[HN Gopher] The brain summons deep sleep for healing from life-t...
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The brain summons deep sleep for healing from life-threatening
injury
Author : gmays
Score : 134 points
Date : 2024-11-10 03:47 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| rramadass wrote:
| Timely and Important article.
|
| In this day and age where you have limitless
| distractions/entertainment we often ignore our "less sexy"
| biological needs to the detriment of our mind and body. We need
| to treat Sleep/Nap/Rest as a "job" and not as something
| extraneous.
|
| Instead of the current practice of arranging our biological needs
| around our work we should revert back to pre-industrial era
| practices where our work was arranged around our biological needs
| and nature's rhythms. A good way to start is to eat only when
| feeling hungry, nap/sleep when feeling tired/sleepy and in
| general listen to the body/mind needs irrespective of context.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| This is spot on. These things are a delicate balance as well.
| When I sleep well, I can control my feeding patterns much
| better. When I eat well, I tend to sleep better. Exercise
| affects both of those, and is affected back.
|
| Work is constantly nudging this balance in the wrong direction,
| putting us into a vicious cycle of accelerated death and
| suffering.
|
| I may be making this sound worse than it feels though, probably
| because I'm writing this in between bouts of high fever. I
| honestly can't complain all that much from the life I lead but
| I do wish I could make it work much better around my
| physiological needs.
| rramadass wrote:
| You might find some of my previous comments useful too;
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40978488
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41538322
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38445883
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Thanks. I upvoted you because this is all great advice. I'm
| politely going to decline it though. Not because I don't
| think it's valuable but mostly because I already have
| alternatives to achieve those results that I know work
| better for myself.
|
| Unfortunately right now I don't have the time to follow
| through with most of it. Life happens, and right now it
| just happens to be happening more or less all at once.
| Urgency trumps priority.
|
| Furthermore, I'm a night owl. I have at different times in
| my life tried to change it. I followed all the advice I
| could find (including a lot of the things you mention).
| Ultimately, if I have to wake up early in the morning for
| work, I might end up with a cycle of 8h on the first night,
| with some luck another 8h, then it goes down to 6-5h, 2h
| and in some occasions an all nighter to top if off.
|
| My current sleep deprived cycle is one of relatively
| regular 5-6h per night. It's not very good but mostly
| because of the time I have to be awake.
|
| If I could wake up at 9:30-10:00 every day, I would be able
| to sleep those 5-6h per night and be in top shape. I know
| because I've done it for a few months in the past. I was at
| top physical and mental shape, consistently.
|
| Waking up at 7:00-8:00, even if I could sustain 7-8h per
| night, I'd still be sleepy, tired and unfocused for the
| most part. My brain suffers and so does my body.
|
| At this point I just decided to accept light sleep
| deprivation vs. the worse alternatives.
| rramadass wrote:
| I suggest you watch Dr. Satchin Panda's (he is the
| Circadian Rhythms researcher) videos (they are short TEDx
| ones) at the minimum. He gives a simple 6-step process
| which you might find very relevant.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Thanks, I'll try to find the time.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Note, though, that people with eating disorders can easily not
| feel hungry for days at a time for no reason or conversely
| never not feel hungry no matter how much they have eaten.
|
| Some people with depression or C/PTSD can sleep 14+ hours a day
| and not feel rested.
|
| Many people are so dysregulated that "listening to their
| bodies" and "embracing what is natural" are potentially self-
| destructive activities.
|
| So, keep your own body's limitations in mind. If you are
| affected by something that has pushed you off the track, at the
| very least, be aware of it before you go charging full steam
| ahead.
| rramadass wrote:
| First, see some of my previous comments linked to here for
| background - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42138469
|
| What you are pointing out are extreme cases which is
| generally a small subset. So before jumping to this
| conclusion one should first setup one's daily life around
| circadian/natural rhythms and in general establish a healthy
| relationship between ourselves and the environment we are
| embedded in. This is fundamental to everything else.
|
| In fact many doctors themselves are now saying that drugs are
| overprescribed and you don't need them for most (not all)
| cases. Watch the following documentaries;
|
| 1) _The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs (Medical Documentary)_ -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_ggnhpGvvA
|
| 2) _The Truth About the Medical Industry | The Doctor Who
| Gave Up Drugs | Part 2 | Documentary Central_ -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33RuKhr9pag
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I'm not going to take unsolicited homework from this site,
| especially one that is pushing an agenda in response to a
| statement that is clearly positive but cautious in response
| to your previous statement.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think better advice would be poor people to boldly explore
| and challenge their bodies limitations, and discover what
| they are capable, and what works for them.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I think we are saying the same thing, only my statement is
| more cautious and yours is more gung-ho.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| This is me.
