so, you can start. (up
| until 6 months, I just slept with the kids in my arms every
| night. Oh my god I miss those nights now. It makes me cry to
| think about how wonderful it felt.)
|
| We've done it 4 times now and all our children gladly sleep
| from 7pm to 6:30am every single night. (The older ones now go
| to sleep more like 9pm). Everyone in the house is rested every
| day and it makes a big difference. Those two weeks are a lot of
| work for one of the parents (it is specified that one person
| should be focused on it) but in our experience it works by the
| 3rd night or so.
|
| The main takeaway from the aproach is to disassociate eating
| and interaction from the act of sleeping. It created buffers
| between feeding times and play times and when you finally put
| them down in their crib to sleep. If they do wake up during the
| night they don't think "oh, if I cry I will get to eat right
| away." and they self-soothe and go back to sleep. If they do
| wake up hungry, it's a failure of the parent to have ensured
| they've eaten properly. You adjust as they grow. (A hungry cry
| is totally different from a discomfort or bored cry. You learn
| them pretty quickly.)
|
| When I put my 10 month old in his crib to sleep now he looks
| back at me briefly and then turns over and gets in his sleeping
| position and he's asleep before I leave the room. It's such a
| relief knowing that no matter how badly a day goes, you can
| sleep that night.
|
| I've had a lot of friends think this isn't for them, but 100%
| of the ones I have convinced to do it (and in some cases have
| just paid for) have been successful.
|
| I'll also add that 2 of our kids were "colicky" and were very
| unfcomfortable during the day for their first year. Even still
| we were able to have them sleeping the entire night most nights
| after 6 months.
|
| Again, there is no "cry it out". In fact, the baby almost never
| cries at all in this process in my experience.
| mreezie wrote:
| Can you point me in the direction of this trainer/method?
| thehappypm wrote:
| Taking Cara Babies, by Cara Dumaplin, is an excellent
| resource for sleep training that works super well.
| cblum wrote:
| > "oh, if I cry I will get to eat right away."
|
| This kinda matches what I've read recently in a parenting
| book.
|
| I'm currently reading Bringing Up Bebe, a book written by an
| American journalist who lived (maybe still lives?) in Paris
| and had her kids there. She wrote it after she started
| observing that French parents don't seem to have the myriad
| of exhausting issues American parents have, or at least not
| with the same intensity and for the same duration.
|
| When it comes to sleep, she writes that most French babies
| sleep through the night by the time they're 6 months old.
|
| According to her, what a lot of American parents (and from my
| experience as an expat, parents from several other countries
| too) do wrong is to immediately tend to the baby the moment
| they make any noise at night, in the first months few of
| their lives (this apparently doesn't apply to the very first
| month though). That trains the baby to do exactly what you
| wrote, to get what they want as soon as they wake up in the
| middle of the night.
|
| According to the author, French parents typically wait a few
| minutes whenever the baby wakes up at night. Most of the time
| the baby goes back to sleep.
|
| The explanation she offers is that babies' brains don't know
| how to link one sleep cycle to the next, so they wake up
| between cycles and typically cry or fuss for a bit. By
| leaving them alone for a few minutes instead of instantly
| reacting, parents can help their brains learn to connect
| sleep cycles more efficiently. If they're immediately picked
| up though, they're actually being trained to do the exact
| opposite and to stay awake instead.
|
| I really like your post btw, going to look up what you wrote
| about as it sounds invaluable in case the French method
| doesn't work :)
| misiti3780 wrote:
| who is this coach?
| bicepjai wrote:
| It felt good to read the stories that we can relate to, we have
| a a 2.5 year old; literally sleep deprived and these stories
| woke me up, thank you and good morning. I can see aging process
| is definitely faster with sleep deprivation. We can physically
| see it in our photos timeline and feel it in our workouts that
| we work so hard to keep up. Grey hair and baldness surged in
| this 2 years. We use to have so much energy in the evening for
| personal projects after work, not anymore. It's so hard to deal
| with this both mentally and physically. Sleep training
| definitely helped us, but again every experience is unique.
| Hold on and it will pass.
| jrussino wrote:
| A lot of people here will say "it gets better", and it does,
| but be sure to take your health seriously and not let yourself
| normalize that feeling for the long-term. Mine are 7 and 4 now
| and we're well past the sleep-deprived early years, but I
| realized recently that I had grown accustomed to that feeling
| and my new baseline is significantly worse, largely due to bad
| sleep habits. I'm a lot busier now, juggling the needs of 2
| kids and my other responsibilities, and for too long I've
| coasted on ~5-7 hours of sleep thinking it's OK to sacrifice
| 1-3 hours of sleep in favor of squeezing in extra work or some
| low-quality leisure time at the end of the day because, "hey,
| it's still better than it was when they were babies, and I made
| it through that".
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| People who haven't been through this often underestimate the
| severity of it... they often think that because they've pulled
| all-nighters for school or something that they understand but
| weeks or months of chronic sleep deprivation is a totally
| different thing.
|
| It was living hell for me- my son wouldn't sleep during the
| night for more than 10-20m at a time, and my partner was having
| severe postpartum mental health issues
| (psychosis/rage/depression) so I was parenting solo, and up all
| night every night by myself with a crying baby. I eventually
| started hallucinating, and had a short temper and made very
| poor decisions. I couldn't get advice, help, or sympathy from
| anyone- usually something along the lines of "parenting is so
| easy for dads, why are you complaining?" Visiting family would
| expect me to serve meals to them, and not help either.
|
| I almost lost my job also because I couldn't focus or code
| anymore. Once I started sleeping in a separate room from my
| son, I could finally think/code/work again. Understanding in
| the workplace for a struggling new dad was non-existant:
| everyone assumed the mother was doing all of the work, and I
| would perform like normal.
|
| If anyone is reading this and can relate, don't do what I did-
| pay for help. Pay for a nanny- take out a loan if you have to.
| If you or your partner is struggling, get them professional
| mental health support. Prioritize your sleep, bodily, and
| mental health needs: you need to "put the mask on yourself
| first" or you can't help anyone else. Don't be afraid to set a
| crying baby in a safe crib and go sleep for a while if you need
| it.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I'm hoping that someone will ""solve"" poor sleep, in the sense
| of working out how to determine what's actually causing it.
| What's the state of the art in affordable home sleep analysis?
| Smartwatches?
| diggan wrote:
| Anecdote, but I've found that the less I analyze and try to
| "mold" my sleeping, the better I sleep. The times I sleep worst
| is when I'm worried about sleeping too little, so whatever I
| can do to take my mind off how poor my sleep is, the better
| rested I feel when I wake up.
|
| Some nights are still horrible though, and it's a hard loop to
| exit when you lie there at 03:43 in the morning and panicking
| about getting too little hours this night...
| doubled112 wrote:
| I know that feeling. You're probably onto something. If you
| worry about something, I think you always make it worse.
|
| There was a point where even other people worried about me
| sleeping, and that made me worry about my sleep.
|
| Eventually I decided I would go to bed when I was tired and
| see how it went. Been doing that half my life now. I go to
| bed when I'm tired (about 12-1am) and I usually wake up at
| 7AM feeling fine.
|
| Forcing a whole 8 hours often makes me feel worse. YMMV
| ambicapter wrote:
| Yes, I've had terrible sleep most of my life, and a period of
| good sleep recently. Felt stupid, but I realized during that
| good period that I just needed to "chill" when going to bed.
| My brain has a tendency to WANT to focus, and actually
| slowing down is almost a foreign state at this point, and
| it's exactly the state you need to get in to naturally fall
| into sleep.
| eszed wrote:
| Listening to podcasts helps me. It gives my brain something
| else to focus on, and I drift off much more quickly.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I like listening to podcasts as well, but the ones I like
| when trying to fall asleep are different than those I
| listen to recreationally when doing chores. For falling
| asleep, I need to make sure whatever I listen to is
| something I'm OK with missing, so call-in shows often are a
| good fit, as there's infinite content in a call-in type
| show.
| schnuri wrote:
| For me it's the same. The moment I accept that I'll be super
| tired the next day is the moment I finally fall asleep.
| ramon156 wrote:
| I've seen DIY gadgets before that cost around the same, seems
| very interesting. I'm wondering if there is a gap in the market
| in sleep quality analysis
| forgotmyinfo wrote:
| Sleep studies exist, and they're fairly advanced, is my
| understanding. For most people, though, it'll be possibly
| difficult lifestyle changes, like reducing light in the room,
| better bedding, less noise, not sleeping with a partner,
| winding down before bed without screens (big one), better diet,
| etc. The solutions are there, they're just unpalatable, like
| everything else you should do that's good for you.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| Sleep studies collect a lot of data, but that may or may not
| translate into an actual intervention depending on the
| situation. As I understand it, they're mostly useful for
| detecting _when_ sleep is disrupted, which can then
| potentially fit a profile for e.g. sleep apnea or be
| correlated to some other physiological indicator.
|
| As for lifestyle changes, I'm not an expert in sleep science,
| but I've tried to read some of the literature to understand
| what works, since I struggle with sleep quality. As far as I
| can tell, a lot of the specific suggestions that often get
| thrown around (even by otherwise reputable sources, sadly)
| are somewhere between speculative and pseudoscience. There is
| some evidence that "sleep hygiene" interventions as a whole
| might have some kind of effect, but the individual components
| aren't typically tested, the studies usually aren't
| adequately controlled, and the effect is often exaggerated
| (e.g. by highlighting questionable measures like "sleep
| efficiency").
|
| CBT-I has better evidence, although it's also not entirely
| clear which components are really worth the trouble (the
| evidence for sleep restriction seems pretty strong; the "CBT"
| elements less so, but it may be that they help different
| subpopulations), and clinicians who actually have experience
| delivering CBT-I are not readily available in many places.
| thibaut_barrere wrote:
| I have followed a distilled version of CBT-i remotely via
| SleepReset (a HN company), because I discovered CBT-i but
| it wasn't indeed readily available in my country and
| region.
|
| It has helped me tremendously (together with other tooling
| like sport and meditation).
| RattlesnakeJake wrote:
| > ...what's actually causing it.
|
| I'm not sure a smartwatch could do anything with my chronic
| diagnosis of "Having a toddler kicking my ribs at night."
| yosito wrote:
| The good news is that condition usually resolves on its own
| with time!
