[HN Gopher] Attention lapses due to sleep deprivation due to flu...
___________________________________________________________________
Attention lapses due to sleep deprivation due to flushing fluid
from brain
Author : gmays
Score : 482 points
Date : 2025-10-31 13:14 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
| rtaylorgarlock wrote:
| Long live healthy sleep for brain health, and thank goodness
| light exercise helps this same glymphatic system.
| cestith wrote:
| ISTR that light exercise also helps with quality of sleep.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It stands to reason.
| stOneskull wrote:
| It lays to drain.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| I slept around 5 hours last night split up into two periods
| because my baby daughter woke up crying from fever and wanted to
| play / was hallucinating / etc. She's totally fine now but I am
| wondering if there is a correlation between dementia and having
| kids.
| aethrum wrote:
| Probably negatively correlated cause you have someone to
| interact with in your old age/better chance of community :)
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Also I think of (hopefully at least one of) my three kids as
| a diversed retirement portfolio :)
| arethuza wrote:
| I remember this quote from when we had young kids:
|
| _" Insanity is hereditary. You can get it from your
| children."_
|
| And then as soon as they are in their 20s and reasonably self
| sufficient we had to get a puppy to keep me sane!
| spockz wrote:
| Long days and short years.
|
| Did you have empty nest syndrome?
| arethuza wrote:
| More like empty head syndrome - but getting a dog was the
| best thing I've done in years.
| sarchertech wrote:
| I'm on my 3rd (she's 1 week old today) at 42. With the first 2
| it was only terrible for the first couple months. Once I just
| got used to going to sleep at 9:30 I was mostly fine.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Yeah that's the trick, sleep asap
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| We're expecting our first in a few months.
|
| NGL I'm low key wondering if my messed up natural rhythm of
| 9pm-4am is going to be potentially handy.
| zurichisstained wrote:
| I have a similar natural rhythm, or I should say "had". For
| the first year, especially the first few months, it was a
| godsend (for my wife, especially), but now that we're in a
| fairly consistent sleep routine with our two year old
| (~8pm-7am), I've shifted to something more like 8pm-1am out
| of necessity.
|
| Although... I was up until 4am and got up at 6:30am and
| feel surprisingly great, so it still happens from time to
| time. :)
| Tade0 wrote:
| As a father of two I would say "nope", primarily because
| you won't be deciding the rhythm. Best you can do is
| coordinate sleep with your partner so that there's at least
| one somewhat functioning parent at all times.
|
| As I'm typing this my 1.5yo is napping. I had maybe 6h of
| sleep but I'm after (part time) work and at home already,
| so I should probably nap as well.
|
| Can't. My adult body won't go to sleep right now even
| though I'm feeling drowsy because it's too bright, too loud
| and chiefly I already had too much caffeine in the morning
| and I have like 15 minutes until I'll have to head out to
| collect my older child from preschool.
|
| My SO is knocked out cold at the moment though, so I'll be
| relying on her this evening.
| debo_ wrote:
| This kind of fear is a quick route to insomnia. One of the most
| effective ways to reduce sleep is to worry about it.
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| And when that happens, of course HN has the answer
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15997016
| debo_ wrote:
| I think CBTI is pretty horrible but I'm happy it works for
| some people.
|
| There's so much helpful stuff out there now it's rather a
| blessing.
| Mizza wrote:
| Memory loss from sleep deprivation is an evolutionary
| advantage. If you remembered how rough the first few months of
| new children are, you wouldn't do it again.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| I mean the baby stage doesn't last very long. I dont even
| remember the sleepless nights from my own kids anymore lol
|
| Chronic sleep deprivation is the larger issue. And how we
| really don't have treatments on how to fix that, and how
| ultimately sleep phase issues are a social issues (being forced
| to follow a fixed modern schedule). Not to mention how closely
| that's tied to ND people. So a lot of us deal with sleep issues
| since we were little, but work and school dont give us the
| flexibility we need. For example, flex hours could be helpful
| here. I would rather work 10am to 6pm or 11am to 7pm most days.
| Or 5-6 hours during the day and 2-3 hours late at night.
| chasebank wrote:
| "Chronic sleep deprivation is the larger issue. And how we
| really don't have treatments on how to fix that"
|
| Sure we do, however, not everyone is willing to hike 20-30
| miles a day and sleep in a tent. It's not practical but it is
| very effective.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| Physically exhausting yourself isnt a solution. Its
| tangential to the real issue. Its a bit like suggesting you
| can solve anxiety caused by trauma by drinking large
| amounts of alcohol everyday. No, instead we should be
| treating trauma. Its like putting autistic kids through
| rough ABA therapy, no instead we should finding
| accommodations and support for autistic people.
|
| People have natural sleep rhythms. Society should conform
| to that, instead capitalism demands we conform to what it
| deems profit maximizing.
| chasebank wrote:
| Not physically exhausting yourself is the real issue.
| It's our natural state as humans. We're not meant to be
| staring at screens having discussions about chronic sleep
| deprivation on an internet forum, we're meant to be
| outside moving our bodies.
| sureglymop wrote:
| I agree with you. I regularly have strong insomnia and I
| have tried physical exhaustion.
|
| It usually works for the first few days of doing it but
| then it's like my body (probably moreso my mind) gets
| used to it and it doesn't help with sleep anymore.
|
| Arguably it feels even more unhealthy because it's like
| my body is fully exhausted and tired but my mind won't
| let me sleep so no restoration can happen.
| randerson wrote:
| I suffered chronic insomnia most of my life and seen my fair
| share of experts and read a few books about it. There are
| definitely treatments for the majority of insomniacs.
|
| Sleep deprivation is often caused by alcohol, inconsistent
| sleep/wake times, high color temperature lighting (>3000K) in
| the hours before bed, failure to spend time outdoors in
| natural light in the morning, temperature too warm (68F is
| ideal), caffeine (or other stimulants) in the afternoon,
| associating the bedroom with tasks other than sleep and sex,
| or simply spending too much time in bed.
|
| Following doctor's advice for the last one: Start by going to
| bed at, say, 1am and waking up at 6am. Follow this without
| fail for a few weeks. You'll be exhausted but keep at it.
| Eventually you should find yourself falling asleep quickly.
| If you wake up exhausted, pull back bedtime by 10 minutes. Do
| this for a week. Rinse and repeat until you are waking up at
| 6am refreshed. That is how you determine how many hours your
| body needs to sleep, and how long you should be in bed.
| Helped me.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| I'm autistic with delayed sleep-wake cycle. For autistics
| DSWPD is pretty common. There's just no fixing that for the
| vast majority of us, we're just expected to follow strict
| schedules and if we are underslept, too bad for us.
|
| ND people get this pretty badly. 2023 study: The incidence
| of sleep problems in ASD patients ranges from 32 to 71.5%,
| especially insomnia, while an estimated 25-50% of people
| with ADHD
|
| Insomnia is different, but tbf, insomnia for many people
| can't be treated well or if not at all. CBT is helpful if
| you look at the studies and ignore the follow up studies
| showing relapses between 40-70%. We can stuff people with
| melatonin and hypnotics but after a while that no longer
| works. So looking at this, it looks like things like drugs
| and CBT can help 70% of insomnia sufferers but the relapse
| rate is as high as 70%, so we're looking at people who can
| actually be cured as low as 15-20% of total insomnia
| sufferers.
|
| Its not caffeine or screens for us, its just how the
| machinery of the human body works. This is like telling a
| depressed person to just 'cheer up.' I'm glad that worked
| for you, but your story is just an anecdote, and the
| science for this is still pretty dismal unfortunately.
|
| The science can't work because at this point we're going
| against our nature. A lot of people cannot subscribe to a
| modern industrialized sleep schedule because its not
| natural for us to have extremely strict sleep and wake
| times.
| aliljet wrote:
| What have you done when your toddler wakes up at random hours
| during the night to interrupt your sleep and come and play?
| That's what has truly obliterated our sleep. Everything else
| was a passing fad that was minimally painful at best..
| freedomben wrote:
| Ah, those days were the absolute grinder for me. How a precious
| and sweet little baby girl can become an absolute monster all
| night long, and then wake up the next day back to her normal
| self while leaving me a hollowed out mess of a human is a
| mystery for science to solve someday.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| aren't they the best though? but yeah, back to the grind, and
| now i also have her respiratory disease and am trying to
| launch my startup off the ground ...
| ferguess_k wrote:
| I wonder if a 30-min nap improves the situation. But I need to
| tell the brain to hold the flushing until the nap.
| rtaylorgarlock wrote:
| There's controversy over exact mechanisms involved in
| glymphatic function, so suffice it to say that _allegedly_ even
| just NSDR / yoga nidra will engage a rest deep enough for
| glymphatic function to engage/improve
| DenisM wrote:
| I was disappointed the article didn't mention that. Can you
| give me some pointers. I will use Google but HN curated
| content is often a better starting point. :)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Anecdotally, it seems to. I have laid down and closed my eyes
| even for a short while. And believe that I have even had a
| "flushing" sensation, that feels like a mental fog being lifted
| (or "drained", I guess).
|
| I pop up 5 minutes later and feel completely refreshed.
| nullstyle wrote:
| Fwiw, i have the opposite experience of napping. Napping adds
| to mental fog for me especially for the hour immediately
| after napping. Its not until several hours later that i
| actually experience any loss of mental fog or increase in
| clarity.