|
| I can easily eat nothing for a day or two, though my longest
| was 3 days. Working out has been helpful because now I have
| an _intellectual_ need to ensure I get enough calories and my
| macros. I can also _way_ overeat if I have things I like
| available because there's never really a "stop" signal that's
| not being physically full. The only times I experience a
| "yeah ok I'm good now" is with extremely rich cheesecake
| sickening me (having still overeaten it) or 70% dark
| chocolate boring me. The later along with green apples are
| the only snacks I dare to keep around, because I'm not all
| that interested in eating them lol.
|
| If I tried to go to bed when I'm tired, I'd end up doing so
| 2-4 hours later than the previous day, end up being awake at
| night and sleeping (poorly) during the day until it cycles
| back around and the insanity repeats all over again. Even if
| I'm extremely tired for some reason, it still takes at least
| an hour to actually fall asleep, followed by waking up
| multiple times during the night to toss and turn. The
| phenomenon of my head hitting the pillow and the next day
| showing up happened once when I was traveling, and was
| wonderful.
|
| I've historically been very poor at recognizing when I'm
| being emotionally affected by things or stressed, which I
| would describe as feeling more like an android that a human,
| though that's improved these past few years.
|
| Listening to my body _is_ still important, but I can't
| intuitively just understand what it's "telling me", rather I
| need to track the consequences and intervene.
|
| _Incidentally_ , I am both autistic and spent much of my
| childhood trying to manage that hazards of my parent's
| unstable emotional states rather than my own.
| vundercind wrote:
| Every so often--maybe once a quarter--I wake up just
| feeling like a million bucks, like I can do anything, and I
| go through the whole day like that. I get so much done, and
| feel awesome the entire time.
|
| I have wondered, at times, if other people feel like that
| more often (and some, maybe never!). I'm pretty sure I'd be
| emperor of the planet if I felt like that even one day a
| week.
| yazzku wrote:
| Who would've thought that sleep is good for you, right?
| Apparently we needed several million dollars in research to
| find out.
|
| > The findings, published today in Nature, could help to guide
| care for people after a heart attack,
|
| This is just hilarious. Remember to get enough sleep after a
| life-threatening heart attack, folks!
|
| But your comment resonates very much with me. I am tired of
| this capitalist culture that reduces the human essence to value
| output and shames people for not pretending to be working hard
| enough. Part of the reason I like working from home is that I
| can take that fucking 20-minute nap after lunch and be
| infinitely more productive throughout the rest of the day.
| op00to wrote:
| > This is just hilarious. Remember to get enough sleep after
| a life-threatening heart attack, folks!
|
| Is it better to prioritize low-impact exercise or sleep after
| a heart attack? There's plenty of interesting angles to
| investigate.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I do think it is sad that people are so out of touch with
| their bodies and the idea of self ownership that they need an
| authority figure to instruct such simple tasks.
|
| I think there is a huge component of trained helplessness
| resulting from consumerist culture and social subservience.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| So how do you know to convince a person who doesn't feel it
| and yet needs it, without the research? If it's a treatment
| plan, it needs to have clear reasons behind.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Im not sure I understand your question. Who is trying to
| convince who?
|
| Ultimately, individuals are responsible for managing
| their own health. Thinking it is the doctors job and
| responsibility to keep them healthy, and not their own is
| the root of most problems.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| How am I supposed to make informed decisions without the
| research? How is a doctor supposed to choose and present
| options without it?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think that 99% of the bottleneck is not research for
| basic health, and the value of research is vastly over
| stated for things like nutrition, health, and exercise.
|
| A new study isn't going to convince people people to stop
| being obese, exercise, and take care of themselves. A
| study that shows that sleeping longer or eating a
| Mediterranean diet has a 5% improvement in some metric
| has almost no _specificity_ to you.
|
| Research is important for the 1% of the time your health
| is already in crisis, When you are picking between
| medications or interventions after.
|
| Even then, personal data on what works for you should
| always trump the research, because it is statistical in
| nature, usually with extremely high variability. If drug
| A works 51% of the time drug B works 49% of the time, the
| difference between them is almost meaningless. You want
| to know which drug your body responds to. In the clinical
| context, I think people and doctors overvalue how much
| time and effort to spend figuring out where to start, and
| undervalue how much effort to spend responding to
| personal data if it works or not.