| monktastic1 wrote:
| I suspect it will only be "solved" once the problems of
| existential angst and ennui are. It's remarkable how powerful
| our primal emotions can be at overriding even the strongest of
| drugs.
| vundercind wrote:
| Electronics and very bright nighttime lighting are a ton of it.
|
| Cutting those out would turn a hell of a lot of "night owls" or
| people who "can't sleep" into people who sleep on a normal
| schedule just fine.
|
| It's obvious when you consider what all that stuff really
| means. Obviously it's hard to sleep when you spend your hours
| after sunset in hundreds-of-candle-power lighting and have
| hyper-stimulation of a hundred kinds available at the press of
| a button.
|
| Of course there's also apnea and kids and such, but that's a
| _large_ proportion of the problem, overall.
| randerson wrote:
| Color temperature is more of a factor than brightness.
| Blue/white light disrupts Melatonin production. Changing your
| lightbulbs to be below 2700K (more of a yellow light or even
| red light) won't disrupt Melatonin.
| david-gpu wrote:
| Sleep apnea degrades your quality of life tremendously. Even when
| treated with CPAP you can still have pretty poor sleep due to the
| mask shifting around while you sleep and other side effects of
| the treatment, but it's generally much better than the torture of
| untreated apnea. It's so bad that even with moderate apnea you
| wake up more tired than when you went to bed.
|
| Now allow me a preemptive reply: I suffered apnea with a BMI
| below 20. Plenty of people don't have apnea because they are
| overweight; instead, they are overweight because they suffer
| apnea.
| dbspin wrote:
| Thank you for this comment which mirrors my experience.
| Unfortunately CPAP seems to be considered the be all and end
| all of treatment, although the mask, tubes and reliance on such
| a bedtime setup can be enormously disruptive of sleep on its
| own.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think CPAP is just convenient and inexpensive compared to
| surgery. If I ever have sleep apnea, I'd want the surgery.
| alwaysrunning wrote:
| There is also the mouth guard for apena.
|
| https://www.sleepapnea.org/treatment/sleep-apnea-mouth-
| guard...
| e40 wrote:
| I have heard horror stories about the surgery. Who knows,
| but I'm skeptical because surgery presumes the precise
| cause is known. The number of variables for sleep apnea is
| large to have certainty.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "The number of variables for sleep apnea is large to have
| certainty."
|
| Clearly they have to know which part of your airway is
| restricted. Most of the variables for sleep apnea are not
| related to the surgey, just factors that make it more
| likely to experience that restricted airway (drinking,
| weight, etc).
| e40 wrote:
| I have sleep apnea and I use a CPAP. During the
| diagnosis, there were tests but nothing that would/could
| finger a physical culprit that could be fixed via
| surgery.
|
| My question is, what tools are there to narrow, to a
| certainty, what would need to be done via surgery? In all
| my research I have found none. Maybe I missed them. If I
| did not, then it amounts to a guess by a surgeon. And
| that's what worries me and has fed a lot of the horror
| stories I've read about.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| I talked to a bunch of dudes who had various surgeries to
| open up their airways. It seems the outcome of the
| surgeries is kind of hit and miss. Some people had multiple
| surgeries and still no success.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| This is a really important comment. Whether for apnea or
| other sinus related issues, I've met far more people for
| whom the surgery did nothing than people I've talked to
| who had good outcomes.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I adapted to it really well but I am used to adapting to the
| needs of machines. My wife doesn't like it when it blows air
| on her but my cat is very curious about the mask. My doc told
| me that most people have a lot more trouble.
| elric wrote:
| CPAP is by far the best option for very nearly everyone with
| obstructive sleep apnea (for now).
|
| Unless you have a very specific, isolated problem (such as
| huge tonsils or a fucked up jaw), surgery is rarely a good
| option. Results are hit or miss, recovery is unpleasant, and
| the scar tissue created can result in more obstructions years
| down the line.
|
| None of the current implants are as good as cpap and few
| peole qualify for them.
|
| Mouth guards can work, but many don't tolerate them well and
| they can lead to TMJ issues.
|
| Etc.
| on_the_train wrote:
| If it's not weight, what's the common cause? Such a bad
| impediment on so many people should have a very clear signal.
| And apparently it's not weight? O never really looked into it
| wredue wrote:
| The most common cause of sleep apnea is anything that
| obstructs your airways. Being overweight does that and is far
| and away the most common cause of sleep apnea.
| elric wrote:
| This is such an often repeated trope, but it's not at all
| as clear cut as that. Sleep apnea *causes* weight gain, the
| arrow of causality can go both ways.
| kkwteh wrote:
| One theory is poor facial structure that develops due to
| faulty breathing technique.
|
| Reference
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4686746/
| schwartzworld wrote:
| With obstructive apnea, it's mostly hereditary. You inherit
| the shape of nose from your parents, why not the structures
| in your airway? Weight gain can make it worse as those
| tissues also can expand, and any weight on your breathing can
| help turn a partial blockage into a full one. That weight can
| include muscle weight, and body builders often suffer from
| apnea.
|
| But the thing to keep in mind is that obstructive sleep apnea
| isn't so much a condition as a description of what's
| happening. Apnea means you stop breathing, obstructive means
| something is blocking it. Maybe it's because your fat belly
| is weighing you down, maybe it's your tiny nostrils and
| deviated septum, or maybe the back of your tongue is thick
| because your dad also had a thick tongue.
|
| That's not even including self-imposed factors like central
| nervous system depressants (alcohol) and smoking, both of
| which can make apnea worse. Ever notice how drunk people
| snore?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Beyond physical obstruction, sleep apnea can also be
| neurological which is the more annoying one since only air
| pressure seems to fix it. You simply stop breathing.
|
| Obstructive apnea doesn't need to be caused by fat either. I
| always thought sleep apnea was a fat person's problem until I
| realized at age 30 that when I slept on my back, the tissue
| mass at the base of my tongue was dropping into my airway.
| And I'm fit/slim and also a nasal breather.
|
| (I used to think I always woke up gasping for breath in my
| 20s because I had frequent nightmares. Ugh, wish I could go
| back and fix it sooner.)
| stordoff wrote:
| It's not exactly common, but you can have central sleep
| apnoea instead of obstructive sleep apnoea. Essentially,
| rather than your airway being blocked, you just stop
| attempting to breath for a period of time. I was diagnosed
| with this a few years ago, and IIRC there are multiple
| possible causes of it.
| jerlam wrote:
| One theory blames "modern life" as a supporting factor, that
| since modern people eat more processed and softer food, that
| jaw muscles are out of proportion to the bone structure and
| this contributes to apnea, as well as tooth problems like
| impacted wisdom teeth.
|
| https://news.stanford.edu/2020/07/21/toll-shrinking-jaws-
| hum...
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > Plenty of people don't have apnea because they are
| overweight; instead, they are overweight because they suffer
| apnea.
|
| A lack of sleep means a lack of energy. You're body compensates
| by getting food energy.
|
| Too much stigma around what should just be understood as a
| biological mechanism.
| pc86 wrote:
| This is stated as biological fact when it's simply not. Sleep
| apnea doesn't change the laws of thermodynamics - if you are
| gaining weight you need to eat less or move more. It's not
| stigma, it's simply the way it is for the vast majority of
| people (the rest being covered by rare hormonal conditions
| that require a doctor to treat).
|
| Being tired may cause you to eat more but being tired isn't
| making you gain weight, it's the overeating that is.
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| Being tired changes how your body uses and stores energy.
| Your body might be permanently trying to save up for bad
| times (because the times are always bad) and so you're
| getting fat even if you eat very little.
| serf wrote:
| can you point to examples of otherwise healthy
| individuals under moderate to high calorie restriction
| that gain weight due to chronic poor quality sleep?
|
| it's not something I have ever been made aware of, and I
| don't understand how it could be the case.
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| A lot of things about your body changes when you're
| extremely tired.
|
| I don't have anything specific to link - it's just my own
| personal experience and what the doctor said.
|
| In my own case, I had to eat much more than I
| theoretically should because my body wasn't able to
| process the food as well as it should (less than 50% of
| usual efficiency). And yet I was fat - not obese, but
| definitely not thin. The body redirected some of my food
| to storage even though I didn't have enough energy
| (glucose etc) as measured by blood screening. And it
| didn't use the reserves properly when I stopped eating.
| pc86 wrote:
| What is mentioned in a couple of these comments about
| your body's response to external stressors changing how
| it allocates calories is absolutely true, but it's at the
| margins. If you're at maintenance caloric intake and +- a
| couple hundred calories a day, over years this can have
| an effect. But it's not going to meaningfully impact a
| 500-1000 calorie/day deficit to the point where you're
| still gaining weight.
| jf22 wrote:
| I believe there is a study where people ate at a 25%
| deficit but had high glucose and still gained weight.
| riversflow wrote:
| Is this the study you were referring to?
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7898726/
|
| > Effects of moderate sleep restriction during 8-week
| calorie restriction on lipoprotein particles and glucose
| metabolism
|
| Because the conclusion starts with,
|
| > In this study, 8 weeks of calorie restriction with and
| without sleep restriction of less than 90 minutes per day
| on 5 days with 2 days of ad libitum sleep per week,
| resulted in similar degrees of weight loss
|
| Let me be clear that sleep deprivation doesn't seem to be
| good for your circulating lipoprotien levels or insulin
| sensitivity based on that study, but they didn't gain
| weight.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Not gonna try to find a specific example, but just from
| having listened so much to the Stronger by Science and
| Iron Culture podcasts for the past few years, there have
| at least been numerous studies and metas over the last
| decade examining the effects of sleep on weight loss and
| weight gain as it pertains to bodybuilding goals. I don't
| recall any having showed an impact on the rate of gain or
| loss but duration of sleep opportunity definitely has an
| impact on the quality of gain or loss. That is, you lose
| more muscle and less fat losing weight while sleeping
| poorly, and gain more fat and less muscle when gaining
| weight while sleeping poorly.
| vmladenov wrote:
| By this logic, one could run an army legion without food
| supplies simply by keeping them sleep deprived.