| g-b-r wrote:
| It probably depends on how much sleep you're lacking, and
| how long the nap is.
|
| My experience after sleeplessness nights is that even few
| seconds help significantly, especially when you're almost
| unable to function anymore.
|
| If the nap lasts longer than 30 minutes, though, you have a
| good chance of feeling groggy afterwards.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| I had the same experience. The only trick is to keep it
| short, like 5-10 minutes. Any longer and the nap may bring
| negative impacts.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| Agree though it's 10 minutes for me.
|
| When I owned some property out in the country, it was a 2 1/2
| hour car trip to get there. Sometimes I just couldn't finish
| the drive home but pulling over to the side of the road for a
| 10-minute nap made me feel fully refreshed.
| 256_ wrote:
| I do something similar, although there's an added peculiarity
| when I do it. I lie down for 5 minutes and wake up 9 hours
| later.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > I wonder if a 30-min nap improves the situation.
|
| I pretty much wait until I feel drowsy, and then take a 15-30
| minute nap
| jongjong wrote:
| Good to know that the brain finds a way to flush itself while
| awake. I think I've become pretty good at putting unused parts of
| my brain to sleep while awake. My brain is like that of a dolphin
| now.
|
| But on rare occasions (like a couple of times a year), I get
| migraine auras and stuff disappears from my field of view. Can
| last about an hour. I feel like that's my visual cortex falling
| asleep.
| paglaghoda wrote:
| Rest in peace to all the college dudes covering the whole
| syllabus within 24 hours of the exam
| wslh wrote:
| It is always great to follow the instructions from a
| psychiatrist [1].
|
| [1]
| https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/08/how_to_take_ritalin_...
| plmpsu wrote:
| I miss her.
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| What happened? Did they pass or something or just stop
| posting or what?
| _--__--__ wrote:
| TLP was doxxed in a way that threatened their real life
| psychiatry practice, briefly blogged on Tumblr under a
| different psuedonym, and has since had little online
| presence other than rare tweets and randomly dropping a
| self-published book on Amazon (_Sadly, Porn_ by 'Edward
| Teach').
| thesmtsolver wrote:
| This is just outdated, bad and dangerous advice that a ton of
| recent research invalidates.
|
| 1. Ritalin, and other stimulants are not cognition enhancing
| for non-ADHD adults and may in fact do the opposite.
|
| https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/smart-drugs-can-
| decrease...
|
| 2. > Because the doctor will rigorously apply artificial and
| unreliable diagnostic categories backed up by invalid and
| arbitrary screens and queries to make a diagnosis. So after
| this completely subjective and near useless evaluation is
| completed, your doctor should be able to exercise prudent
| clinical judgment to decide if Ritalin could be of benefit.
|
| What else can you do for psychiatric conditions? We don't
| have a magic ADHD-o-meter but know that it statistically
| impacts lifespan, health, etc. Even for more objective
| measures like blood glucose, BP, BMI, clinical interventions
| are based on discrete thresholds that don't exist in nature.
| znpy wrote:
| Not a college dude, but i used to work on shits (including
| night shifts) and adjusting to and from a five-nights
| (23:30-07:30) shift isn't that pleasant either.
| nfriedly wrote:
| I think you meant to say "...I used to work on _shifts_... "
|
| That, or maybe try a laxative.
|
| (Man, if ever there was a time I wanted emoji support on HN,
| this is it!)
| kurisufag wrote:
| anecdotally, i never feel better than when i haven't slept. spent
| 8pm tuesday -- 8pm thursday this week awake nursing cheap energy
| drinks, and not only could i manage a higher-than-usual level of
| focus, i was genuinely content.
|
| bombed a midterm halfway though, but at least i felt good about
| it.
| barrenko wrote:
| Well, not sleeping through the night, you'll feel genuinely
| euphoric around dawn, it's one of the most immediate "cures"
| for clinical depression.
| jcims wrote:
| I've got pretty bad ADHD and I find that my mind is more quiet,
| focused and productive on mornings after a night of 2-4 hrs of
| sleep than it has ever been on meds or anything else. It all
| falls apart by the afternoon, but for a while it's a nice
| feeling.
| 90ne1 wrote:
| I see the same thing in myself.
|
| I've attributed it to a my brain moving to power-saving mode
| and muting some of my anxiety / perfectionism tendencies. Does
| this explanation resonate with you at all?
| kurisufag wrote:
| That's possible. It feels a lot like the placebo component in
| drinking: if you're free to ignore one of the few things you
| need to /live/, it should be much easier psychologically to
| be carefree (similar to "oh, haha, i'm drunk, might as well
| get wacky").
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| It's not unusual to feel good after pulling an all-nighter.
| Sleep is when re-uptake of serotonin takes place, so if you
| interrupt it you end up with a surplus. Although there are also
| other possible explanations [1]
|
| 1. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2214505120
| taeric wrote:
| I'm assuming it is similar to the "runners high" people get
| at the end of a long run? You will feel very energized in
| ways that don't make sense. And if you don't force yourself
| to just lay down and pass out, you can keep going for longer
| than you would have thought. Will crash harder, though, if my
| experience is common.
| rtaylorgarlock wrote:
| Age sounds like a factor here. I know zero long-term healthy
| ppl in 30s and beyond who act/think this way.
| freedomben wrote:
| Indeed, as a 20 year old I would stay up all night pretty
| regularly for work and occasionally fun. At 40 I'm not sure I
| would live through it, at least not in a cognitive state
| where I could converse.
| jtuple wrote:
| I've done a few all-nighters in my 30s and 40s, and they
| generally feel the same as my 20s. Still get that clear
| headed, high focus second wind around 4am that carries
| through until noon or so.
|
| But, I definitely crash harder than I did in my 20s and need
| longer to recover after. In my 20s, would be fine if the next
| night was a normal one, now it takes multiple days.
|
| It's definitely something I try to avoid at this age, as
| opposed to just being standard procedure back in college.
| boogieknite wrote:
| anecdotally i feel pretty good when im buzzed but reality is my
| performance is impaired. there is a teeter-totter of
| overconfidence and impairment where the liquid confidence
| actually helps more than the impairment impairs but its a sweet
| spot
| kurisufag wrote:
| sleep deprivation definitely reduces raw reasoning ability.
| in some cases, though (and this is true for getting buzzed as
| well) the trade-off is absolutely productive.
| cyberdrunk2 wrote:
| I wonder if this could help explain why creatine helps mitigate
| the effects of sleep deprivation. Since creatine aids in water
| retention.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16416332/
| layer8 wrote:
| It's not clear how water retention would help with the needed
| flushing.
| regularfry wrote:
| Hypothetically, more water retention would mean that the
| fluid being flushed is less concentrated, and if the flushing
| mechanism is triggered by a certain concentration level then
| it'll happen less frequently.
|
| Hard to imagine that it would be worth more than a few
| percent though.
| layer8 wrote:
| Less flushing sounds like it would also worsen the sleep
| deprivation, even if it reduces the momentary lapses.
| jorvi wrote:
| Mix your cheap instant coffee with creatine powder and ORS for
| that ultimate early morning flavor bomb!
| zer00eyz wrote:
| The mechanism of creatine isn't that straight forward.
|
| You need to take it for a while for it to build up, and for
| water to accumulate in cells.
|
| It would also be disgusting in a cup of coffee!
| pawelduda wrote:
| Don't forget to intensely shake your head after consumption
| for a proper brain flush
| huemaahn wrote:
| Welp, now I'm bout to make the nastiest coffee known to man
| for the next 3 months
| Citizen8396 wrote:
| I would imagine it has more to do with its principal function
| in recycling ADP back to ATP (fuel for cells). People who are
| sleep deprived also have impaired glucose metabolism, meaning
| that the cellular "fuel pipeline" is impeded. Perhaps creatine
| is especially helpful under these conditions.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1991337/
| earless1 wrote:
| So biological garbage collection pauses then? skip sleep, and the
| brain tries to run gc cycles during runtime. Causing attention
| and performance latency spikes. Evolution wrote the original JVM.
| layer8 wrote:
| Luckily it doesn't clear all unreferenced memory, though.
| DenisM wrote:
| Cleanup is an LRU process.
|
| Once a memory lapses you have to relearn from life experience
| (or not at all).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| No, a lapsed memory can be provoked. It doesn't have to be
| relearned. It is "lapsed" because the organizational path
| to it within your brain has been lost, like a book in a
| library that has been left out of the card catalog, but
| just like the book, if you happen to find it anyway, it
| will be there.
|
| Compare, from https://evolutionistx.wordpress.com/2016/12/1
| 6/anthropology-... :
|
| > at the first news of English ships in the area, Buckley
| rushed to the spot. He attempted to make contact, but
| couldn't swim out to the ship and couldn't convince the
| ship to send a boat to him (Buckley had, at this point,
| forgotten how to speak English.) Buckley was again
| heartbroken until another ship showed up, and he found the
| English colonists and tried to approach them:
|
| > "Presently some of the natives saw me, and turning round,
| pointed me out to one of the white people; and seeing they
| had done so, I walked away from the well, up to their
| place, and seated myself there, having my spears and other
| war and hunting implements between my legs. The white men
| could not make me out-my half-cast colour, and
| extraordinary height and figure [Buckley was around 6'5" or
| taller,]-dressed, or rather undressed, as I was-completely
| confounding them as to my real character. At length one of
| them came up and asked me some questions, which I could not
| understand; but when he offered me bread-calling it by its
| name-a cloud appeared to pass from over my brain, and I
| soon repeated that, and other English words after him. ...