| pengaru wrote:
| > A good way to start is to eat only when feeling hungry
|
| LOL, that's what everyone riding the "western diet" blood sugar
| roller coaster is already doing.
|
| If the diet doesn't reflect the environment our biological
| needs evolved in, acting without self discipline, eating based
| on how you feel, is a sure path to obesity, diabetes, and
| NAFLD.
|
| Horrible advice.
| rramadass wrote:
| If you take that advice in isolation while your Diet is shit,
| of course it is not applicable.
|
| If you want a little more detailed overview see my previous
| comments here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42138469
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think the charitable interpretation is that they're drawing
| a distinction between physical hunger and emotional hunger.
|
| I "feel" like I could go for a bacon cheeseburger basically
| 24s hours today. I feel like I could eat another right after
| I finished the first. All of that is emotional.
|
| That is pretty different than symptoms true physical hunger.
| My stomach starts to grumble after 24 hours without food.
| After about 48 hours I feel lethargic and cognitively
| disordered.
|
| I think that a majority of Americans confuse the two because
| it has been years or even decades since they actually
| experienced the symptoms of insufficient calorie intake
| scotty79 wrote:
| It can be good advice with additional conditions. For example
| I now eat whenever I feel hungry but only for the half of the
| time that I'm alive. For the other half I just don't eat at
| all. The only exception I make is for tea and occasional
| coffee with milk.
|
| One day I'm eating only till 4PM and the next one after 4PM
| and so on.
|
| Already lost 10 pounds in 2 months from being slightly
| overweight with no additional lifestyle changes and almost
| effortlessly because it's surprisingly easy to distract
| myself from eating for few hours.
|
| I think we are tuned to eat when we want but also to the food
| not being available all the time.
| pengaru wrote:
| > It can be good advice with additional conditions. For
| example I now eat whenever I feel hungry but only for the
| half of the time that I'm alive. For the other half I just
| don't eat at all. The only exception I make is for tea and
| occasional coffee with milk.
|
| You're effectively saying "It's good advice if I ignore it
| half the time", with your positive outcome stemming from
| the time spent ignoring it and not eating altogether.
|
| It's silly and harmful advice. Feelings are inherently
| irrational, we shouldn't advise people to act on them.
|
| When it comes to diet, _what_ you eat largely governs how
| it makes you feel. The "feeling hungry" part is emergent,
| root cause largely being the diet.
| scotty79 wrote:
| After consideration, I think you are right.
|
| I think the essence of this advice is to avoid eating for
| social, customary or emotional reasons.
|
| So what I wrote basically is totally unrelated because,
| you can get away with all of that and eat for any stupid
| reason if you restrict yourself to doing it just half of
| the time.
| profsummergig wrote:
| Do you believe it has helped to vary the eating window (one
| day before 4pm, the next day after)? What do you believe
| would happen if you kept it the same every day (e.g. eating
| only before 4pm)?
| krisoft wrote:
| > LOL, that's what everyone riding the "western diet" blood
| sugar roller coaster is already doing.
|
| I don't think so. In my observation a lot of people eat
| because it is time to eat, or because others are eating, or
| because they are bored, or because food is at hand.
|
| > acting without self discipline
|
| That is a curious thing to say. Not eating when one is not
| hungry takes a lot of self discipline. "Eat only when hungry"
| is a whole bunch of not eating.
| simmerup wrote:
| When I was regularly eating sugar, I was always hungry. I
| couldn't go an hour or two without having a snack of
| something.
|
| Ever since I switched to whole food diet, I don't get
| nearly as hungry and easily go 12+ hours without food
| without a thought
|
| I think you're underestimating just how hungry people feel
| krisoft wrote:
| > I think you're underestimating just how hungry people
| feel
|
| Possible. Or people have no clue what hunger really is.
|
| But still the advice didn't say "eat every time you are
| hungry". It said "A good way to start is to eat only when
| feeling hungry." That is actually a prohibition. The
| advice is equivalent with: do not eat when you are not
| hungry.
|
| It also in the very sentence admits that this is not the
| only rule to be followed. That's the "A good way to
| start". Meaning that there are other things to be aware
| of. One of them being what you eat as you mention.
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| The actual paper is pretty wild, and makes sense from what I
| know: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08100-w
|
| TNF-alpha promoting sleep is a surprise but it... makes sense.
| Somehow.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| It is kind of surprising.
|
| I wonder what happens in people who are on anti-TNFa. Maybe the
| antibody doesn't cross the blood brain barrier though.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| I had this question as well. Anecdotally, I've been on
| various anti-TNFa drugs for the past three or four years, and
| I feel like my sleep hasn't been impacted (and if anything
| has improved). Definitely no insomnia. I can nap like a
| champ!