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| Uh, no? The whole point is that the entire system breaks
| down. So you get sleep deprived humans who can't process
| food properly and have no energy as a result. Sounds like
| a big failure.
| brnt wrote:
| The body is far more complex than simple thermodynamics
| however, and to pretend the dozens of biological feedback
| loops are fully under ones control betrays a lack of
| understanding.
|
| Reducing getting fat to thermodynamics is like reducing
| computing to adding numbers. While that may be the basic
| building block, only a fool thinks that merely by
| comprehension of the add operator, one is also able to
| debug hugely complicated soft- and hardware stacks.
| pc86 wrote:
| I actually like the computing and adding numbers analogy
| because "Sleep apnea makes people overweight" is the
| nutritional equivalent of saying "1 + 1 = hammer."
|
| The root cause of weight gain is either overeating or
| lack of sufficient exertion in almost every case. Sleep
| apnea may absolutely cause someone to overeat in part
| because of those dozens of biological feedback loops you
| mention. But that doesn't mean that sleep apnea makes
| people gain weight. It's still too much food at the end
| of the day.
| pkoird wrote:
| I'd like to contribute by saying that even when you are
| sleeping, body burns calories for various neurobiological
| processes. That automatically translates to bad sleep
| equals decreased calorie utilization (than a healthy
| baseline)
| balfirevic wrote:
| > It's still too much food at the end of the day.
|
| It's all four fundamental physical forces actually, if
| you want to go that route. Which isn't helpful.
| criddell wrote:
| If overeating has causes, then it's not really a root
| cause.
| dgfitz wrote:
| By this logic, sleep apena doesn't make people gain
| weight either.
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> But that doesn 't mean that sleep apnea makes people
| gain weight_
|
| I gather that you are unaware of how sleep apnea causes
| poor sleep, which in turn causes insulin resistance,
| which in turn causes an elevated production of insulin,
| which in turn forces glucose into your adipose tissue,
| which in turn makes the rest of your tissues starved for
| energy, which in turn causes you to be hungrier, overeat
| and gain weight.
|
| This is an oversimplification, of course, as there are
| hormones other than insulin and cortisol involved in the
| complex process of insulin resistance, but it is at least
| a starting point that goes beyond the _useless truism_
| that "people gain weight because they overeat". Of
| course they do, but the mechanisms why they are hungrier
| than they need to be are crucial if you want to address
| the problem, because in the long run every human being
| with free access to food will eat precisely until they
| are no longer hungry, whether or not they are
| metabolically healthy or not.
| jonhohle wrote:
| But that's not what he's saying. Being hungry does not
| cause you to eat. Regardless of hunger, a caloric deficit
| will result in weight loss.
|
| There definitely is the issue of how to reliably maintain
| a caloric deficit when your body is screaming at you to
| eat more, but the underlying mechanism is much simpler.
|
| At the most basic levels, food choice doesn't even really
| matter (specifically for weight loss, not general
| health), but choosing satiating foods with low calories
| is going to help with implementation. Eating 2,000
| calories of oranges (45) is going to be a lot harder than
| 2,000 calories of fast food hamburgers (2).
| david-gpu wrote:
| The problem isn't that CICO isn't true, it's that it's
| not useful. It can't even explain why fat people are
| still hungry when they have enough calories stored in
| their bodies to last them for months.
|
| _> Being hungry does not cause you to eat_
|
| Yes, it does. That's why people eat: to alleviate hunger.
| You may will power your way to a caloric deficit for some
| months, maybe a couple of years, but eventually hunger
| will win and you will eat until satiety.
|
| Metabolically healthy people aren't slim by being hungry
| all the time. They eat to satiety, and they are lucky
| enough that their satiety signalling is still working
| well enough. If you make them chronically
| hyperinsulinemic, they will be hungrier and they will
| gain weight -- it happens in humans and in animal models
| when allowed to eat ad libitum.
|
| _> At the most basic levels, food choice doesn't even
| really matter (specifically for weight loss, not general
| health), but choosing satiating foods with low calories
| is going to help with implementation_
|
| As long as you are hyperinsulinemic, you will store a
| portion of the energy you consume in your adipose tissue,
| because that is one of the major effects of insulin in
| the body. The remaining energy left in you will not be
| sufficient to supply the energy needs of your body, and
| as a result you will be cold, tired and hungry.*
| dgfitz wrote:
| > Yes, it does. That's why people eat: to alleviate
| hunger. You may will power your way to a caloric deficit
| for some months, maybe a couple of years, but eventually
| hunger will win and you will eat until satiety.
|
| If this is the premise of your argument, it is flawed.
|
| You have no idea if "eventually" happens to everyone.
| You're making a wildly strange assumption.
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> > You may will power your way to a caloric deficit for
| some months, maybe a couple of years, but eventually
| hunger will win and you will eat until satiety._ _> You
| have no idea if "eventually" happens to everyone_
|
| Have you tried? Are you willing to try? How many people
| do you know that intentionally remain hungry every day
| for more than a couple of years, while otherwise having
| free access to food?
|
| Any weight loss advice that does not adequately address
| hunger and satiety is naive to the point of ridicule. And
| any person who advises others to address their weight by
| telling them to be hungry in perpetuity hasn't given much
| thought to what they are asking for.
| jonhohle wrote:
| >> Being hungry does not cause you to eat
|
| > Yes, it does.
|
| Nearly 1:10 people in the world are chronically hungry.
| Being hungry has no impact on their ability to eat.
| Likewise, those with access to food eat when not hungry
| and (believe it or not) may not eat when hungry.
|
| I really think you're missing the point, though. We have
| a host of signals in our body that can misfire due to
| various conditions and people cope with them. Hunger is
| no different and many of us have spent months ignoring it
| to our own benefit (and some to their own peril).
|
| Caloric intake in excess of expense causes weight gain.
| What factors lead to that excess do not.
|
| There are certainly those with a variety of issues that
| make caloric deficit difficult. Fortunately, that's not
| most people.
| jonhohle wrote:
| I know you're being downvoted into oblivion, but I agree.
| I'm not overweight, but had put on nearly 40lbs more than
| my historic average. There's all kinds of advice, but the
| best I found was: the only way to lose weight is to have
| a caloric deficit.
|
| That meant measuring calories until I could generally
| estimate what I was taking in each day. 1000-1500
| calories a day sucks at first, but seeing the scale drop
| is motivating. I dropped 30lbs in about 6 months.
|
| You can't gain weight if you are taking in less calories
| than you expend. That's pretty simple. Not eating that
| cheesecake, on the other hand, not so easy.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| >It's still too much food at the end of the day.
|
| The problem with that is you can reach a point were
| trying to reduce calories further will only further
| sabotage your metabolism and makes you feel like shit.
| Which is why treating the symptom repeatedly fails to
| work long term.
|
| I'm a 5'11" male who gained weight up to ~220 pounds on
| ~1800 calories eating a very consistent meal rotation. I
| now maintain ~190 pounds at ~2100 calories. My problem
| was likely a combination of my food acting as a chemical
| signal to gain weight (high in branch chain amino acids,
| polyunsaturated fats from fatty pork and chicken), work
| stress, bad sleep, and possibly even chronically elevated
| blood sugar or thyroid effects from essentially what was
| an almost carnivore one meal a day sort of diet. My body
| temperature was hitting lows of 96.3 degrees F. It's now
| roughly two degrees higher, which seems small, but feels
| so much better.
| bnralt wrote:
| I think one of the issues with this is that most people
| have pretty terrible diets, most people have pretty
| terrible diets that can be improved pretty easily, and
| when dietary improvements are suggested a lot of time the
| response is "this is just really complicated, it's not
| that simple." Not everything is simple, but, say, giving
| up soda is something that's healthy and going to have a
| positive impact on people's lives. People who are saying
| "don't tell me to give up soda because I have sleep
| apnea" are looking for excuses for their bad habits.
|
| If someone is eating healthy foods and making a genuine
| effort to get good exercise, then we can talk about other
| factors. But too many people use "this is so complex" to
| avoid the very basics of healthy living.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| Lack of sleep and stress are associated with overeating,
| and not only that, they also trigger hormons that promote
| the body to prioritize building up fat reserves.
|
| I'm on mobile and don't have time to link, but a quick
| google search should give medical studies on this.
|
| The "energy" thing is a simplification, but as a
| description of how this feels, it is apt in my view.
|
| This is not about thermodynamics.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| > Being tired may cause you to eat more but being tired
| isn't making you gain weight, it's the overeating that is.
|
| Potato pot-ah-to.
| pc86 wrote:
| Maybe the end result is the same but it's an important
| distinction. It's too easy to say "oh yeah I'm gaining
| weight because I have sleep apnea" while you're snacking
| on donuts at your desk at all. The people who are tricked
| into believing it think that if they "cure" their apnea
| they'll be back to a healthy weight when a) they could be
| at a healthy weight despite their apnea with some effort,
| and b) they're building habits that even if their apnea
| disappears a year from now they will stay at the same
| weight.
| nerb wrote:
| You reference the laws of thermodynamics, but I'm not sure
| which laws you're applying to the human body? Is it the
| first which requires the measured system to be closed which
| a human body is not? Is it the second about entropy always
| increasing? Or is it the third defining perfect entropy at
| 0 Kelvin?
|
| Bringing up thermodynamics as a generalization for
| biological systems is pseudo-intellectual. We aren't all
| equal machines that take in a fuel stock and output work.
| How do you account for differences in peoples' resting
| metabolic rates? How do you account for the difference in
| available energy in the foods you chose to eat, and in the
| differences in peoples' biological processes that extract
| that energy? Stress is a common hormonal modifier that
| impacts how the body stores fat; no where near a "rare"
| condition that many people experience nowadays, and yeah
| caused by things like sleep apnea. You betray your own
| argument anyway by adding an the "hormonal condition"
| exception (I don't see any exceptions referenced in the
| laws of thermodynamics, lol).
|
| Biology has more dimensions than you are choosing to look
| at, and using thermodynamics as a "gotcha" when it comes to
| others' bodies reveals your lack of understanding and
| intuition.
| foobarian wrote:
| Yes the first one. The energy contained in ingested food
| is far and away the dominant metabolic input.