|
| > "Word by word I began to comprehend what they said, and
| soon understood, as if by instinct, that they intended to
| remain in the country; that they had seen several of the
| native chiefs, with whom-as they said-they had exchanged
| all sorts of things for land; but that I knew could not
| have been
|
| I submit that it takes more than a day to learn English if
| you don't already know it.
|
| Once I was in a Toys-R-Us and noticed a cover image among
| the bottom-of-the-barrel DVD display which caused me to put
| what I was doing on hold for several minutes while I stared
| at the DVD. I bought it, and it turned out to be a movie I
| had watched many times when I was very young, but that
| information hadn't been accessible to me.
| jyounker wrote:
| Are you sure about that?
| bigbuppo wrote:
| I forgot what I was going to type, but I didn't get enough
| sleep last night.
| blauditore wrote:
| Fun fact: Suppressed/hidden/lost memories due to trauma that
| appear to re-surface through therapy are not a real thing, as
| previously thought (and still by some psychotherapists).
| Nowadays it's understood by psychology that any memories "re-
| surfacing" in therapy are in fact newly created, although the
| patient themselves cannot tell the difference. Allegedly,
| whole accusations of childhood abuse may have been created
| out of thin air, without the victim realizing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovered-memory_therapy (see
| research section)
| slater wrote:
| Gonna need some citations on that "fun fact"
| blauditore wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovered-memory_therapy
| (especially the research section)
| svnt wrote:
| That is extremely weak to nonexistent counter-evidence
| that seems to focus on supporting Loftus, who has put a
| lot of effort into the defense of her public persona. I
| don't disagree that it is possible to manufacture
| memories but the evidence isn't there to support your
| conclusion or the converse.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Recovered-memory therapy (the topic of the Wikipedia
| article) is very clearly quack science and has been
| discredited.
|
| Some of the techniques used in the therapy include giving
| patients sedative-hypnotic drugs to put the patient in a
| waking dream-like state while the therapist asks leading
| questions to get them to "remember" an event. The same
| drugs they used are known to be associated with false
| memories, like when someone falsely recalls something
| from a vivid dream as having actually happened.
| svnt wrote:
| It has fallen out of favor based on a lack of evidential
| support, for sure. It has not really been dismantled
| publicly scientifically, but mostly quietly, perhaps in
| order to protect its practitioners, perhaps because the
| research cannot currently be ethically conducted.
|
| I am not advocating for it, just stating the near total
| lack of substantive scientific evidence presented either
| in support or opposed.
| ghurtado wrote:
| Claim: "modern cancer research is a scam"
|
| Proof: "colloidal silver has been used to attempt to cure
| cancer".
|
| Solid logic.
| ghurtado wrote:
| People downvoting a request for supporting evidence is
| peak Hacker News.
| fsckboy wrote:
| people demanding supporting evidence without expending
| any effort themselves is peak internet.
| jjk166 wrote:
| The onus of proof lies on those making a claim. If you're
| unwilling to back up what you say, don't say it.
| nwienert wrote:
| In science. On a casual forum you have no obligation and
| I'd rather someone leave a short comment so I at least
| know, if I'm interested I'll go look and verify myself.
| theshackleford wrote:
| It's not my job to track down proof only every bullshit
| claim thrown at me.
| layer8 wrote:
| People can remember things that hadn't re-entered their
| mind for decades. It certainly happened to me a number of
| times (completely trauma-unrelated and not actively
| elicited).
| worldsayshi wrote:
| My guess is that long term memory recovery is inherently
| a reconstruction from the pieces that you have retained.
| So it is not unlikely to include dreamed up parts.
| layer8 wrote:
| The accuracy of recollection can certainly vary, but the
| point is that _some_ information is retained long-term
| even when it isn't made use of in the meantime. Of course
| one could argue that actually it is being made use of
| unconsciously, but I'm skeptical of that, given the
| relative irrelevance of the details that can be
| recollected. It's also not that difficult to imagine that
| some memory-representing micro-structures in the brain
| just happen to be stable over decades even when they
| remain untapped.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The debunked recovered memory therapy was something
| different: They would use different techniques and
| leading questions to try to get a patient to think they
| remembered something that may not have happened at all.
|
| Some of the techniques included hypnosis or even giving
| the patients (including children) sedative-hypnotic drugs
| before pressuring them with the leading questions.
|
| If they could eventually get the person or child to claim
| to have some memory of the event (after asking a lot of
| leading questions and maybe even drugging them) they
| considered it to be a recovery of the memory.
| bpj wrote:
| This has been my experience as someone who has
| experienced childhood trauma, and what I've inferred from
| my therapist. He taught me that the memories I have are
| typically exaggerations of what happened and it's hard to
| pin down what truly happened. The only evidence I have
| that has any merit is my siblings can corroborate with
| similar experiences since it happened to all of us, and
| I'm sensitive to things related to these traumas. Almost
| every day I can feel the things that happened, and on my
| worst days these areas are much more sensitive.
|
| On top of that, I have legitimate memories that were not
| traumatic, but still related to the same traumas because
| said person attempted to encourage these activities
| throughout my young life on rare occasions. I didn't
| remember what happened as a kid, but I knew something
| wasn't right and I wasn't comfortable. It wasn't until I
| was almost 30 that I had my first "flashback" which was a
| fractured memory, I still remember it looked like a faded
| photograph in my mind, and it was accompanied by an
| extremely uncomfortable feeling.
|
| The re-surfacing memories aren't real in a sense, but in
| my case they aren't entirely fake either.
|
| I wonder if it's possible that things can be completely
| imagined with absolutely no basis what-so-ever in certain
| circumstances, and I also wonder how difficult it is to
| discern that. It seems to be a difficult concept to
| manage.
| warmedcookie wrote:
| Indeed. I was browsing a Nintendo fan site I made in 1998
| on archive.org when I was just 11 years old. I don't
| remember every detail about making it, but my brain had
| no problem stitching all the pieces it did retain back
| together.
|
| On the other hand, I do have some Gandalf "I have no
| memory of this place" moments for other things.
| Aurornis wrote:
| A valid memory spontaneously re-entering your mind is
| different.
|
| The idea of "repressed memories" was that people had
| hidden memories that they couldn't access, even if they
| tried. According to the theory, even if someone brought
| up the past event and tried to remind the person about
| it, they would be unable to recall it happening because
| their brain had blocked it out.
|
| The idea was that only intervention by a therapist or
| some other special event could help the person "unlock"
| the repressed memories, making them available for
| remembering again.
|
| What was really happening was that some therapists were
| leading people into "remembering" things that didn't
| happen through aggressive prompting and pushing, much
| like what happens when an aggressive investigator
| convinces a vulnerable person to falsely confess to
| something they didn't do.
| tehjoker wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if there are inaccessible, partly
| corrupted memories encoded in the hippocampus. I suspect
| most of them cannot be prompted by a therapist though,
| and likely there is no practical way to recover them.
| strbean wrote:
| I think it's all a matter of finding a trigger (or
| reference) to grab the memory. A therapist talking to you
| almost certainly wouldn't achieve that, but walking down
| the street and smelling an odd smell might.
| tehjoker wrote:
| I think it depends on the stage of degradation and
| whether the network is still connected to something that
| can interpret it.
| rkhassen9 wrote:
| I once found a recording of a lab session in high school
| physics. A day I completely forgot about. A moment that
| had no bookmarks in my brain.
|
| Other things about that day were surfaced. How my braces
| felt and the fear I felt about forgetting a textbook.
|
| All real, but unsurfaced until then.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| That makes sense considering that human memory is
| strongly based on associations. Activating nearby
| memories can bring things back.
|
| If you hear the first tones or words of a song you're
| much more likely to be able to tell the lyrics that
| follow compared to being asked to say those lyrics based
| on the title.
| kulahan wrote:
| They won't remember it accurately anyways, so it's kind
| of a moot point.
|
| Though you're right - a specific scent can easily call up
| an ancient, forgotten memory.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| This is a more precise statement than just "you can
| recall things you thought you forgot".
|
| It is specifically about trauma, and generally you don't
| forget traumatic events and that's often a big part of
| the problem. We are not talking about trivial things like
| the name of your maths teacher in high school, which have
| a tendency to come and go.
|
| It is also specifically about therapy, that is an
| environment where you are actively encouraged to recall
| memories. We know how easy it is to make up memories,
| especially with the help of a third party (here, the
| therapist).
|
| Combine the two: memories that are hard to forget and an
| environment conductive to making false memories and it
| becomes very likely that the "lost" memories are
| completely made up.
| theshackleford wrote:
| > and generally you don't forget traumatic events
|
| That depends on how many you endured really. Only so much
| room in the old noggin with everything else important
| going on.
| Muromec wrote:
| >It is specifically about trauma, and generally you don't
| forget traumatic events and that's often a big part of
| the problem.
|
| Oh, of course you can.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Most people think that when their memory fails it's just
| the act of not remembering something, but misremembering
| something happens equally often, and completely making up
| shit also does happen. It's just like LLM hallucinations.
| bollocks9 wrote:
| What about Dr. Jim Tucker's two child psych cases, James
| Leininger and Ryan Hammons?