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I've found that after a hard workout at the gym I sleep better
| and longer. That's certainly not a life-threatening injury but
| working out to exhaustion does create micro-injuries to muscle
| tissues which then have to heal (leading to growth).
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Yep, I usually average more deep sleep (10-15m) during times of
| regular workouts. I typically fall asleep much faster as well,
| though I don't typically have issues with that.
| generalizations wrote:
| Also interesting: deep sleep therapy where you keep the patient
| asleep for days or weeks. Mixed results back then; I imagine they
| didn't have good ways to differentiate the patients who would be
| helped vs harmed by the therapy.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_sleep_therapy
| pglevy wrote:
| One thing that stuck with me from the book Stroke of Insight
| (memoir of brain scientist who has and recovers from stroke) was
| how intently she prioritized sleep when everyone else kept trying
| to drag her out of bed.
|
| In a more mundane context, I've been fortunate to organize my
| schedule such that I don't use an alarm to get up in the morning.
| So I can let my body figure out how much sleep I need.
| burningChrome wrote:
| >> So I can let my body figure out how much sleep I need.
|
| This is why my doctor advised (during a bout of insomnia a few
| years ago) not to use those "blackout" shades. They completely
| confuse your brain. My doctor said to sleep with the blinds
| open so your body can naturally reset its clock with the
| sunrise and sunset. Thankfully, this was in the Summer in a
| midwestern state, so I got back on track, but I still had to
| make some adjustments when daylight savings and Winter started.
|
| Your strategy was the other recommendation my doctor said to
| use. Anything that allows your body to naturally find its
| biorhythm is the best.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| What happens when the sun sets at 18:00 in the winter? I like
| the idea, but I feel like most people won't go to bed that
| early, and use artificial lights to go about their evening,
| thus negating a lot of the effort. Or am I misunderstanding?
|
| Context: I struggle with insomnia and use blackout shades.
| qazxcvbnmlp wrote:
| Artificial lights also interfere with sleep. If you've ever
| been 100% off grid, or even a place where you have minimal
| phone usage and little artificial light you will feel
| sleepy more correlated with when the sun sets, even if it's
| at 1800.
|
| I've found blackout shades useful for when I'm not sleeping
| a schedule correlated with the sun (eg work at 4 am) or
| external artificial light (streetlamps).
| burningChrome wrote:
| During the Winter, I tend to stay more active. I play
| several sports, do weight training and do indoor rock
| climbing to sort of wear myself out. So in Winter, I
| adaptively change the signals my body is using that tells
| it when its time to go to sleep.
|
| My diet also changes in the Winter. I cut off caffeine at
| noon and restrict phone and screen time in favor of
| physical activities in the later afternoon. It takes about
| two weeks for my body to adjust fully to the changes, but
| then its fine throughout Winter. Even when I'm getting less
| sunlight because the sun is going down sooner.
|
| I never knew how much your diet will affect your sleep and
| biorhythms until I started making changes. Even small
| changes can have big effects on your sleep cycles.
|
| Hope that helps.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Most people are trying to get more sleep and stay asleep past
| early morning / ambient light.
|
| "Dang, my alarm woke me up at 8:30am while I was sleeping
| like a baby because of my blackout shades" doesn't sound like
| a problem anyone is having.
| QuantumGood wrote:
| Or use a 35,000 Lumen corn light (one I use
| https://a.co/d/idyzuiW ). Stopped a family from falling into
| depression regularly throughout the year. They are fanatical
| about getting the light because they don't want to go back.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| I don't understand what's the benefit of the light (vs a
| regular light)? do you have it synchronized with the sun
| with no way to turn it off?
| dvdkon wrote:
| The benefit of such a powerful lightsource is that you
| can get roughly the same amount of light you'd get from a
| summer sun. That seems to be what you need to stave off
| seasonal affective disorder.
|
| For waking up you'd need some kind of timed control,
| either old-school mechanical or maybe a smart relay. I've
| found that a single well-placed smart bulb programmed to
| ramp up over the course of 15 minutes works well to wake
| me up, but I'm pretty sensitive to light during sleep.
| matsemann wrote:
| Where I live the days are very long during summer, and
| short during winter. If I wake up by sunlight it's either
| like 4 in the morning in summer, or soon now like after 9
| in the morning.