|
| There is no need to get into the weeds of various details
| of how that breaks down; the main problem is that
| calories are way too cheap in the modern day and age, and
| people's habits and instincts developed in far different
| eras lead to easily ingesting more than is expended. Yes
| the OP is not wrong, but it's not a very useful argument
| unless we're going to roll back the modern civilization.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| He's not entirely wrong, but perhaps not for the stated
| reason. Sleep deprivation can skew the ghrelin/leptin
| hormonal balance, which can make appetite control
| difficult.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| The body never processes 100% of calories from food the way
| a bomb calorimeter does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calor
| imeter#Bomb_calorimeters, but depending on how much energy
| it needs it processes more or less.
|
| It's entirely possible to eat less food and have your body
| decide that food is more scarce and choose to strip more
| calories from your food than it was when you were eating
| more.
|
| Thermodynamics is an asinine thing to bring up in a system
| that can reconfigure its efficiency on the fly to optimize
| for different environments.
| tehjoker wrote:
| All that does is change the lower limit. The system has a
| compensation limit, below that you lose weight.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Sure, but it's still unhelpful to say that overeating is
| what makes you gain weight when other people eating the
| same amount and with the same amount of activity are not
| gaining weight, especially when eating less could cause
| you to gain more weight until you hit a threshold.
|
| I don't think many people disagree with "If you starve
| yourself enough your body will eventually start burning
| fat", they disagree that it's as simple as "anyone
| gaining weight is necessarily doing it to themselves by
| eating more than other people".
|
| And starving yourself isn't easy. It's one of the top
| like five things your body is designed not to let you do.
| So how on earth is it helpful when people are talking
| about factors that can influence your appetite and can
| literally influence the number of calories your body
| chooses to extract from the exact same food to say "just
| eat less lol"?
|
| I might add that overwhelming research suggests that
| social pressure on people's weight _causes people to gain
| weight_. So even if you were right, bringing it up would
| be counterproductive.
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> if you are gaining weight you need to eat less or move
| more_
|
| You could do a little experiment: set up an alarm to wake
| you up 15-30 times every _hour_ while you try to sleep.
| That is what _moderate_ sleep apnea does to you. Try this
| for, say, a year. See what happens to your overall health
| and your weight in particular. Don 't forget to "eat less
| or move more".
| SamBam wrote:
| People love to think of the body as a simple energy-
| in->energy-out equation, but it's definitely more complex
| than that, as the body can change what it's deciding to
| hold on to and what it's deciding to burn or expel.
|
| I am one of those that stayed skinny as a rake throughout
| my childhood and mid-adulthood (in my mid-40s I'm starting
| to become more normal sized). I wasn't particularly active,
| and I ate voraciously -- third or fourth helpings of pasta
| bowls. But the food never stuck to my ribs. (And it wasn't
| a worm or anything -- the whole side of my mother's family
| is the same, while my dad's side is the opposite.)
|
| No one should look at my body and say "clearly he is
| exercising more than he is eating" because it wouldn't have
| been true at all, and yet that's what the simplistic
| energy-in and energy-out conclusion would say.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I can second this. I get routinely mistaken for a runner
| because of my size. I do strive for 10k steps a day, but
| generally, my activity levels would not easily reflect my
| BMI.
| nvy wrote:
| >People love to think of the body as a simple energy-
| in->energy-out equation, but it's definitely more complex
| than that, as the body can change what it's deciding to
| hold on to and what it's deciding to burn or expel.
|
| If calories-in/calories-out didn't work, then it would be
| impossible to starve to death.
|
| Where people get confused is that the number of calories
| changes as your metabolism speeds up or slows down.
|
| If you are ingesting fewer calories than your body
| requires, you _will_ lose some combination of fat and
| muscle. There is no possible way for this to be false.
| SamBam wrote:
| It's the flip side that _is_ quite possible to be false.
| You can certainly eat more calories than your body
| requires and yet not gain weight. Your gut could absorb
| less, so you excrete otherwise-digestible carbs. You
| could have a parasite.
|
| Further, you could be burning more calories without doing
| more exercise or otherwise doing anything "useful" with
| the energy -- i.e. having a higher basal metabolic rate.
| These calories can be burned doing all sorts of things
| that the person has no control over: you could have a
| higher core body temperature, you could be spending more
| energy on cellular repair and other cellular processes,
| you could be synthesizing more hormones, you could be
| spending more energy metabolizing foods, etc etc.
|
| These latter causes are obviously on the "energy out"
| side of the equation, but they do not relate to things
| under our control. Further, they can change with age,
| stress, and (relevant to TFA) sleep.
|
| So a body that has been coasting by eating 2200 calories
| per day and never gaining a pound could suddenly change
| and start putting on weight, even though the person's
| diet and activities haven't changed.
|
| The point is that two people could eat the exact same
| calories, and do the exact same exercise, and one of them
| go up in weight and the other go down. The "calories in
| vs calories out" idea usually simplistically makes people
| think this couldn't be true, because "calories out" is
| simplistically taken as "exercise."
|
| The reason I shared my story is that so many people just
| quote "calories in vs calories out" as if both sides of
| the equation were perfectly under control, and those
| people are also often like me: they find it easy to keep
| the pounds off (because of a high metabolic rate) and so
| they look down on people who have trouble shedding weight
| and figure that those people could live just like them.
| But those heavier people could well be eating _less_ and
| doing _more_ exercise than them.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| > It's the flip side that is quite possible to be false.
| You can certainly eat more calories than your body
| requires and yet not gain weight. Your gut could absorb
| less, so you excrete otherwise-digestible carbs. You
| could have a parasite.
|
| Is the flip-side really debated that much tho? I feel
| like when people talk about CICO they're primarily
| talking about reducing CI to lower than your CO. No?
|
| The complexity in CICO of course is measuring your CO. Ie
| you could estimate your CO, reduce your CI to what you
| believe your CO is - and still not lose weight. But does
| that undermine CICO? Because as the other commenters
| mentioned, it's "impossible" for you to burn more than
| you take in without losing mass, so our issue in this
| example is incorrectly asserting the output (assuming of
| course we're not also underestimating the input).
|
| Note my questions here are generally questions. I am not
| an expert here, so please correct me if i'm wrong.
|
| > The reason I shared my story is that so many people
| just quote "calories in vs calories out" as if both sides
| of the equation were perfectly under control, and those
| people are also often like me: they find it easy to keep
| the pounds off (because of a high metabolic rate) and so
| they look down on people who have trouble shedding weight
| and figure that those people could live just like them.
| But those heavier people could well be eating less and
| doing more exercise than them.
|
| Fwiw, i don't dispute that some people have the wrong
| ideas with CICO. Perhaps frequently even. But i thought
| it still stood as a foundational truth nonetheless; that
| you have to "simply" burn more than you take in. If you
| gain weight (ignoring water weight for simplicity), then
| you have ate more then you burned, always.
|
| My takeaway with CICO is that the hardest question seems
| to be correctly figuring out how much you're burning.
| Which i feel like usually, especially for overweight
| people, it's much less than they think. You can't outrun
| a bad diet, as they say. Rarely do people actually want
| to exercise enough to truly compensate for the thing they
| want to eat. Hence why i like CICO, as to me it signals
| the only effective action is in restricting your CI,
| since increasing CO is so difficult.
| valarauko wrote:
| In my Indian family, this sort of skinny phenotype with a
| voracious appetite had a simple folk explanation - you
| eat so much that the food doesn't have time to be
| absorbed.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| And yet, if you want to lose weight, it's almost always
| (outside of medical conditions) as simple as getting into
| a caloric deficit that matches the deficit necessary to
| induce weight loss.
|
| If you have a 500cal deficit per day, you lose a pound of
| weight (fat) per week. It's literally that simple.
|
| There's some auto regulation of caloric burn rate, but
| it's not some impossible problem to solve.
| silverquiet wrote:
| If you knew your exact metabolic requirements as well as
| the exact calorie count of every food you ingested, then
| it would be that simple. But what if you take the
| elevator one day instead of the stairs and don't burn off
| the 30 or so calories it might take to go up them? What
| if someone went a little heavy on the dressing on a salad
| you ordered and added 100 calories or so?
|
| I've manipulated my body weight a few times and the real
| world is vastly different from a simple model of CI/CO.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| On average this doesn't matter. Humans are a whole lot
| more predictable and pattern based than you seem to be
| implying.
|
| Also, if you're trying to aim to a specific deficit, you
| should be calorie counting your food. If you got fatty
| dressing, you should be counting that. Even estimating is
| relatively easy once you do it for awhile. And if you
| don't get it quite right, being a little off shouldn't
| impact your overall average too much. It keeps you
| honest, which I think is by and large the main reason
| people don't think they can lose weight: dishonest
| assessments of food consumption.
| silverquiet wrote:
| As I've said, I can absolutley lose weight, but I cannot
| reliably lose one pound per week; I do not seem to have
| that resolution in the numbers.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Reliably losing one pound a week (beyond the initial 1-2
| week period where your weight is going to go all over the
| place due to water weight fluctuations) is as simple as
| cutting calories until you see the weight (on average,
| ignore fluctuations) drop by 1 lb a week. You have to
| average extensively. Bodies are very temperamental at
| this, unfortunately. My scale weight swings 0.5-1 lb
| quite frequently mainly due to sodium changes in my diet.
| It's all about trend weight, though.
| Izkata wrote:
| I've been tracking my weight weekly and all calories
| (even with crude estimates in some cases) for a year and
| a half, and have been experimenting with exactly this: I
| made a scatter plot and linear regression of average
| calories per day on the X axis, and weight change for
| that week on the Y axis.
|
| Week to week weight has extra fluctuations that make it
| difficult to tell what's going on, but after around 6
| months of data it stabilizes, and has been consistent for
| any 6-month period over the last year and a half: I burn
| around 2200 - 2300 calories per day on average (way
| higher than the online estimator tools think I burn, 1600
| - 1700).
|
| Knowing this I've also been reliably able to control my
| weight up or down at the rate I want as long as I'm
| looking at it for over a month span - because as above,
| week to week there's too much fluctuation (fullness of
| stomach and bowels mostly).
| Modified3019 wrote:
| People do not live on a thermodynamic knife edge. There is
| a very wide leeway of excess intake that allows our body to
| burn energy "wastefully" or store it based on a hideously
| complex set of factors.
|
| The idea that everyone is fat because we're somehow more
| sinful (gluttonous, slothful) than in the past has
| repeatedly failed to resolve any problem except for the
| need for smug people to pat themselves on the back for
| using thermodynamics in a sentence.