|
| One remembered memories of a WWII pilot named James Huston
| Jr. and the other a deceased Hollywood agent named Marty
| Martyn.
|
| Putting aside the reincarnation hypothesis for the moment,
| do you think the kids invented the details and
| coincidentally happened to match to a real person or were
| they fully coached? Maybe they didn't get enough sleep or
| got too much sleep?
| elmomle wrote:
| The statement "there is evidence of black swans" does not
| justify the conclusion "every swan is black".
| fsckboy wrote:
| if you specialize in looking for black swans, and you've
| looked for more black swans than anybody ever, and all
| the black swans you thought you'd found have turned out
| to be sooty white swans, people might be interested in
| reading about your experience and have their faith shaken
| that black swans actually exist.
|
| I'm reminded of the story of dragon sightings in Great
| Britain: after the printing press and newspapers and
| newspaper reporters chasing stories emerged, as news
| distribution out from city centers into rural areas
| increased, it seems dragons picked up and moved farther
| away, only being spotted in the hinterlands without news.
|
| You apparently would keep your mind open to the idea that
| dragons don't like the smell of newsprint as no other
| conclusion could be more plausible sheerly on the basis
| of logic?
| ghurtado wrote:
| > any memories "re-surfacing" in therapy are in fact newly
| created,
|
| You're saying that those memories are exactly the same as
| all the other memories.
|
| Every time you "recall" something, you are not pulling up
| some file that is always the same. You are actively
| recreating the memory.
|
| There's nothing "fun" or insightful about this, this
| mechanism has been known for a long time.
|
| Obviously it's not unique to psychotherapy.
|
| > may have been created
|
| Most things that "may" have happened do not warrant
| absolute statements such as "that's not a thing" (which,
| incidentally, is a particularly empty statement in any
| context, since every _thing_ is a thing)
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| There are two types of repression, however. The notion that
| primarily repressed memories--say, those of being
| breastfed, of being potty trained--could ever resurface is
| bogus of course. But it is that original violence, first of
| being cared for, and then having that care taken away and
| even, in many cases, transforming into authoritarian
| violence in order to be socialized properly, that
| precipitates all other "secondary" repressions like
| Freudian slips, even screen memories or rationalizations.
| No, most people traumatized past the age of say, 5, won't
| readily forget it. But perhaps they will have a way of
| reconciling with that trauma in an unhealthy or not fully
| conscious manner (consider self-harming, or drug abuse,
| making up a narrative in order to stay with a partner who
| violently abuses them). And they will not readily connect
| their traumatic experiences with their unhealthy coping
| mechanisms. And we could say that the connection between
| unconscious behaviors and trauma, when revealed, could be
| considered a "re-surfacing." Even if I can't remember being
| breastfed, I know that I find the warm embrace of another's
| arm's comforting and soothing, and this perhaps relates to
| my original state of relaxation as a child in my mother's
| arms, for instance.
| drdeca wrote:
| Why would it relate to your past experience of being held
| in your mothers arms, rather than to whatever inbuilt
| tendencies that lead one to respond well to being held in
| one's mother's arms while a baby?
|
| Like, if kissing is derived from impulses relating to
| breastfeeding (which is a hypothesis that, AIUI, is in
| good standing, though not the only one in good standing
| nor necessarily more favored than a couple others), I
| wouldn't think that therefore someone who was only ever
| bottle-fed as a baby would therefore not get anything out
| of kissing. The appeal of "my lips on another person"
| should be there regardless, just as it was for the first
| time a baby is breastfed (though, of course, it is also a
| cultural thing: not all cultures have had kissing as a
| standardized way of expressing affection, so whether one
| grows up in a context where kissing plays a role, that
| probably also plays a part in whether one finds it
| appealing to have one's lips on another person).
| dbspin wrote:
| The problem is not that memories can't be repressed.
| There's plenty of research demonstrating repression does
| exist as a defence mechanism. The problem is that even
| highly evocative memories can also relatively easily be
| falsified, or modified through elicitation and reframing.
| Since there's no neurological stenographer, there is no
| mechanism even in principle to identify the difference
| between the two. With potential consequences like the
| satanic panic of recovered and elicited memories of sexual
| abuse. That's what Elizabeth Loftus and others have shown,
| and shown so thoroughly that eye witness testimony should
| never be trusted.
| saltcured wrote:
| As a counterpoint to this, I am replying here because I
| can't make myself write a polite response to the GPP.
|
| Yes, witness testimony is always potentially flawed.
|
| But knowing "some repressed memory recovery is false"
| does not justify saying that repressed memories are not a
| real thing. Repressed memories do happen. They do come
| back sometimes. When they do, they are just as valid as
| any normal memory that a person thinks they always had.
|
| I know because I had them myself. Mine were of trauma in
| the age range from 5-9. I had a high "ACE score" when I
| eventually looked into this. I did not have any therapy
| session prompting the recall, I just remembered them
| spontaneously around age 15 when I was empathizing with a
| schoolmate who told me about domestic violence. It was a
| sickening feeling to have this whole phase of my past
| come unlocked.
|
| Amazingly, it submerged into repression again. I next
| remembered it at about age 20. In between, I had years of
| basically not remembering/knowing that I had any of this
| trauma or that I had experience the earlier recall. They
| all came back together, again triggered by an empathetic
| moment in college. Again it was disorienting to have this
| whole aspect of my past reopen.
|
| At that later point, I confronted people who were around
| my childhood and got enough of a painful discussion,
| confession, and apology to know that these memories were
| not invented.
|
| I had other forms of childhood trauma that never
| submerged. I don't know why this one section did.
|
| I find it very offensive for someone to make broad
| statements that these phenomena do not exist.
| eiginn wrote:
| This mirrors my experience as well of multiple instances
| over my life of repressing childhood trauma and some
| event or conversation suddenly bringing it back to the
| surface.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Not to minimize your experience or anything like that,
| I'm just thinking out loud: What's typically the
| delineation between repressed and "not on the mind at the
| moment"? We naturally "forget" things all the time
| because there's no need for them to be in our current
| context window, e.g. I can't recite every coffee shop
| I've been to, but maybe if you start talking about a
| coffee shop with uncomfortable seats, I'll remember the
| one I went to with uncomfortable seats. Not a comparable
| experience in general of course, but one wouldn't say I
| repressed the coffee shop. Is it more like if I started
| at "uncomfortable coffee shop", nothing came to mind, but
| then I later remembered only after smelling some special
| flavor of coffee beans they had had?
| mrsvanwinkle wrote:
| I can objectively say your reply minimizes the previous
| two posts who shared childhood traumas by the objective
| fact that you are implying (if they are not able to
| satisfy your Scientific Endeavor) that, if there is no
| delineation, then their repression of childhood trauma is
| equivalent and minimized or perhaps exalted if coffee is
| your religion to the repression of your religious
| experience of this coffee shop. If you were perhaps a
| child victim in this coffee shop maybe? You literally
| erased the trauma part. That is the delineation if you
| still need to think about this out loud
| saltcured wrote:
| A repressed memory and its associated knowledge and
| entailment is "not there" until triggered properly. To
| the extent that our autobiographical memories construct
| our sense of identity, repressed memories have been
| censored from ourselves. And, I think it is censored for
| a purpose, not because it was one too many bits of trivia
| to keep in ready memory. I think it is a coping mechanism
| like very deep and targeted denial or dissociation.
|
| When such memories come back, it can be like a mini
| identity crisis. You suddenly know things that are
| counter to your self-identity from the moment before.
| Once I was able to absorb the whole picture and not
| recoil back into repression, it became a permanent and
| unpleasant part of my self. .
|
| There can be flashbacks of related events, some of which
| I also might feel are remembered for the first time in a
| long time. Those little flashbacks might be like
| remembering your specific uncomfortable cafe. The overall
| memory recovery is like suddenly realizing I spent years
| in a theater of war, that happened to have such cafes in
| it.
| mrsvanwinkle wrote:
| Thank you so much, the parent thread was truly an
| uncomfortably disturbing read and your post is a
| necessary contrast to "rational" "objective" "minds"
| armchairing something so delicate with gross finality.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| You might "think" you had a repressed memory but it could
| all be completely made up. You might even get other
| people to believe it, because human memory is incredibly
| faulty. Shared delusions are literally a "known bug" of
| human biology. Wikipedia has a whole page on them
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux). The
| Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic (https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pitting_epi...) is yet
| another example
|
| The thing that changed though is since the 2010s everyone
| has a high definition camera in their pocket. Everything
| you do is recorded online. Kids that grew up in the last
| few years will have their entire childhood recorded in
| some way or another. Every movement tracked by GPS.
| Therefore, while I don't agree completely, I wouldn't be
| surprised if some assumptions about psychology are
| upended and a great deal of so called repressed memories
| turn out to be bogus when we can easily disprove them.
| saltcured wrote:
| Malicious suppression and gas-lighting are also known
| functions of human biology.
|
| Yes, real life is messy and ideals like justice are quite
| difficult or impossible to achieve.
|
| Don't assume you can cleverly deduce a nice, absolute and
| comfortable answer. That's just another coping mechanism
| called rationalization.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| The person you're responding to said they did the work of
| verifying themselves with third parties. Do you not
| believe that too? People dont suddenly just admit to
| committing severe abuse because they were convinced to do
| so. In fact, usually the opposite happens with abusers -
| they delude themselves into thinking the abuse never
| happened and believe/defend this very aggressively.