| hinkley wrote:
| I dress it up in other terms but this is ultimately my primary
| complaint about Scrum. It uses peer pressure to moralize about
| acceptable sleep patterns.
| jjulius wrote:
| I'm completely ignorant here, but my understanding is that
| Scrum is (perhaps at a high, reductive level) a software
| workflow/collaboration tool. Genuinely curious how that ends
| up being used to moralize about acceptable sleep patterns.
| MortyWaves wrote:
| Standups?
| CleanRoomClub wrote:
| What about standups? Are you implying that having to be
| somewhere at a certain time in the morning impedes your
| ability to go to sleep at a reasonable time so you can
| get a healthy amount of sleep?
| YokoZar wrote:
| Yes. Isn't that obvious? Everyone has different natural
| sleep patterns, some have later cronotypes. Meetings set
| too early in the day for your body's preferred time to be
| asleep will result in having to wake up with an alarm to
| attend them.
|
| My team moved our daily standup later in the day to
| accommodate my delayed sleep phase and it's been
| extremely helpful to getting a full night's uninterrupted
| sleep.
| hinkley wrote:
| There you go moralizing about acceptable patterns of
| sleep.
|
| Crepuscular and nocturnal predators require tribes of
| humans to have some number of members who are tuned to be
| either awake before sunrise or awake long after sunset.
| Without people with genes to go bed late and wake up late
| we wouldn't be here having this conversation.
|
| In modern society the former are lionized and the latter
| are villified as making bad choices.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I can pick when I go to sleep and wake, I've worked 3rd
| shift, 9 - 5 and resturant hours with no issue.
|
| Wouldn't a tribe that is able to do as I can have the
| greatest evolutionary advantage and thus outcompete the
| tribes requiring specialization like you describe?
| YokoZar wrote:
| Unfortunately, not everyone has quite the same natural
| flexibility you describe. "Shift worker syndrome" has
| been known for decades, though a fortunate subset of
| people just seem immune.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| I can get into my bed at a certain time, I can put my
| head on my pillow, but I can't force sleep.
| hinkley wrote:
| If you don't show up at a particular time in the morning
| then you're a horrible person and not a Team Player. Every
| day, year after year.
|
| Good teams make it after everyone would have reasonably
| absorbed their coffee. But some teams get pushed earlier.
| Particularly if there are people in EST, CST, and
| definitely if you've got people in India, where 9 am PST is
| when you should be reading your kids bedtime stories.
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| Sounds like a retro topic.
|
| Move standup to 10:30am so Todd can sleep in
| hinkley wrote:
| Often it's a boss proving they're in charge by setting the
| times.
|
| It's also a handy way to keep raises small. Oh you are
| being a human and we don't give raises to people who are
| human. Meets expectations, 2% raise.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Not only that but also hurting all others kinds of flex time
| and smarter commuting, even if you're awake.
|
| At one office job, we regularly worked from home around
| 9-10am and would only commute after the morning rush hour
| faded away.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| When my wife had our children, she (and I) were handed them,
| stuck in a room, then distrurbed for tests and briefings every
| 90 minutes for 3 days.
|
| How anyone can recover from something as savage as childbirth
| is beyond me. It is no small miracle that she was able to walk,
| let alone care for two new babies and herself (with my help,
| but there's only so much I can do to assist with breastfeeding
| or healing of major trauma).
|
| At one point I asked all the nurses to leave and not come back
| for 6 hours in very angry tones.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| This mirrors my experience as well. It's so weird. Give us a
| break!!
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I stayed in a nice suite in a hotel once and it was the same
| until I put the do not disturb sign on the door
|
| It was like they were obsessed with busy work, I couldn't
| tell if they didn't want me there or if this was VIP
| treatment to them
|
| It was in another country
| willcipriano wrote:
| We had to keep our daughter on a photocopier looking device
| for bilirubin as well as the tests. Nobody told me how common
| this is so I also got to enjoy a feeling of panic and dread
| while that was going on.
|
| Plus my boss kept calling me.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > Given the findings, [...] clinicians need to inform patients
| [...] after a heart attack, says Rowe. This should also be
| considered at the hospital, where tests and procedures would
| ideally be conducted during the daytime to minimize sleep
| interruptions.
|
| #1 - For most patients, it ain't merely "tests and procedures"
| which interfere with sleeping in a hospital at night.
|
| #2 - After a major injury, it ain't just nighttime when you need
| to sleep. Again, most hospitals seem determined to make that as
| difficult as they possibly can.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Which could mean sleeping is good for the heart
| simmerup wrote:
| It says as much in the article
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