| vikingerik wrote:
| This is the truth, even if people don't like it so you're
| receiving downvotes for it. Weight gain or loss is calories
| in vs calories out. Nobody's body is so special that you're
| defying thermodynamics and creating mass that you didn't
| intake as food. And that's definitely not changed by sleep
| apnea.
|
| That said, there is the point that calories ingested
| doesn't necessarily equal calories absorbed, and sleep
| apnea could indeed affect that. But if you're relying on
| that thin margin for the difference between staying at a
| healthy weight or not, that's a fragile state of affairs,
| and you could fix your diet more to be more comfortably on
| the right side of it.
|
| (My own, unscientific, hypothesis: far too many people are
| indeed unknowingly relying on that. I think a ton of people
| cram in 3k calories a day while absorbing 2k because
| there's just too much mass for the body to process, and
| then when they do cut ingestion to 2k, that doesn't change
| absorption and that's why they don't lose weight. (Numbers
| here are approximate.) It's actually pretty amazing how
| little food the human body actually needs and how little
| mass 1500 calories is.)
| vmladenov wrote:
| > and how little mass 1500 calories is
|
| Or how much, depending on what you're eating. It would be
| physically impossible for me to eat 1500 calories of
| lettuce in a day (10kg worth) but it definitely aids in
| "feeling full" when added to a meal.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Sidenote, i'm in your camp and agree with you - BUT,
| hypothetically there's a side to this i've not seen
| discussed here. That you can lose sleep and it causes a
| weight gain, with no other change to your CI or CO.
| Notably, you were previously not processing a portion of
| your potential CI and it was just passing through you.
|
| In that case you didn't change how much you ate or how many
| calories passed your lips, but you did change your CI by
| way of changing your sleep.
|
| Is this a real example or a contrived edge case from a
| software dev? No clue. I'll let better minds decide that
| hah.
| lordswork wrote:
| I thought it was more complex than this, something like lack
| of sleep disrupting hormones that regulate feelings of hunger
| and fullness.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| I'm sure it is. But the point should still stand.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> A lack of sleep means a lack of energy. You're body
| compensates by getting food energy.
|
| I saw this ironically during military basic training. Lots of
| exercise, but very little sleep. The body compensates by
| keeping blood sugar levels high. I was one of the many that
| actually gained weight during basic training. The eating
| routine of three solid meals eaten very quickly also was not
| healthy.
| jerlam wrote:
| My doctor wore one of those continuous glucose monitors for
| a while and reports something similar. He considers himself
| an endurance athlete and his blood sugar levels were always
| a bit high when he was regularly exercising, but once he
| took some time off, his blood sugar levels dropped to
| "normal" levels once his body realized it wasn't under so
| much stress.
| alwiejrlai wrote:
| Absolutely. When I was in the Navy, working 80-100hrs/wk, we
| were served four meals a day, every six hours, like
| clockwork. You can substitute sleep with calories for days or
| weeks at a time. It's terrible for you, I do not recommend
| it, but it can keep you going.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Sleep apnea is not the reason people are overweight.
| mort96 wrote:
| Nobody is overweight from one reason alone. But do you
| dispute the idea that it contributes?
| david-gpu wrote:
| If you are so confident, try setting up an alarm to wake yo
| up 15-30 times every _hour_ of every night, for a year. See
| what happens to your overall health and to your weight in
| particular.
|
| And that is moderate sleep apnea. Actually, apnea is worse
| because you wouldn't even be breathing normally while you are
| "asleep".
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Sleep deficit drives metabolic changes that may result in
| obesity (e.g over feeding behavior).
| hackernoteng wrote:
| I fixed apnea using MAD night guard (pulls jaw forward using a
| mouth guard device). Made by dentist. Cost about $2000. But it
| works.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| You can also try "snore prevention" night guards like ZQuiet
| and SnoreRX - they're less than $100 and you can buy them
| online. I find they work just as well as the custom night
| guard I got from my dentist.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| When you say fixed, do you mean you no longer need the
| device?
| monktastic1 wrote:
| In case this helps anybody: I've been using those BreatheRight
| strips (extra strength) and they've been incredibly helpful.
| Not nearly as effective as CPAP, I'm sure, but a milder version
| of the same effect.
| euroderf wrote:
| I could not handle the CPAP mask but instead I got a dental
| appliance (custom) that juts out my lower jaw a bit. Worked
| great.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I got a custom dental appliance for like $1000 out of
| pocket, and it broke within a few months, conveniently when
| I had moved out of state from my original dentist.
|
| There are a few over-the-counter options that advertise
| themselves as just for snoring reduction - SnoreRX and
| ZQuiet are ones I've tried. I've found that wearing a
| BreatheRight-type strip along with one of these appliances
| works as well or better than the one I got from my dentist,
| and it's MUCH cheaper. I also take an anti-allergy nasal
| spray, as I have pretty bad allergies also interfere with
| sleep.
| euroderf wrote:
| I got mine thru the city health service, so I only made a
| token payment. 1000$ ouch.
| wnolens wrote:
| That's a little upstream of where in one's anatomy is the
| common choke point - usually the back of the throat/soft
| palate relaxes and obstructs _all_ breathing.
|
| But I have nose blockage issues and use nasal strips
| nowadays, too. It prevents mouth breathing which is nice to
| prevent dry mouth in the middle of the night (which even a
| humidifier on my nightstand can't completely solve in my
| climate)
| johnbellone wrote:
| Those never worked for me (mouth breather) but for some they
| do work wonders.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Tape didn't work for me. What did work were nasal dilators:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Rhinomed-Snoring-Solution-
| Reduction-C...
|
| I don't understand why, but in my 30s, it's like my nostrils
| aren't big enough to get the airflow I need, especially when
| sleeping on my side where a pillow might compress one
| nostril.
|
| Disclaimer: they are not very comfortable, but far more
| comfortable than a CPAP mask.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I feel the same way, I wish there was some kind of way to
| permanently expand my sinuses or something because I feel
| like I can't force air through them.
|
| Sometimes just breathing hard through my nose starts to
| make my ears pressurize and threaten to pop
| instagib wrote:
| There's a metallic device to insert inside your sinuses.
| It looks like a finger trap with one side going to a
| point. I remember it lasts a few years then needs to be
| replaced for $1000 or so.
|
| My grandfather looked into it because the surgery doesn't
| last very long and he had it done multiple times.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| > Sometimes just breathing hard through my nose starts to
| make my ears pressurize and threaten to pop
|
| I had something similar (ears permanently felt like they
| needed to be popped, for months). Was diagnosed with a
| deviated septum + allergic response causing my eustachian
| tubes to not regulate ear pressure properly. Flonase
| helped. But cluing in that it was partially due to an
| allergic response (deviated septum made my nasal passage
| narrow, allergies closed them all the way), I have found
| that Benadryl is extremely helpful with both nose
| breathing and preventing the issue with pressure in my
| ears. I only take it when I have difficultly nose
| breathing.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| nasal dilators definitely help a lot. I've tried the mute
| brand you posted and another style that smells of lavender
| and the mute ones are better. my only problem is I
| subconsciously mid sleep pull it out because they are a bit
| uncomfortable like you mentioned, or it falls out at some
| point of the night and gets lost in the bed. it is amazing
| how much more air I can breathe through my nose with one in
| though, and I definitely feel much more rested using them
| when they stay in. I knew they worked the first time I fell
| asleep and woke up the next morning in the same position
| bbatchelder wrote:
| CPAP has been life changing for me. For my entire life I
| struggled getting up in the morning, and I never felt
| "refreshed". Getting up before 9-10AM was super difficult. I
| also was often in a sort of fugue state when I would first wake
| up, I'd often have no memory of any interactions, and
| apparently was often mean.
|
| Now I can easily get up, even at hours that were previously
| unthinkable, and more often than not feel fully recharged.
|
| I have no doubt that played a part in me being unhealthy -
| though by no means was it the sole reason.
|
| As an aside, also getting on a dose of Semaglutide has been
| similarly life changing. The damn near elimination of "food
| noise" has been incredible.
|
| I know there are a number of folks of the opinion that its
| somehow cheating. But for me I am left wondering "Is this just
| how normal people feel?".
| phone8675309 wrote:
| It always bothers me when someone says it's "cheating" to use
| a GLP-1 agonist.
|
| It helps but the person losing weight still has to clean up
| their diet and start an exercise routine. There are still
| major changes they need to make to become successful. GLP-1
| agonists help a lot of people make better decisions due to
| how they fight hunger. Less hunger means less chances to make
| bad choices when eating, and weight loss progress is a
| virtuous mental cycle where you keep doing what you're doing
| because you see results.
|
| None of that is cheating. There are still major changes one
| must make. Taking Ozempic but continuing to eat a trash-tier
| diet will yield little to no progress.
| bbatchelder wrote:
| Definitely agree, but man, the sheer number of folks who
| leave just horrible comments on videos/posts people make
| about how they lost weight on a GLP-1 agonist is so
| disheartening.
|
| In addition to saying that its cheating, they will actively
| wish harm to the person by saying "just wait til you get X"
| where X is some side effect (real or imagined). Or just the
| "well once you stop taking it you'll just get fat again".
| phone8675309 wrote:
| The people who say "you'll get fat again once you stop
| taking it" also baffle me.
|
| The most difficult part of losing weight for me
| personally is changing my routine and habits. Setting
| myself up with a kitchen that's ready to cook. Figuring
| out what kind of meals I'm happy to have on a weeknight
| that don't require a lot of cooking. Preparing parts of
| meals over an hour or two on the weekend to complete some
| of the more time consuming parts when I'm not so
| constrained on time. Learning to deal with the urge I
| (used to) have to "eat my feelings".
|
| All of those things don't just magically go away when you
| stop taking a GLP-1 agonist. Losing a lot of weight isn't
| just about self-control like if you're just trying to
| lose five pounds to make your pants more comfortable for
| going to your 20th high school reunion; you have to
| rewire your habits and mind and make a life long
| commitment to those changes.
|
| Rewiring your habits and rewiring your brain are things
| that persist if your intention going into the weight loss
| was to change your habits instead of just moving the
| number on the scale. If you are looking to do it only
| temporarily and are unwilling to lock in those behavioral
| changes then you're likely going to fail, and that has
| much more to do with mindset than medication.