|
| This whole thread is gross. I'd say you should be ashamed
| of yourself but you likely lack the prerequisite self
| inspection.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Thanks so much. I was wanting to write a scathing
| response as well but you calmly explained what I wanted
| to. I had severe childhood abuse that was documented by
| third parties I'd completely forgotten about - when I
| remembered them in therapy, my therapist thought they
| were fake or delusional too and sorta gaslit me about it.
| I had to go hunt down the receipts, which for me was
| traumatic in and of itself and permanently severed a few
| relationships with my family members, which didn't have
| to happen. I fired her over it.
|
| The comments in this thread are indeed disturbing.
| Clearly many on this forum have led blessed lives and
| can't imagine people having it differently,
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Sure it's a real thing for memories to surface that were
| previously buried. It's happened to me.
|
| If it happens in therapy, that doesn't mean the memories
| are "implanted". And not all memories lack the ability to
| validate them... for example, if you've forgotten someone's
| name, then remember it later, you can call out to them by
| their name to confirm that you've correctly remembered it.
|
| Memories tumble around in the brain all the time, not all
| memories are easy to access, but that doesn't mean they're
| inaccessible.
|
| The point that memories can _also_ be implanted or
| fabricated during therapy is absolutely an important one,
| but dismissing the possibility for memories to resurface
| (and conflating any situation where this might happen with
| a specific type of discredited therapy) is needlessly
| reductive.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I beg to differ, or at least I'd need clarification, some
| people experience traumatic visions from what is assumed
| repressed memories (with or without therapy)
|
| It might be something that one might not understand if
| he/she doesn't live through it I guess
| bozhark wrote:
| Careful with this absolute assumption. The brain
| rationalizes. Though irrationally.
|
| Sometimes yes, created to validate, sometimes no, unlearns
| to disassociate
| layman51 wrote:
| This idea of unconscious memories perhaps being a type of
| fantasy is also discussed in this article too:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freud%27s_seduction_theory
| ghurtado wrote:
| I realize you're making a joke, but there is no such thing as
| "unreferenced memories", as in, something that is no longer
| in use and has been removed from the brain.
|
| Every memory your brain has ever produced is still there,
| even if most are beyond conscious access. Memories quite
| literally become a permanent part of you.
|
| A lot of people mistakenly think of human memory as a sort of
| hard drive with limited capacity, with files being deleted to
| make room for new ones. It's very much not like that.
| pdonis wrote:
| If you are implying that human memory has infinite
| capacity, that's not possible. The human brain is a finite,
| physical thing. It can't store an infinite amount of data.
|
| If you just mean that human memory has a finite capacity
| that's much larger than anyone has come close to reaching
| by storing the memories of a normal human lifetime, that
| might make sense.
|
| Do you have any references for your statements about
| memory? I'm not familiar with whatever science there is in
| this area.
| ghurtado wrote:
| I didn't mean either of the things that you are wondering
| whether I meant, so i can't give you evidence of those
| things you made up yourself.
|
| If you have questions about my comment, I'm happy to try
| to explain myself better
|
| "I didn't understand you at all, so you must have meant
| either A or B" is not the way to reach an understanding
| vanviegen wrote:
| Your words: "Every memory your brain has ever produced is
| still there [..]"
|
| How would that _not_ imply infinite storage?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It wouldn't imply infinite storage because human life is
| not infinite in time and memories do not accumulate at an
| infinite rate in storage consumed per unit time, so the
| total storage over a human lifespan is finite, so the
| claim can be true with finite storage.
|
| It is almost certainly false, but it doesn't require
| infinite storage to be true.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> human life is not infinite in time and memories do not
| accumulate at an infinite rate in storage consumed per
| unit time_
|
| Which would put it into the category of the second part
| of my comment--which the person I was responding to said
| was not relevant to what they meant.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> i can 't give you evidence of those things you made up
| yourself._
|
| I didn't ask for that. I asked if you have references for
| what _you_ said. Even if I misunderstood you, that
| shouldn 't be a reason for you not to give references for
| _your_ statements, if you have them.
|
| If you don't have any references to back up _your_
| statements, then I 'm not sure what you're basing them
| on.
| standardly wrote:
| > The human brain is a finite, physical thing. It can't
| store an infinite amount of data.
|
| True, but it doesn't really detract from his statement
| because do we really know what that upper bound even is?
| I don't think we come close to the theoretical storage
| limit... So saying "every memory you have is permanently
| stored" is effectively true, at least true enough for a
| thought experiment like this. Perhaps when people live to
| be 200 years old and we know more about the brain we can
| test this, though.
|
| I used to be weary of learning new, complex things,
| thinking I'd "lose" old knowledge XD
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I don 't think we come close to the theoretical
| storage limit_
|
| That was the point of the second part of my comment--
| which the person I was responding to said was not
| relevant to what he meant.
| jjk166 wrote:
| The claim that everything is there does not imply
| infinite, or even large capacity.
|
| Consider an exponentially weighted moving average - you
| can just keep putting more data in forever and the memory
| requirement is constant.
|
| The brain stores information as a weighted graph which
| basically acts as lossy compression. When you gain more
| information, graph weights are updated, essentially
| compressing what was already in there further. Eventually
| you get to a point where what you can recall is useless,
| which is what we would consider forgotten, and eventually
| the contribution of a single datapoint becomes
| insignificant, but it never reaches zero.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> The claim that everything is there does not imply
| infinite, or even large capacity._
|
| It implies enough capacity to store everything. But what
| you describe is _not_ storing everything.
|
| _> lossy compression_
|
| Which means you're _not_ storing all the information. You
| 're not storing everything.
|
| _> When you gain more information, graph weights are
| updated, essentially compressing what was already in
| there further._
|
| In other words, each time you store a new memory, you
| throw some old information away.
|
| Which the person I was responding to said does _not_
| happen.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Knowing almost nothing about memory and the brain, I don't
| know if I agree with "Every memory your brain has ever
| produced is still there".
|
| Memories seem to be constructed by a group of neurons
| together, and it seems clear that neurodegeneration is a
| thing, whether by trauma or due to aging. When pathways
| degenerate, maybe you have a partial memory that you brain
| can help fill the gaps with(and often incorrectly), but
| that does not make it the original memory.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Bullocks. Memories fade. Or do you really believe that
| 'subconsciously' I still know what I had for dinner today
| exactly 30 years ago?
|
| The way I understand it, it's just that, unlike on disk,
| the deletion process is not binary. Weak connections that
| are not revisited regularly gradually become weaker, until
| they're undistinguishable from noise (false memories).
| lux_sprwhk wrote:
| I had this experience at Big Bend State park that makes me
| think they are. I didn't bring enough water and camped in
| the primitive area. At night, I was dehydrated pretty bad.
| When I finally got a little sleep (it was tough to say the
| least), I had this vivid dream where I put a pebble in my
| mouth and started sucking on it to make saliva. Then I woke
| up for real, and I knew it because there was a lot of wind
| IRL, that wasn't in the dream. So I took out a coin from my
| back, put it in my mouth to make saliva, and got a little
| bit of relief. Enough for a couple hours until it was dawn,
| and had enough light to hike down to the restroom area.
|
| I don't know where I got this trick. Likely some survival
| show or some novel. But I don't have any background in
| survival, otherwise, I would have brought a lot more water.
|
| So my brain knew there was a memory that could help and
| made up a dream about it is my theory.
| Zenul_Abidin wrote:
| Is Sun Microsystems in the room with us?
| dathinab wrote:
| this might explain how "power napping" (<30min) can help so
| much when you are sleep deprived even through it's too short to
| really count as sleep. I wonder if you can find that when sleep
| deprived people power nap a "flush" happens then
| hinkley wrote:
| There's a phenomenon we have known about since at least the
| late 1980s when Race Across America riders were using it.
|
| Essentially these guys try to stay up for the first few days
| and then sleep less than 8 hours after that. Way less. Many
| of them end up hallucinating by the end, and only their
| extreme fitness levels probably save them from just dying
| from lack of sleep.
|
| The trick is that waking up to daylight makes you feel more
| rested. So the teams would have their riders sleep 2-3 hours
| from just before dawn until dawn so they would wake up to
| sunlight. Physiologically the difference is small, but
| psychologically it's much bigger.
|
| Some of the effect of power napping is likely the same sort
| of trickery, just as caffeine is partly trickery and partly
| adrenal.
| hinkley wrote:
| Skip enough sleep and parts of your brain will try to nap while
| you're doing things like meetings.
| timeinput wrote:
| Depending on the meeting it might be worth a nap even if I'm
| well rested.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| [This is one of those article titles that would really benefit
| from adding one more word.]
| cvoss wrote:
| Or some parentheses. Is "due to" naturally left-associative or
| right-associative? I would have said 'right', which gives the
| unintended reading of the sentence.
|
| Attention lapses due to (sleep deprivation due to flushing
| fluid from brain).
|
| (Attention lapses due to sleep deprivation) due to flushing
| fluid from brain.
| shahbaby wrote:
| > For example, what you don't want to do is NOT take amphetamines
| at testing if you had used them to study;
|
| Hard disagree there. If you get any anxiety during the test it's
| better to take it only while studying.
| lazide wrote:
| Huh? Care to explain?
| 85392_school wrote:
| Did you mean to reply to
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45772306>?
