I’m the dad of a 7 month old baby. I think I feel around 100 years older than I actually am.
I found myself feeling "old" during north east winters, I would wake up exhausted and crabby.
Recently I tracked this down to indoor air quality, installed an ERV (basically, introduces fresh outside air into the house) and I feel much better.
There's a lot of talk about (obesity related etc) sleep apnea that's due to how the person breathes, it seems to me that there's a version of it related to WHAT you breathe.
Granted I think I am more sensitive to indoor air quality than an average person or maybe just more aware of the effect, but this seems to have been a game changer in a way.
I find having kids in my late 30s hits really hard because of this. Biologically, I can see it being best having kids in your early 20s when you're made of rubber and can bounce back after lack of sleep.
A thing I noticed had a dramatic effect on my sleeping was forcing myself to keepy my mouth closed while doing any sort of excersize, be it running or calisthenics. It forces my entire nasal cavity to empty all the mucus, and I can breath significantly better and my sleep improved dramatic.
A week of broken sleep is enough to change my whole personality. I end up hopeless, self-destructive, and convinced that I’m going to die imminently for some reason. Just this conviction that my heart is going to wear out any day now. It’s such a bizarre experience, especially to finally get sleep and wake up with such energy and positivity.
The first two months after my wife had my daughter about a year ago, I was a walking zombie.
I wasn’t really here. I tripped and fell down so many times. I had not fallen down since I was in my teens and I am in my late 30’s.
I really had no idea how bad lack of sleep was going to mess me up. Of the things I had planned for in having a child, I was absolutely not prepared for this.
One of the hardships of sleeping rough is that poor sleep quality can rapidly degenerate your cognitive function. Simply put, being homeless hurts your ability to escape homelessness.
This is why I need to work from home. I have random periods of chronic insomnia. If I’m able to get a nap in, it breaks the cycle. If not, after 2 days, I begin to spiral down. When in the office, I could only recover on the weekends, leaving a productive Monday and Tuesday.
I've found that my body can tolerate one day in a row of waking up via an alarm clock instead of at my natural wakeup time. The second day, I'm completely exhausted and can't think straight.
The way to sleep effectively and be most alert is to sleep when your body tells you to not when society tells you to.
I hate the fact that I must sleep everyday. I have always tried to get around 6 - 7 hours a night as a result.
Through my 20s it wasn't an issue, but I stopped gyming a few years back and it has been hard if I lose any sleep.
I started working out again and I am back to 6.5 hrs a night, no problem.
I'm hoping that someone will ""solve"" poor sleep, in the sense of working out how to determine what's actually causing it. What's the state of the art in affordable home sleep analysis? Smartwatches?
that's why it is imperative that you squeeze in some amount/level of workout. does not have to at the gym, even 5 mintues of jumping jack at your home helps. Granted if you have are exhuasted from lack of sleep, workout is the last thing you want to do; but through out your weekly routine -- to quote immortal bard Eddie -- go ahead jump <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwYN7mTi6HM>.
I get bad sleep all the time, and I look younger than all my friends my age...
I would be curious as to how they are measuring the subject's perception of their age. Are they just asking them how old they feel? How do they get meaningful results?
Some martial artists of the UFC say that sleeping is the best PED (performance enhancer drug)
I like to set an alarm for 9 hr 30 min before sunrise. This gives me 30 min to get ready for bed, and to go to bed with time for 6 full REM cycles of 1.5hr each. The rest of the timing (the timing of my rest?) is up to my body and how much sleep it wants.
When I do it this way, vs setting alarms, I'm always surprised by the sleep debt I've accrued and am now paying back.
Modern (especially urban) society demands a lot more of us than many of our bodies can sustain.
I'm sorry, but this is clickbait junk science.
> Psychologists in Sweden found that, on average, volunteers felt more than four years older when they were restricted to only four hours of sleep for two consecutive nights, with some claiming the sleepiness made them feel decades older.
The average was four years older, with some people claiming they felt "decades" older. This should be enough to tell you how useless this methodology is. People cannot reliably estimate how much "older" they feel because it's their subjective interpretation of an experience they don't have. By definition they don't know what being 4 years older feels like.
You might as well ask them whether sleep deprivation made them feel like they'd been waterboarded for 4 hours or 4 days.
Has anyone experimented with polyphasic sleep? There was a very interesting blog on "Uberman" sleep cycle (nap every 4 hours) in the 2000s, called Puredoxyk. The author tried it due to insomnia and found it very helpful. Later she developed Everyman (short "core sleep" plus several flexible naps), which works better with work and family.
I tried Uberman a few times but I seem quite nap resistant... I only ever have those catastrophic 5 hour naps, which isn't very helpful here.
I'd spend the first few days of adaptation completely sleep deprived, then finally pass out and sleep through all the alarms.
Steve Pavlina wrote about his experiences with Uberman. Says the most useful thing he got out of it was that now (back to normal sleep) he can instantly nap anytime he wants to.
Also related and fascinating: N24, zeitgebers, etc.
You don't just "feel" older, the subjective response is only a small part of it. Insulin response decreases, and there is a direct relationship between diabetes and sleep. Cortisol levels increase, which can harm sleep the following night. Memory and reaction times are measurably worse.
We're working on improving the efficiency of deep sleep (https://affectablesleep.com, https://affectablesleep.com/science).
The older I've gotten the earlier I wake up, probably due to my bladder going down the drain. I usually pop awake 4-6am and just begrudgingly stay awake, I don't work until 9-10am.
When I DO go back to bed after waking up like this and manage to actually sleep until 8-9am I feel more drained and tired by far. I did that last night/this morning and I am way more tired than I've been all week getting up as soon as I wake up.
I don't really go to bed late, 10-11 probably. My doc complains all the time that I'm not sleeping enough but that's why.
My sleep is very irregular but I always get enough. I tend to have trouble falling asleep but once I'm asleep nothing can wake me up. Some days I sleep until noon or I have to get up early but then take a nap later. I wonder if all the bad consequences that are associated with "broken" sleep apply to irregular but plenty sleep as well.
How about 20 years ? Just curious...
I was just sick for 2 days and spent about 1.5 days sleeping (like I literally slept 18-19 hours on one day, and probably 12-13 hours the next) - I am now recovered and I feel a couple of years younger...so I guess it goes both ways
I have very very poor deep sleep, but no apneas. Anyone in the same boat?
See also: Sleep deprivation is torture: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dreaming-in-the-digi...
Validated. I exercise, eat well, don't drink, don't consume caffeine after noon, and my sleep is still terrible. I get four good hours, that's it.
Last night my kid slept with us because he is sick. At 2am woke up to screaming and alligator death rolls. I feel like ass after one night.
Maybe a coincidence but I got the first gray hair of my life 4 months after getting a newborn(and waking up like 4 times per night)
This is incredible. I can't remember the last time I had a night of unbroken sleep. It's literally months ago.
Recommend the book "Why we sleep" for people who want to learn a bit more about effects of sleep deprivation
I am 34,583 years old.
Ain't it the truth.
from the department of the bleedin' obvious
This is one of those "no shit" articles.
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Sleep apnea degrades your quality of life tremendously. Even when treated with CPAP you can still have pretty poor sleep due to the mask shifting around while you sleep and other side effects of the treatment, but it's generally much better than the torture of untreated apnea. It's so bad that even with moderate apnea you wake up more tired than when you went to bed.
Now allow me a preemptive reply: I suffered apnea with a BMI below 20. Plenty of people don't have apnea because they are overweight; instead, they are overweight because they suffer apnea.