| Redster wrote:
| As a fairly thin guy in my 20s (I was about 130lbs and 5'6"), I
| had years of undiagnosed hypopnea. I would wake up with tears
| streaming down my face and choking, but couldn't figure out
| why. I was constantly exhausted and yet, couldn't sleep. I
| would spend more than 12 hours in bed every night, hoping to
| get as close to 8 hrs as I could.
|
| Paid for a sleep study and the doctor walked in the room and
| said, "You don't have sleep apnea." I was like, " I knew that,
| but what can I do?" The doctor shrugged and said, "You have
| hypopnea. You could try a mouthguard...?" trailed off and left.
|
| So, with this newfound wisdom I was back at square one.
|
| Some things that dramatically helped me in recovering from
| years of sleep loss: - A chinstrap. - I found a study (n=1,
| literally) about a patient who didn't fit the typical sleep
| apnea profile as a thin older man. The doctors treating him
| wondered if it was "positional sleep apnea" and had him get a
| chinstrap. This held his mouth shut while sleeping and
| prevented his tongue from falling back and blocking his airway.
| I found a chinstrap on Amazon and immediately started sleeping
| better.
|
| - A blood test - My doctor knew that I was dealing with adrenal
| issues due to not sleeping, Lyme disease, and other issues, so
| he ordered a blood test. This was fantastic. For me, addressing
| my underlying magnesium and B-12 deficiency made an enormous
| difference in sleep quality. I found that taking my B-12 right
| before bed helped my sleep be so much more restorative.
|
| - Andrew Huberman - Andrew Huberman's podcast Huberman Labs is
| old news, now, but when I found him a few years ago, it was
| some of the more actionable advice I had ever gotten about
| sleep, falling asleep, and circadian rhythm.
|
| Anyway, there were more things across the way, but these are
| some things I shared with others that they also found helpful.
| I now am in control of my sleep and feel decades younger. You
| can get there! It's worth experimenting and finding a doctor
| who is going to help you find your problem. The mental clarity,
| focus, and energy has definitely made up for all the the months
| of trying to find out what was wrong with me.
|
| I hope you sleep well!
| cko wrote:
| I had sleep apnea and got jaw surgery. But I also have a
| dysfunctional TMJ, so my mouth opens when I sleep. Every chin
| strap on the market pushes the chin down into the airway, it
| seems. Which one did you get?
| Redster wrote:
| I got some random generic one. I wouldn't recommend it as
| the quality could've been better. For you, I also tried
| tape over the mouth. I got a wide washi tape from a friend
| and experienced similarly helpful results to the chin-
| strap. However, I found that comfort-wise, I preferred the
| chinstrap.
|
| But, if you can breath through your nose well enough, I
| think some kind of mouth tape can work? I haven't tried the
| Hostage brand anti-snore tape, but maybe someone here has
| had experience with that.
|
| If you really want the chinstrap that I got, I got this
| one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DR16XGV/
|
| Based on the pictures, it obviously pushes the jaw
| backwards. That obviously wouldn't work for you. I wear
| mine in such a way that it is helping my jaw close and stay
| shut. I agree that you don't want something pulling your
| lower jaw backwards.
| cko wrote:
| Yep I've tried mouth tape and it's pretty good,
| especially when combined with side sleeping.
|
| Though I have this paranoia that mouth tape will increase
| my philtrum length, which I know is a vain worry. Another
| solution is one of those incline pillows - just a 20%
| gradient should allow me to back sleep, which I prefer.
|
| Post-surgery I had my jaws wired shut and they had this
| chin strap that was like an ace bandage that around my
| head and chin. I could replicate that with one of those
| mouth guard combined with a chin strap, but I read
| somewhere that this would eventually pull the upper jaw
| down towards the airway as well (since maxillary plates
| are not fixed.)
| SamBam wrote:
| Have you tried mouth taping instead? Seems to work better
| for some people than chin straps, but I don't really know.
| johnbellone wrote:
| I've had sleep apnea and CPAP for years. The last several weeks
| have been grueling because of mask fit, movement, and other
| factors. My BMI is very high, but I am in minority that will
| have sleep apnea regardless due to anatomy. That doesn't mean
| it won't help to lose weight.
| jonhohle wrote:
| As an additional PSA, sleep apnea may not be the cause of
| exhaustion, even if diagnosed. I was diagnosed with apnea and
| CPAP did (still does) little if anything for my energy levels.
| I finally found a sleep doctor who checked my iron levels, and
| despite being within the normal range suggested I take an iron
| supplement (iron polypeptide) and within a week felt normal
| again.
|
| It turns out that people with restless legs, which I've had
| since childhood, experience iron deficiency anemia with much
| higher blood iron content than the average population.[0]
|
| My primary care didn't consider this. A pulmonologist had no
| interest in checking this. An oral sleep doctor had no interest
| in checking this. I had people suggesting getting an implant to
| force my tongue to stick out when the issue was low iron.
|
| Definitely get a sleep study (I'd recommend lab over home). I
| use a sleep tracker (cheap Garmin "smart" watch, but I've also
| tried an Apple Watch) as a reasonable proxy for REM and deep
| sleep. And if you think a practice is just trying to sell
| equipment, they probably are. Fortunately I found a good doctor
| from acquaintances that I would have never otherwise considered
| (not part of the local medical systems, though did take
| insurance).
|
| Unfortunately, for many issues it's not enough to trust the
| doctor. Do your own due diligence for your health.
|
| 0 -
| https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3...
| SamBam wrote:
| I have occasional restless leg (once every two weeks or so)
| and low energy. How would one know if one has iron deficiency
| despite blood work being normal? Is it just a case of popping
| iron pills and seeing if you feel better?
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Doesn't hurt to try does it? A bit of extra iron is
| harmless.
| SamBam wrote:
| That was partly my question. Looking online, iron is
| definitely something that you don't want to have too much
| of.
|
| My question is, basically, is having a non-anemic iron
| deficiency something that can be easily remedied by
| having low-dose over the counter vitamins, or is it
| something that requires a higher dose (to make up the
| difference in what you're missing) and so requires a
| doctor. And yet it sounds like this is difficult to
| diagnose.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Over the counter iron supplements are totally safe to
| take for the period indicated on them. They contain as
| much iron as a medium piece of chicken liver.
| SamBam wrote:
| Most of the over the counter ones I see online are 65 mg
| iron, which is nearly twice the iron in a whole half kilo
| of chicken liver.
|
| The medical sites say a safe value is no more than 45 mg
| per day.
|
| There are also low iron pills (or "gentle iron") that are
| 28 mg.
|
| So not only are many over the counter pills potentially
| over the safe levels, but it still doesn't even really
| answer the question, which is whether the low-dose pills
| that are under the RDA effective in countering an iron
| deficiency.
|
| Anyway. I think I'll ask my doctor at a once-every-
| several-years checkup.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Do you live in America? Supplements tend to be much
| stronger there. Here in Germany at the local pharmacy you
| will mostly find in the 10mg-30mg range. I've bought and
| drank them before to no ill effect, which is why I even
| started this entire chain.
| zhengyi13 wrote:
| It can indeed hurt[1], and getting medical advice from
| the Internet can be... fraught.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557376/#:~:text
| =The%20....
| raffraffraff wrote:
| What's "normal"? Your results are never just "normal",
| there is a range that is considered normal. If you're at
| the low end of normal, that could actually be just "low".
| Those teams can be a bit too wide.
|
| How is your B12? If you're a vegan or vegetarian and aren't
| taking those supplements then I would start taking them.
| It's always safe to take extra B12.
|
| Unless your iron is at the upper end of the band it should
| be safe to take a low dose. But it won't do anything if
| you're not really deficient.
|
| I find that sitting at a desk all day makes me tired. I
| just push past it and go for a run. Always works, and it
| guarantees me a good night's sleep.
|
| Just remembered, if you walk a _lot_ , like over 25k steps
| a day, or do a lot of exercise (squats?) that can also
| cause restless legs.
|
| Also, your diet? Most people are getting more than enough
| carbs these days, but are you on some weird diet?
| tbirdny wrote:
| Serum iron is a pretty useless test. What was your ferritin?
| jonhohle wrote:
| In August it was 66ng/mL prior to taking any supplement. So
| above the reference low, but below the adjustment for RLS.
|
| Unfortunately, I just had it tested last week but had given
| power red a few weeks prior and came in below even the
| normal range (20ng/mL).
| dwallin wrote:
| Do you have any additional resources you recommend on this
| topic? I've experienced life long restless legs alongside
| issues with sleep quality, daytime tiredness and low energy
| levels so this seems like an interesting avenue to explore.
| jonhohle wrote:
| I don't, just my personal experience. A few years ago I
| started getting exhausted to the point I was napping every
| day and getting 10-12 hours asleep and still felt tired.
| I've never been overweight, don't have any structural
| occlusions in my airways, though I do snore (so says my
| wife).
|
| I did all of the normal things and got regular exercise. I
| finally went to a specialist, and got an at home sleep
| study which found moderate apnea (on the low side of
| moderate). I spent several months using a CPAP and bought a
| sleep tracking watch. Nothing improved and I was still
| tired. The pulmonologist suggested one of my medications
| affected REM. I was able to stop taking it without any
| significant issue and my REM improved, but I was still
| tired. I asked them for an in lab study and did that and it
| found the same as the home study.
|
| I had convinced myself I had narcolepsy or some similar
| neurological issue.
|
| My wife's friend coincidentally mentioned he had sleep
| issues and they had found a sleep doctor they liked. He was
| the first to ask about restless legs and have any blood
| work done. He confirmed that I have apnea, but thought
| trying an iron supplement might help based on recent
| studies and my iron levels.
|
| The iron helped almost immediately. Within a week I didn't
| need to take a nap, which I had done daily for at least two
| years. I still use the CPAP because apnea can cause heart
| issues long term, but don't "feel" like it does anything in
| the short term.
|
| Usually, the most common thing is the most likely, but when
| it's not, it can be really hard to find someone who both
| believes you and can do something about it. When I was
| exhausted all of the time, finding that person was even
| more challenging.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| Isn't iron one of those things you don't want to overdo due
| to dangerous side effects?
|
| You raise an interesting situation here though because I've
| also had restless leg forever and my iron tests came back
| normal. Still, I'm not sure how safe it is to take iron
| supplements under "normal" conditions.