| epsilonic wrote:
| Exogenous ketones (such as BHB salts) are known to help with
| glymphatic drainage in the brain during sleep. I've used them
| extensively and have noticed improved sleep with nearly a
| doubling of the time spent in REM stage.
| smith7018 wrote:
| Could you go into detail what you take, how much, and when? I
| could always use a little boost for my sleep!
| epsilonic wrote:
| Sure. When I have a night of poor sleep or anticipate one, I
| usually take 6 grams of BHB salts in the morning on an empty
| stomach. You can work your way up to a maximum of 12 grams,
| but I would advise caution since it can cause diarrhea. I
| would start by buying the cheapest product (nutricost) you
| can find online; if it costs more than $80 for ~300g, then
| you're probably getting ripped off. I noticed that I have
| very lucid dreams and experience strong hypnagogic jerks when
| I take this supplement.
|
| Here is some literature that I've perused to support my
| experimentation with BHB salts:
|
| 1. b-hydroxybutyrate is a metabolic regulator of proteostasis
| in the aged and Alzheimer disease brain (https://www.scienced
| irect.com/science/article/pii/S245194562...)
|
| 2. Refueling the post COVID-19 brain: potential role of
| ketogenic medium chain triglyceride supplementation: an
| hypothesis (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/ar
| ticles/10.3...)
|
| My motivation for pursuing this was protracted sleep
| disturbance from long-covid.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| So... can we trigger it manually? I'd love to be able to lay down
| and press the 'flush brain' button.
| vrx-meta wrote:
| Research on NDSR, I have been using this for days I had to wake
| up without proper rest.
|
| If you have 15m, search this on YT for a guided practice and
| test it yourself.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I believe you were referring to NSDR (Non-Sleep Deep Rest)?
| Muromec wrote:
| Mixing up acronyms is on brand with sleep deprivation.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| NSDR, rather--Non-Sleep Deep Rest.
| niwtsol wrote:
| Kind of related, but there is a concept of polyphasic sleep -
| where you sleep for small increments throughout the day (like
| 30 minutes every 3 hours). I did it for a bit at a startup
| thinking we were "hacking sleep" and "getting more productive
| hours out of every day!" - It takes awhile to transition to
| it, but once there, your scheduled "sleeps" are insane, 15
| minutes, feel like straight to REM. The main problem was if
| you missed on schedule sleep you were a zombie.
| tetha wrote:
| Yeah, when I was looking into the plausibility and function
| of polyphasic sleep, I stumbled across studies from the US
| Airforce. Their conclusion was similar: In a controlled
| enviroment, it can be spectacular and work really, really
| well.
|
| However, it is very, very fragile to any kind of
| interruption, so they stopped looking into it.
| cestith wrote:
| When I worked an overnight shift and lived alone, I got
| into a pattern of 2 to 3 hours a go three times a day.
| These were after work, halfway or so through my personal
| time, and before work. I used these separate times in
| between sleeps for work, almost exclusively for chores, and
| a dedicated slot for hobbies. I started each one refreshed,
| which was great. It doesn't necessarily work so well when
| aligning your life with a partner.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Searching back, as I recall a video that was supposed to cause
| [increased] CSF flow, I did find this -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34764730 about suggestions
| some learning difficulties might be due to interrupted CSF
| fluid flow.
|
| The video (?) was related to clearing of plaques from the brain
| with a view to mitigating Alzheimer's effects.
|
| It was not the NSDR (Non-Sleep Deep Rest) videos a sibling
| commenter posted.
| krackers wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41942775
| g-b-r wrote:
| If you're very tired you should be able to fall asleep, or at
| least doze off, whenever you let yourself go.
|
| It seems likely that you'll get those flushes right after
| falling asleep, so a nap of a few minutes could help a lot.
|
| In my experience, after a night without sleep even a 30 seconds
| nap reinvigorates you significantly.
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| hmm.. this is interesting... the article says "spinal fluid exits
| the cerebrospinal fluid (csf) flows out of the brain... I wonder
| where it discharges these waste products. I ask because it is
| believed we have a sort of chimney on our backs. I think I read
| this on the article of the Irish lady who could detect alzheimers
| years before any modern medical detection systems. But maybe it
| is discharged in the gut? via the mesentery, the new organ they
| finally named fo rthe stuff that holds our intestines together.
| If anyone knows where it is discharged, please comment, I'm
| interested in this, because I do prolong waterfasts every 3
| months, and I strongly believe the brain drains waste into my
| mouth during that time, because the taste in my mouth is
| godawful, but if there are other exit points the brain discharges
| waste, we probably need to know about them.
| kingkawn wrote:
| The description of the mesentery as a single organ dates to the
| time of Da Vinci, at the latest.
| canadiantim wrote:
| I believe it's discharged basically half directly into the
| venous system in the neck, the other half goes through the
| lymphatic/glymphatic system and ultimately also the venous
| system in the neck. That being said, that's just based on our
| very crude understandings and I'm sure there are other
| pathways.
| jp57 wrote:
| Why do you think that the taste in your mouth is waste draining
| from your brain and not the result of some metabolic changes in
| your body from the fast? Ketosis is known to cause a metallic
| taste in the mouth, for example.
| alfonsodev wrote:
| What I understood from youtube gurus, take it with a grain of
| salt, is that your brain is taking ketones as source of energy
| to preserve the little glucose that goes into the system, and
| as result it consumes less oxygen.
|
| But I'm not sure the mouth taste comes from the brain's waste.
|
| To some degree, if you had your brain inflamed by bad eating
| habits, fasting would revert that and make the flushing more
| efficient as well.
|
| Again please take with with double grain of salt, since I don't
| even know inflame brain is a thing for sure, or the correct
| term.
| pstuart wrote:
| My pet theory is that dreams are the brain booting up/shutting
| down and the equivalent of old analog TVs that have the flash of
| static and bloom/collapse on the screen when turning off/on.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Sometimes when I get a really bad migraine and poor sleep
| together, I can literally feel a flushing feeling in my head once
| I can fall asleep.
| cozzyd wrote:
| As a chronic undersleeper, good thing I don't drive!
| codethief wrote:
| > The scientists found that during these lapses, a wave of
| cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flows out of the brain
|
| > Lewis and colleagues showed that CSF flow during sleep follows
| a rhythmic pattern in and out of the brain
|
| > Most significantly, they found a flux of CSF out of the brain
| just as those lapses occurred. After each lapse, CSF flowed back
| into the brain.
|
| I can't believe the authors of the article didn't address one of
| the most obvious questions: Where does the CSF flow to and where
| does it flow back from? It's not like there are pipes leading out
| of the brain, or the CSF will just leave my brain through my ears
| or anything, will it?1 What happens with the waste products? (1
| Though it would be kinda funny if this was where snot comes
| from.)
|
| EDIT: Wikipedia's got the answer:
|
| > Clearing waste: CSF allows for the removal of waste products
| from the brain,[3] and is critical in the brain's lymphatic
| system, called the glymphatic system. Metabolic waste products
| diffuse rapidly into CSF and are removed into the bloodstream as
| CSF is absorbed. When this goes awry, CSF can become toxic [...]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebrospinal_fluid
| svnt wrote:
| They didn't put it in there because knowing the flow of CSF is
| so elemental to performing research in the field that it would
| be a waste of everyone's time.
| codethief wrote:
| This is a pop sci article, though?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's not like there are pipes leading out of the brain
|
| There are, in fact, "pipes" leading out of the brain.
| Cerebrospinal fluid is (and this is probably somewhat
| oversimplified) produced from material in the bloodstream in
| the ventricles in the brain, flows through the system of
| ventricles and then out of the brain into the subarachnoid
| space around the brain and spinal cord, and is then reabsorbed
| into the bloodstream.
| cvoss wrote:
| And some people literally need an actual pipe implanted to
| assist with CSF drainage.
|
| https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/brain-
| shunt/abou...
| rickcarlino wrote:
| Could this be why SNRIs help some patients mitigate ADHD
| symptoms?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Could ADHD be caused by a broken flushing response? Lots of
| flushing followed by intense focus caused by the _tabula rasa_?
| delecti wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but that wouldn't really fit with my
| understanding of ADHD. It's not that we have a lack of
| attention ("defecit" of attention, as the name suggests), it's
| an impaired ability to direct it.
|
| To abuse a metaphor, the sleep-deprivation-induced spontaneous
| CSF flush is slamming on the brakes of a car, and ADHD related
| attention shifts would be more like a drunk toddler is turning
| the steering wheel wherever they please, but the gas/brakes
| still work fine.
| luciferin wrote:
| I suppose it's possible, but it seems less likely to me because
| ADHD is a life long neurodevelopmental disorder that shows
| [visible physical changes in the brain on
| scans](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7879851/). That
| said, there are statistically more people with narcolepsy who
| have ADHD, and the same goes for sleep apnea. There's a number
| of hypotheses I've read as to why, to name a couple: related
| epigenetic causes, or [possible misdiagnosis](https://pmc.ncbi.
| nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7336577/) (narcolepsy is much harder to
| diagnose than ADHD if you don't have textbook symptoms). So
| there is definitely something there.
| Citizen8396 wrote:
| Disordered sleep can cause executive dysfunction similar to
| ADHD, but it does not cause ADHD. It certainly can exacerbate
| it or be diagnosed incorrectly.
| Geee wrote:
| Not sure if it's related, but I have way more ADHD-like
| symptoms if I'm on late sleep schedule, but sleeping the same
| amount of hours.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| I hope that the actual medical field starts taking note of this.