|
| EDIT: this is just one source, but it doesn't sound like a
| great idea to be taking iron supplements with normal iron
| levels, at least not on your own:
| https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iron-Consumer/#h11
| jonhohle wrote:
| Did I suggest otherwise? I said I ended up seeing four
| doctors before one suggested what worked for me. YMMV.
| Consult a physician, etc., etc.
|
| I need to have my iron levels checked semi regularly. I
| would imagine any doc suggesting iron supplements would
| suggest the same.
| annpierce wrote:
| So interesting! Thanks for sharing. Do you still take iron
| every day, or is this the kind of thing one does for a period
| of time until the body is rebalanced?
| kirse wrote:
| H.Pylori is well known to impact iron absorption and serum
| iron/ferritin levels. Most of the world carries this
| unknowingly (esp. since childhood), and it has all sorts of
| silent consequences ranging from fatigue (due to iron impact,
| etc) to GI issues to stomach cancers.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8513126/
|
| [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11218379/
| raffraffraff wrote:
| My wife had menorrhagia (extremely heavy periods that lasted
| a week) and extreme lethargy. And restless legs. Not only did
| her doctor not get her bloods checked, he didn't care about
| the heavy periods and said (about heavy periods), "go on the
| pill, and see a shrink" (because presumably he thought she
| was a hypochondriac or depressed, because she came back
| several times to see if he could do anything about it). He
| finally got her iron and B12 checked, and since they were
| both on the lowest end of the "Ok" range, he didn't do
| anything further.
|
| It took 2 doctor changes and a lot of goggling to realise
| that her menorrhagia had a cause, but that she's need scans
| to prove she might have uterine fibroids. It took 2
| procedures to correct them. Once all that was done and she
| got iron + B12 injections, and got her life back.
|
| On a forum she talked to other women who were left to deal
| with fibroids for up to a decade because their doctors would
| just sigh and say, "Yes, women's problems. This is normal. Go
| on the pill". Unfortunately the fibroids grow so large that
| there is sometimes no option but a full hysterectomy. This is
| a common story.
|
| I completely agree, you need to do your own due diligence
| these days.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| How would one know if they had sleep apnea in any shape/form?
| instagib wrote:
| Get a sleep study for accuracy.
|
| If your partner notices you snore or stop breathing when
| sleeping.
|
| You can record yourself also. You wake with a headache and
| dry mouth almost daily.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| Do you think sleep apnea is a condition caused by civilization?
| I.e. did medieval people suffer from this? And is this a
| consequence of the American diet and a sedentary lifestyle, or
| something else?
| maxglute wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder if humans need more variability in sleeping
| positions. Animals sleep in all sorts of positions on all
| manners of not perfectly even terrain, probably trains nassal
| to be strong in different orientations. When I had bad
| heartburn/gerd I'd pass out propped up on the couch or setup a
| bunch of cushions in the corner of the room, or raise head of
| my bed up with a few books and getting great sleeps.
| elric wrote:
| I wish CPAP manufacturers were a bit better. There has been
| little innovation, and if anything, there's been a downward
| trend in quality in recent years.
|
| My wishlist:
|
| 1. Every CPAP device should be BiLevel.
|
| 2. All data they record should be accessible to the user (for
| tools like oscar).
|
| 3. Either more granular pressure controls, or better algorithms
| (or both). Some people do well on CPAP, others do better when
| iPAP > ePAP (BiLevel, or EPR), while others do better when ePAP
| > iPAP (vcom).
|
| 4. Better masks. Seriously. It's so hard to find a good mask,
| and so expensive to experiment with them. A new mask can set
| you back EUR150, and if turns you hate it, you're shit out of
| luck. I've toyed with the idea of personalized 3D printed masks
| to get a better seal for each unique nose/face shape.
|
| 5. Quieter machines. Without the Philips cancer foam.
|
| 6. Quieter masks. Some have excellent diffusers in the
| exhalation port (P10), while others blast out a concentrated
| jet of air that will wake you up when it hits the pillow, or
| will lead to divorce faster than your snoring ever did when it
| hits your bedpartner.
|
| 7. Bring back travel cpap devices. The market collapsed post
| covid. I'd love to keep a small device and super lightweight
| mask/hose in my bag for sleepover emergencies. I'd pay any
| price for that, because having to lug a full size cpap around
| ruins any chance of spontaneity in my bachelor sex life.
|
| None of these are rocket science. But Philips Respironics are a
| bunch of evil cunts, ResMed are goofing off, and the other
| brands might as well not exist.
| david-gpu wrote:
| Agreed on all counts, down to having contemplated 3D printing
| molds to manufacture custom silicone masks. I also wish the
| tube had a sensor to detect whether you are sleeping on your
| back to preemptively raise the pressure. Or having better
| algorithms to detect hypopneas before the air stops flowing
| altogether.
|
| I don't even understand why purchasing a CPAP machine
| requires a prescription. I'm scared of the possibility of a
| doctor denying me a new CPAP machine when the current one
| inevitably croaks. The device is a glorified fan, for
| goodness sake.
| elric wrote:
| The prescription thing is probably location specific, but
| AFAIK you can just buy them online. I have a few spares I
| bought online from back when I frequently slept in
| different places.
|
| Masks straps could probably be fitted with an accelerometer
| to detect positioning. If they can make heated tubing, this
| isn't such a stretch. Might also be useful in correctly
| flagging events: my machine often incorrectly marks
| position switches as periods of hypopnea.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| I have severe apnea and have been skinny most of my life, as I
| get older (in my mid-40s now) I can gain _some_ weight, but I'm
| still slim. My apnea is caused by having a narrow airway
| entrance and thick tongue that just completely blocks the
| entrance during sleep when my tongue relaxes and falls back.
| Has nothing to do with my weight, just the genetics I
| inherited. I use a CPAP that helps. My AHI is really low with
| it on. Now I just need to make myself go to bed earlier, I
| definitely have that "revenge nighttime procrastination" thing
| where I stay up way too late.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| It causes binge eating. Need to resist those urges.
| jackallis wrote:
| that's why it is imperative that you squeeze in some amount/level
| of workout. does not have to at the gym, even 5 mintues of
| jumping jack at your home helps. Granted if you have are
| exhuasted from lack of sleep, workout is the last thing you want
| to do; but through out your weekly routine -- to quote immortal
| bard Eddie -- go ahead jump
| <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwYN7mTi6HM>.
| goalieca wrote:
| I find having kids in my late 30s hits really hard because of
| this. Biologically, I can see it being best having kids in your
| early 20s when you're made of rubber and can bounce back after
| lack of sleep.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I hear this all the time regarding bouncing back after lack of
| sleep when younger, but I have to say that I never really
| experienced it - I was always completely shot after a (rare)
| night of not sleeping. To the point where I actually
| essentially lost consciousness involuntarily for a few hours on
| one occasion. Then, when I was in my 30's I suffered a bout of
| sleeplessness for a bit and found I could actually "function"
| to some extend during the day, though it was a bit dicey.
|
| It really gave me a fear of situations that might involve sleep
| deprivation - one reason among many I never thought I could
| handle medical school for instance.
| yosito wrote:
| I'm in my late 30s, and physically healthy. Mentally, I can
| function better on low sleep than I could in my 20s. But two
| weeks ago, I had five nights in a row of 4 hours of sleep. By
| the end of the week, I ended up in the hospital with chest
| pains and doctors were concerned it was a heart attack. In
| the end, things checked out fine, but my body definitely
| can't handle the stress of lack of sleep like it used to.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I had 4 kids in my 20s, and I dealt with a lot of lost
| sleep.
|
| Since I hit about 36, I've found that a poor night of
| sleep, such as from a red-eye flight, will wreck me for
| about 2 days.
| hackernoteng wrote:
| Yeah have the young kids in your 20s. Thats why you dont need
| sleep in your 20s. Also has benefit kids are grown and moved
| out by the time you hit 50...
| lolinder wrote:
| I had my first in my mid twenties and there wasn't a lot of
| bouncing back happening.
|
| In college you can bounce back after an all nighter not just
| because you're younger but also because it's an opt-in single
| event and you can opt out of the next one when you recognize
| that you're sleep deprived. You can also do what my brother
| does and regularly sleep in till 10 to make up for the late
| nights.
|
| Once you have kids there's no opt out mechanism, and sleeping
| in isn't an option any more. There's not really an opportunity
| to bounce back from the sleep loss, even for a younger adult.
| donatj wrote:
| The first two months after my wife had my daughter about a year
| ago, I was a walking zombie.
|
| I wasn't really here. I tripped and fell down so many times. I
| had not fallen down since I was in my teens and I am in my late
| 30's.
|
| I really had no idea how bad lack of sleep was going to mess me
| up. Of the things I had planned for in having a child, I was
| absolutely not prepared for this.
| jmpman wrote:
| This is why I need to work from home. I have random periods of
| chronic insomnia. If I'm able to get a nap in, it breaks the
| cycle. If not, after 2 days, I begin to spiral down. When in the
| office, I could only recover on the weekends, leaving a
| productive Monday and Tuesday.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| I also work from home and take lunchtime naps most days! I have
| been chronically deprived of sleep for a while by an old dog
| who doesn't relax for more than 5hrs at a time and I think I'd
| be dead without my lunchtime naps.
| galdosdi wrote:
| If only your job let you have a real office with a door, you'd
| have no problem working from the office.
|
| A lot of the benefit of WFH is just undoing the damage of open
| office.
|
| Not long ago Google was famous for having nap rooms (supposedly
| -- I never found it at the NYC office when I worked there in
| the mid teens).
|
| But in the days of private offices, this was just normal.
| tschumacher wrote:
| My sleep is very irregular but I always get enough. I tend to
| have trouble falling asleep but once I'm asleep nothing can wake
| me up. Some days I sleep until noon or I have to get up early but
| then take a nap later. I wonder if all the bad consequences that
| are associated with "broken" sleep apply to irregular but plenty
| sleep as well.
| froyolobro wrote:
| Validated. I exercise, eat well, don't drink, don't consume
| caffeine after noon, and my sleep is still terrible. I get four
| good hours, that's it.
| duderific wrote:
| Same here! I'm in my 50's, so I often have to wake up to pee at
| anywhere from 3 - 5 AM. Sometimes I go right back to sleep but
| sometimes not. Then it's up at 6:15 AM to get the kids going
| for school (I had kids really late.)
|
| I've just become accustomed to being in a semi-groggy state
| much of the time. I know it's not ideal, but I'm just not
| gifted with being a good sleeper. Conversely, my wife can sleep
| 10 hours in a row if given the opportunity.
|
| In the rare situation where I get 6 to 7 hours of unbroken
| sleep, I feel fantastic.
|
| Edited for clarity
| xyzelement wrote:
| I found myself feeling "old" during north east winters, I would
| wake up exhausted and crabby.
|
| Recently I tracked this down to indoor air quality, installed an
| ERV (basically, introduces fresh outside air into the house) and
| I feel much better.
|
| There's a lot of talk about (obesity related etc) sleep apnea
| that's due to how the person breathes, it seems to me that
| there's a version of it related to WHAT you breathe.
|
| Granted I think I am more sensitive to indoor air quality than an
| average person or maybe just more aware of the effect, but this
| seems to have been a game changer in a way.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| I'm having a very similar experience with indoor air quality in
| winter. Googling ERV doesn't deliver anything. What would I
| look up to find what you're talking about?
| xyzelement wrote:
| It stands for "energy recovery ventilator" - in a nutshell it
| just blows fresh air into your house and exhausts stale air,
| but uses the heat in the exhaust air to warm up the incoming
| air so it's more comfortable and energy efficient compared to
| an open window with a fan in it.
|
| Before you go too far that route (a multi-thousand dollar
| install) I recommend getting an indoor air quality meter to
| get a sense of what might be the problem. I recommend the
| Airthings View Plus, which is about $300 but is comprehensive
| and reliable and since (in my case) I made a multi-thousand
| dollar decision based on it, it was worth the investment.
|
| In my house it was obvious there's a massive CO2 buildup, CO2
| itself isn't as big a deal itself but an indicator of stale
| air (ie, it's not being vented out by itself) and somewhat
| elevated radon. The ERV isn't the "prescribed" solution for
| radon but since it ends up venting it out it's fine.
|
| One last thing - for me, the connection between energy and
| indoor air quality was obvious in retrospect. I could wake up
| early and be miserable, but once I stepped outside to take my
| son to school I'd feel better. Or vice versa - I could be
| full of energy running around all day, then come home and
| immediately get drowsy.
|
| It only took about 15 years to realize indoor air was the
| cause.
| gilbertbw wrote:
| This is called MVHR (mechanical ventillation with heat
| recovery) in the UK. We're looking at putting it in, but
| have a fairly poorly insulated house, so it's not clear if
| the heat recovery is worthwhile. There is also PIV
| (positive input ventillation), which blows fresh air into a
| property (normally the hallways), but does not recover
| heat, or duct air from the rooms. So it's much simpler and
| cheaper to buy and install. It relies on the natural
| 'leakiness' of the property to vent stale air out.
| xyzelement wrote:
| // This is called MVHR (mechanical ventillation with heat
| recovery) in the UK.
|
| These are actually two subtly different things. ERV (what
| I am talking about) recovers some of the moisture content
| along with heat, while an HRV (heat recovery ventilator
| and probably what you're talking about) does the heat but
| not the moisture. Depending on where you live this
| matters or doesn't matter (eg, if your winters are really
| dry and/or your summers are really humid, you want the
| ENERGY recovery ventilator to keep the house humidity
| closer to what you want vs equalizing with the outside.
|
| // We're looking at putting it in, but have a fairly
| poorly insulated house, so it's not clear if the heat
| recovery is worthwhile
|
| This doesn't make sense to me at all. First, if your
| house is "leaky" then why do you need mechanical
| ventilation at all, versus just relying on the natural
| air exchange (I can think of a valid reason but just
| curious how you think about it.) Second, if you DO put it
| in, your house is obviously better conditioned inside
| compared to outside so why wouldn't you want to recover
| that heat, at least for comfort if not economy?
|
| // There is also PIV (positive input ventillation), which
| blows fresh air into a property (normally the hallways)
|
| Yut but I think your hallway is then going to be as cold
| as the outside in the winter?
| ActionHank wrote:
| I hate the fact that I must sleep everyday. I have always tried
| to get around 6 - 7 hours a night as a result.
|
| Through my 20s it wasn't an issue, but I stopped gyming a few
| years back and it has been hard if I lose any sleep.
|
| I started working out again and I am back to 6.5 hrs a night, no
| problem.
| bibliotekka wrote:
| Almost 50, working out more than ever, super clean diet and it
| really is the key to maintaining all kinds of energy and
| stamina, good sleep, focus, all that stuff.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| I've found that my body can tolerate one day in a row of waking
| up via an alarm clock instead of at my natural wakeup time. The
| second day, I'm completely exhausted and can't think straight.
|
| The way to sleep effectively and be most alert is to sleep when
| your body tells you to not when society tells you to.
| johnbellone wrote:
| Last night my kid slept with us because he is sick. At 2am woke
| up to screaming and alligator death rolls. I feel like ass after
| one night.
| dudefeliciano wrote:
| I was just sick for 2 days and spent about 1.5 days sleeping
| (like I literally slept 18-19 hours on one day, and probably
| 12-13 hours the next) - I am now recovered and I feel a couple of
| years younger...so I guess it goes both ways
| Redster wrote:
| To your point, I had a season of extremely hard work (for me)
| where I was on two timezones (one in Europe and one in the US)
| and ended up in a situation where, due to severe jet lag, I
| would go to bed at the right time for the timezone I was in,
| sleep for 12hrs, and wake up *more exhausted* than when I went
| to sleep. Very demoralizing, but this continued for weeks.
| Eventually I decided to take a sleep-cation. I went to a
| friend's house who generously offered a private room. I
| prepared a couple of meals in the fridge and proceeded to sleep
| as much as I could for the next three days. I probably slept
| more than 20 hrs per day, although I didn't necessarily have
| very long stretches. I only needed like 4-5 meals over that
| time. It really took me out of a negative spiral and got me
| back on track. If you actually can sleep, I've seen this
| approach help people "reset" on their sleep and then get more
| regular benefits from their sleep hygiene.
| begueradj wrote:
| Some martial artists of the UFC say that sleeping is the best PED
| (performance enhancer drug)
| chikitabanana wrote:
| *when the cameras are on
| racl101 wrote:
| Ain't it the truth.
| uoaei wrote:
| I like to set an alarm for 9 hr 30 min before sunrise. This gives
| me 30 min to get ready for bed, and to go to bed with time for 6
| full REM cycles of 1.5hr each. The rest of the timing (the timing
| of my rest?) is up to my body and how much sleep it wants.
|
| When I do it this way, vs setting alarms, I'm always surprised by
| the sleep debt I've accrued and am now paying back.
|
| Modern (especially urban) society demands a lot more of us than
| many of our bodies can sustain.
| EPWN3D wrote:
| I'm sorry, but this is clickbait junk science.
|
| > Psychologists in Sweden found that, on average, volunteers felt
| more than four years older when they were restricted to only four
| hours of sleep for two consecutive nights, with some claiming the
| sleepiness made them feel decades older.
|
| The average was four years older, with some people claiming they
| felt "decades" older. This should be enough to tell you how
| useless this methodology is. People cannot reliably estimate how
| much "older" they feel because it's their subjective
| interpretation of an experience they don't have. By definition
| they don't know what being 4 years older feels like.
|
| You might as well ask them whether sleep deprivation made them
| feel like they'd been waterboarded for 4 hours or 4 days.
| AlfredBarnes wrote:
| This is one of those "no shit" articles.
| seanhunter wrote:
| This is incredible. I can't remember the last time I had a night
| of unbroken sleep. It's literally months ago.
| aronhegedus wrote:
| Recommend the book "Why we sleep" for people who want to learn a
| bit more about effects of sleep deprivation
| failrate wrote:
| One of the hardships of sleeping rough is that poor sleep quality
| can rapidly degenerate your cognitive function. Simply put, being
| homeless hurts your ability to escape homelessness.
| diggan wrote:
| > Simply put, being homeless hurts your ability to escape
| homelessness.
|
| Well known self-reinforcing mechanism, sadly :/
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_poverty
|
| Same with sleep surely, where bad sleep leads to worse sleep...
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Maybe a coincidence but I got the first gray hair of my life 4
| months after getting a newborn(and waking up like 4 times per
| night)
| nadermx wrote:
| A thing I noticed had a dramatic effect on my sleeping was
| forcing myself to keepy my mouth closed while doing any sort of
| excersize, be it running or calisthenics. It forces my entire
| nasal cavity to empty all the mucus, and I can breath
| significantly better and my sleep improved dramatic.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I was having problems breathing through my nose too. It led to
| snoring and I felt like a had a blocked nose more often than
| not. Other than forcing myself to breathe through my nose I
| also got one of those sinus rinse bottles and did some salt
| rinses.
|
| It's made such a huge difference. After years of having a
| blocked nose I sometimes just take a moment to enjoy the fact I
| can breathe through my nose at last. I've also gone from being
| a snorer to a "very quiet sleeper" according to my girlfriend.
| swozey wrote:
| The older I've gotten the earlier I wake up, probably due to my
| bladder going down the drain. I usually pop awake 4-6am and just
| begrudgingly stay awake, I don't work until 9-10am.
|
| When I _DO_ go back to bed after waking up like this and manage
| to actually sleep until 8-9am I feel more drained and tired by
| far. I did that last night /this morning and I am way more tired
| than I've been all week getting up as soon as I wake up.
|
| I don't really go to bed late, 10-11 probably. My doc complains
| all the time that I'm not sleeping enough but that's why.
| sarasasa28 wrote:
| I have very very poor deep sleep, but no apneas. Anyone in the
| same boat?
| monroewalker wrote:
| Yes
| sarasasa28 wrote:
| Did you do anything? I Have recently done a sleep study and
| that was the result mainly. Haven't seen the doc yet but no
| idea
| ngai_aku wrote:
| How did you discover you have poor deep sleep? Wearables?
|
| I've been discussing my issue with (for lack of a better term)
| chronic fatigue. He suspects it might be an issue with my
| sleep, but
|
| - I fall asleep really quickly - no obvious signs of apnea - I
| wake up feeling pretty good
|
| My issue is that by 10:30am I'm dragging.
| gjvc wrote:
| from the department of the bleedin' obvious
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