|
| My wife still has to work 24 hour shifts with no sleep,
| performing emergency surgeries no matter how long it has been
| since she slept. During residency only a few years ago she and
| her co-residents were almost weekly required to do 36 hour shifts
| (on top of their regular 16 hours per day, 5 day per week
| schedule) and once even a 48 hour shift when the hospital was
| short staffed.
|
| Of course I'm sure they won't. No one cares if doctors are over
| worked.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I've never understood those long shifts. Unless a shift just
| means you are there but sleeping, what is the reason for
| allowing it? We don't let truck drivers do 24h shifts, why do
| doctors the world over seem to do this?
| munificent wrote:
| My understanding is that the research shows that the harm to
| patient care from information loss during doctor shift
| turnover is worse than the harm from fatigued doctors.
|
| Yes, a tired doctor sucks. But a tired doctor _who already
| has the patient 's state loaded into their head_ may still be
| better than doctor who is completely fresh in both senses.
|
| It's a hard problem.
| harperlee wrote:
| That only works if the mean stay in the hospital (or at
| least the critical care period) is several hours but also
| way below 24h...
| Timon3 wrote:
| Longer shifts mean fewer shift turnovers for any patients
| that stay a sufficient amount of time, especially if
| longer than 24h.
|
| The world doesn't run on boolean logic. A solution can
| _improve_ an issue without solving it completely.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| What about the harm to the doctor themselves+the harm to
| the patient? Would the sum of both be worse?
| arjvik wrote:
| One signed up knowing the risk
|
| (not defending, I also think its insane, just devils
| advocate)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > My understanding is that the research shows that the harm
| to patient care from information loss during doctor shift
| turnover is worse than the harm from fatigued doctors.
|
| This would not appear to apply to emergency surgeries. They
| aren't done by doctors who are familiar with the patient
| anyway. (Neither are non-emergency surgeries. Surgeries are
| done by doctors who do that kind of surgery. Familiarity
| with the patient is useful in deciding what surgery should
| be done, but not in doing the surgery.)
| renewiltord wrote:
| The European Working Time Directive has requirements for
| rest, etc. Either Europeans have much better hand-off
| procedures, they don't know how to comply with the rules
| they make, or they're fucking idiots who are going to kill
| people due to information loss during shift turnover. It
| was proposed decades ago. I wonder what compliance is like
| in Germany, etc.
| K0HAX wrote:
| Instead of 1 doctor covering a 24 hour shift, why not pair
| them and overlap?
|
| 12:00am - 6:00am: Doctor 1 and Doctor 4 are doing
| everything together.
|
| 6:00am - 12:00pm: Doctor 1 and Doctor 2 are doing
| everything together.
|
| 12:00pm - 6:00pm: Doctor 2 and Doctor 3 are doing
| everything together.
|
| 6:00pm - 12:00am: Doctor 3 and Doctor 4 are doing
| everything together.
|
| This way, all 4 doctors only do 12 hour shifts, and the
| patient's state is maintained continuously through all 24
| hours.
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| Doctors do not get along and that's too many Drs. Each
| patient often has multiple speciality Drs visiting them
| and reviewing their case up to 3 or 4 sometimes already.
| Imagine being on consult and trying to figure out which
| guy on a team of 4 you should talk to about such and
| such.
| someguyiguess wrote:
| If engineers ran the world
| lostlogin wrote:
| That's a lot of handovers.
| munificent wrote:
| Here's an anecdote that might help answer. When my wife
| was pregnant with our first doctor, she started
| hemorrhaging spontaneously ten weeks before her due date.
| We rushed to the ER.
|
| 1. Shortly after, a doctor A came in, asked some
| questions, looked at the chart, and told us she was
| having the baby _tonight._ Holy shit our life is about to
| get crazy and we 're going to be parents 2+ months early!
| He leaves.
|
| 2. Several hours later doctor B comes in. We ask about
| delivery. "Oh, no. You're not going to have the baby now.
| But you will have to be on bed rest until the due date."
| Jesus, my wife is going to have to quit her job.
|
| 4. Even more hours later, now the next morning, doctor C
| arrives. "OK, you're free to go home. No bed rest needed.
| Just let us know if anything else happens."
|
| My general experience with doctors is that you get as
| many unique opinions as there are doctors in the room.
| This is not an indictment of the profession. Human bodies
| are insanely complex, there is _way_ more variation
| between them than most people realize, and doctors are
| operating under very very limited time and information.
|
| Having overlapping doctors would likely cause even more
| patient confusion and increase the risk conflicting
| treatments. Also, it would obviously double the cost of
| care.
|
| (My wife and baby were fine. Partial abruption. Very
| scary and my daughter was born five weeks early, but no
| other significant problems.)
| arcticfox wrote:
| > Yes, a tired doctor sucks. But a tired doctor who already
| has the patient's state loaded into their head may still be
| better than doctor who is completely fresh in both senses.
|
| AI fixes this. Imagine the boot time of loading a patient's
| state from dozens of labs and files vs. a summary that gets
| you to exactly what they're going to end up remembering
| anyways. And if a doctor finds something interesting that
| the AI doesn't flag, they should be flagging it in the
| chart for the next doctor anyways.
| solsane wrote:
| In my experience, AI summarization is a pretty lame
| application. I don't really need a block of potentially
| wrong, rephrased text. I've got a feeling that the same
| applies to healthcare.
| munificent wrote:
| Jesus Christ you have to be fucking kidding me.
|
| Your solution to information loss during doctor handover
| is to insert a brainless hallucinating program with zero
| responsibility into the middle?
| cma wrote:
| The AMA works to prevent importing doctors from other
| countries, largely to maintain wages, but we don't have
| enough doctors.
|
| Doctors boards and AGME (partly governed by AMA, but there is
| some amount of public representation) control residency
| admissions and board certification. We don't necessarily want
| low admissions standards, but there is a lot potential
| conflict of interest in constraining supply.
|
| Some states, I think I read Florida recently, have started
| pushing back to allow in foreign doctors.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Here in Norway the doctor's association have worked hard
| against it, and talking to a relative which became a doctor
| some years ago, it's primarly because they want to keep the
| extra premium pay they get from the "uncomfortable hours" as
| it's called here.
| random3 wrote:
| I think both doctors and patients would want a different system
| for both doctors and patients. Having seen a poor performing
| medical system, and comparing it with the US medical system,
| all I can say it's that the US one doesn't seem designed to
| optimize health and well being of patients and, based on
| reading several articles representing doctors opinions, neither
| doctors'.
|
| I do think it's maximially optimized to extract revenue. That
| can sometimes be good (e.g. good access to healthcare) but
| often times it's not great.
|
| Given healthcare, along with education should be a national
| priority, both should be heavily "configured" to serve peoples'
| goals first and any financial goal should be secondary
| (although arguably useful).
|
| I suspect the current shareholder structures from hedge funds
| are (intentionally or not) driving things in the wrong
| direction wrt to public health goals. This is article from a
| few days ago is also interesting
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45680695
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Allow me to be a bit blunt here:
|
| Don't you, as presumably a SWE in the US, make a sh!tton of
| money?
|
| Howcome your wife still is forced into such detrimental working
| conditions?
| cestith wrote:
| Who said she was forced, and why the personal attack?
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| > still has to work 24 hour shifts with no sleep
|
| Reads like being more or less forced to me, it doesn't to
| you?
|
| > and why the personal attack?
|
| Not at all my intention! It's a genuine question, which I
| would ask myself too were I in OP's shoes
| cestith wrote:
| I doubt her spouse makes her be a doctor. Most people who
| go through premed and medical school are pretty dedicated
| and driven on their own. This is a corporate vs labor
| issue, and likely not a domestic issue. I'm sure he
| dislikes it greatly, too.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's not so much "forced", as "given an offer they can't
| refuse".
| switchbak wrote:
| This is the nature of the medical system in North America,
| and some other advanced nations. Also, you're not just being
| blunt, you're being both ignorant and arrogant.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| If OP feels the same way, I offer my heartfelt apologies.
|
| I don't think what I said would come across this negatively
| in person though, but okay..
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| GP's wife isn't being forced into this profession and they
| are making a lot of money from it. Do we need to offer
| sympathy for all people with difficult working conditions
| regardless of the remuneration?
| astrange wrote:
| A surgeon is going to make more than an SWE. Also, surgeons
| are famously unhappy with anyone questioning any of their
| decisions.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It's an interesting paradox.
|
| Imagine doing your best to help someone and they die as a
| direct result.
|
| Then you get to go to work and deal with the next case.
|
| Or the patient has life changing, negative outcomes. Damn,
| that bad. Next case.
|
| Living in that mental state takes a pretty unusual
| character type. We can expect some extreme behaviour.
|
| It's also interesting watching the change over time. The
| trainee versus consultant, or the surgeon as they near
| retirement.
|
| I'm not a surgeon or a doctor and so I see a small part of
| their world but see some of the perks (they get everything)
| and some of the downsides, and there are a lot.
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| her at her worst is better than 90% of people at their best.
|
| if you get through and into a good med school -match into
| surgery- you are Peak in a way very few are.
|
| I don't see this changing unless they reduce the requirements
| for med school; if they let anyone in who wants in and force
| that group to work 30hr shifts - you'll get enough bad outcomes
| the system will change.
|
| There was a study, I believe on nurses and shift durations. The
| study found the nurses were happier with shorter shifts - but
| the patients did worse. Patients come first.
|
| I could see a group of Doctors loudly proclaiming love for
| Donald Trump (and mentioning very much how great he is) and
| pleading the case for a change and something happening. He is
| an interesting president.
|
| I would be interested in hearing a european drs perspective, I
| heard they work shorter shifts (but no EU dr I met has
| confirmed, it's like meeting a unicorn)
| lostlogin wrote:
| > her at her worst is better than 90% of people at their
| best.
|
| A fraction of a fraction of a percentage of people are good
| at surgery.
|
| If I need someone cutting me, I'd prefer someone good, and
| that they were rested.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| This stupid hazing ritual is only happening because of the AMA,
| which is doing it for really stupid "because we had to" logic.
| bmitc wrote:
| Were these continual shifts? I thought that doctor's on shift
| like this were given sleep rooms to sleep when they aren't
| needed.
| kurtis_reed wrote:
| Title sucks
| Olshansky wrote:
| Need a cron job to flush that cache
| shomp wrote:
| In high school a friend of mine told me about "microsleep" and
| how your brain will oscillate into it if you're under-rested.
| This would align with that theory.
| SilentM68 wrote:
| That is very interesting. I have a somewhat related issue with
| sleep cycles. This issue, waking around 3:00am every morning then
| not going back to sleep until 6 or 7am, is not really a
| productive sleep cycle. I read somewhere that taking a spoon of
| sugary substance, like Raw Honey, MCT or Collagen, before going
| to bed can replenish the brain of this energy, so it becomes
| easier to fall asleep. I've been trying it with two to three
| spoons of honey, right before hitting the sack to see if it can
| help me fall asleep again. It seems to be having a somewhat
| positive effect as it does not take me too long to go back to
| sleep.
| rsync wrote:
| Extremely fine optimizations - like you are describing - only
| make sense after the major, gross actions have already been
| exhausted.
|
| Do you have a regular, intensive, exercise routine with a good
| mix of aerobic and resistance training?
|
| Don't buy the fancy high flow air filter if you're not even
| doing oil changes...
| binary132 wrote:
| What I'm picking up here is that if I can just get an automated
| CSF circulator installed I won't need to sleep or get distracted
| when I'm tired. That was the point of this article, right?
| boogieknite wrote:
| should have given them a cup of joe while in the fmri to see what
| difference that made
| gcanyon wrote:
| What I want to know is: can we _trigger_ these flushes? My
| grandfather died of /with Alzheimer's, and I'd prefer not to
| follow in his footsteps. If we determine that these flushes are
| key to good brain health, and there were a way either through a
| pill or even a treatment to up the frequency of these flushes,
| that would be awesome.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Choosing to sleep more, I guess.
| pedalpete wrote:
| We can't "trigger" the flushes, however, it looks like we can
| increase the power of the pump.
|
| This is specifically the area we work in traditionally called
| slow-wave enhancement which is stimulating the restorative
| function of sleep.
|
| This paper [1] specifically looks at amyloid response as a
| result of stimulation and shows a corresponding relationship
| between stimulation response, amyloid response, and memory. I
| wouldn't say it's putting a bow on the results, but it is a
| very promising result.
|
| If you're curious about what we're building, I'll be posting a
| ShowHN next week which dives into some of the data in a way
| regulatory requirements don't permit us to do on our website,
| but until then, check out https://affectablesleep.com
|
| [1] https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afad228
| hammock wrote:
| > We can't "trigger" the flushes
|
| How do you know that?
| pedalpete wrote:
| I work in neurotech/sleeptech and this is the primary
| function our work focuses on.
|
| However, I also mis-stated that. It is possible to create a
| slow-wave, however only through magnetic stimulation
| (rTMS), but that is not realistic outside of a hospital
| environment.
| hammock wrote:
| Ok awesome. Are you saying that because it is an
| autonomic process or some other reason?
|
| You will probably say no but I wonder if those yogis who
| can exert some control over heart rate, blood pressure,
| and breathing pattern might try to target this process as
| well.
| pedalpete wrote:
| I'm just saying that based on known science. I don't know
| if anyone has looked at if yogis, etc can control the
| glymphatic system.
|
| What blew my mind when I got into neuro just over 5 years
| ago, is that the glymphatic system was only discovered in
| 2012!!!! We have SO much to learn about the brain.
| Muromec wrote:
| I know a reliable way to trigger this. 400 gram of lamb, one
| bell pepper, one or two leek, one zucchini, some random spices
| (red chili pasta from the shop works a-okay), put in at slow
| heat for an hour and a half, so by 4 in the evening it's ready
| and you can close your laptop. Serve with rice or mercimek
| chorbasi.
|
| The fluids have no chance to not be flushed once you are done
| with it.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| Maybe unrelated but, years ago, I had a job that had me criss-
| crossing the country by plane Monday through Friday and sometimes
| Saturday. So my sleep and the time zones and hotels could
| sometimes mess with me.
|
| One day, I went to a grocery store and mid-turn onto another
| street, I forgot what city I was in. Worse, I was half a mile
| from my apartment in my home town.
| hollerith wrote:
| How long did it take you to orient or to get home (whichever
| one happened first)?
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| It was very brief. Only a few seconds
| handfuloflight wrote:
| I can feel when this fluid hasn't properly flushed.
| heywoods wrote:
| This reminds me of delirium tremens a bit. Same compensatory
| mechanism, different sleep process - or at least that's the
| pattern I'm seeing.
|
| The MIT study shows CSF waves--normally a sleep-only process that
| flushes metabolic waste--intruding into wakefulness when you're
| sleep-deprived. Your brain is apparently so desperate for the
| cleanup that it forces the process to happen anyway. Cost:
| attention lapses.
|
| From what I've read, delirium tremens during alcohol withdrawal
| seems to follow a similar pattern, except it's REM sleep
| intruding into waking consciousness instead of CSF flushing.
|
| [Polysomnographic studies from the
| 1960s-80s](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7318677/) documented
| this. Patients in alcohol withdrawal exhibit what researchers
| call ["Stage 1-REM"](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neurosc
| ience/delirium-t...)--a hybrid state where wakefulness and REM
| sleep characteristics get mixed together. Right before full-blown
| DTs, [some patients hit 100% Stage 1-REM](https://link.springer.c
| om/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4757-0632-1_...). The hallucinations
| appear to be [literally enacted dreams](https://www.sciencedirect
| .com/science/article/abs/pii/S01651...) occurring while
| technically awake. The sleep-wake boundary just completely breaks
| down.
|
| What strikes me is the system-level similarity here. Sleep
| normally maintains clean states: you're either awake (alert,
| reality-testing intact, no CSF flushing) or asleep (offline,
| dreams permitted, maintenance running). But when the system gets
| stressed enough--whether through sleep deprivation or the
| neurochemical chaos of alcohol withdrawal--it seems to start
| making desperate tradeoffs.
|
| The brain apparently needs certain processes to run. Period.
| Total no-brainer! CSF flushing can't wait indefinitely. Neither
| can REM sleep, which serves its own critical functions. So when
| normal sleep architecture fails, the system appears to force
| these processes anyway, even though the conditions are completely
| wrong for them.
|
| Maybe that's why the costs are so specific. CSF intrusion during
| wakefulness costs you attention. REM intrusion costs you reality
| testing, because REM is the state where your brain accepts
| impossible narratives without question. Same compensatory
| mechanism, different critical process forced into the wrong
| state.
|
| What I find interesting is how the brain knows what lever it
| needs to pull and how it pulls it. Sleep deprivation forces waste
| removal. REM deprivation forces wakeful dream states; which might
| be a side effect not the actual goal. The brain seems to know
| what maintenance is overdue and attempts the repair, consequences
| be damned.
| hyperjeff wrote:
| Back when I used to meditate regularly, I would find that an
| extra meditation in the middle of a sleepless night would go a
| long way toward pushing off the need for sleep. Generally,
| meditating always left me in a slightly heightened awake state.
| Perhaps the help with brain fluid regulation is a core reason for
| both effects. (I should go back to meditating again.)
| pedalpete wrote:
| This is fascinating, and somewhat directly related to the work we
| do increasing slow-wave response during sleep.
|
| For those who are not aware, slow-wave are the hallmark of deep
| sleep and closely linked to the flushing the glymphatic system,
| which is what they are referring to in this article.
|
| We can't create slow-waves, but we can increase their
| effectiveness through precisely timed auditory stimulation. I'll
| be posting a Show HN next week which dives into the data of how
| this works, but if you want to know more, there is info on our
| website and links to over 50 published peer-reviewed papers.
| https://affectablesleep.com
|
| This paper specifically looks at amyloid clearance as a result of
| this glymphatic flush https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afad228
|
| While many people will point to "getting more sleep" that isn't
| really the answer. More time asleep does not automatically mean
| increased glymphatic flush. Additionally, as we age, the power of
| the pump gets weaker, and more sleep does not help with that.
|
| We believe the focus on counting minutes of sleep misses the
| point of what makes sleep truly restorative and beneficial, which
| are the neurological processes, and downstream physiological
| changes as a result. This is why we talk about restorative
| function, and that should be the focus of sleep health, not time.
|
| After all, you wouldn't measure your diet based on how much time
| you spend chewing, would you?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-10-31 23:00 UTC)