Sleep Myths 'Damaging Your Health':
Widely held myths about sleep are damaging our health and our mood, as well as shortening our lives, say researchers.
A team at New York University trawled the internet to find the most common claims about a good night's kip[*].
Then, in a study published in the journal Sleep Health, they matched the claims to the best scientific evidence.
They hope that dispelling sleep myths will improve people's physical and mental health and well-being.
So, how many are you guilty of?
Myth 1 - You can cope on less than five hours' sleep
[...]Myth 2 - Alcohol before bed boosts your sleep
[...]Myth 3 - Watching TV in bed helps you relax
[...]Myth 4 - If you're struggling to sleep, stay in bed
[...]Myth 5 - Hitting the snooze button
[...]Myth 6 - Snoring is always harmless
Another myth is that one should have 7-8 hours of continuous sleep. There is ample evidence that this is a relatively recent phenomenon. Consider embracing a bi-phasic or two-sleep schedule, instead.
I was at first concerned when I found myself waking after 3, 4 or even 5 hours sleep -- I became worried that I might be trending into insomnia. Instead, knowing this is a "thing", I just accept it, now. I get up for an hour or so. Use the bathroom. Maybe do some light reading (SoylentNews FTW!). And, after an hour or so, am ready to go back to bed for the rest of my night's sleep. Naps can be helpful, too.
How well do you sleep?
*kip: chiefly British : sleep, nap
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @12:08PM (7 children)
I prefer continuous sleep. If I wake up in the middle of the night and go read some nets or books, even if I'll later sleep enough hours later, I feel like a boiled carrot in the morning.
(Score: 4, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday April 18 2019, @01:23PM (3 children)
> I feel like a boiled carrot in the morning.
While it may be a somewhat unconventional, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that if that's what you fancy for breakfast. Go for it!
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday April 18 2019, @01:42PM (2 children)
I think you misinterpreted what he meant. Interrupted sleep would make him feel like a trump in the morning.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:33PM
I love the smell of napalm in the morning! [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday April 18 2019, @09:02PM
I often need a good trump in the morning. Otherwise I'll get gas pains later.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @08:45PM (1 child)
I feel oily if I don't get at least 7 hours of sleep, even though I've showered.
The TV show The Mentalist featured a sleep tip in one episode that actually works for me.
Think "one" when inhaling, and "two" when exhaling to push out other thoughts. Counting never worked for me, but this does. Give it a try if you can't sleep.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday April 18 2019, @09:04PM
You can improve on that even more if you would like to -- only inhale thru the nose and only exhale thru the mouth. It's a fairly common breathing technique used to calm yourself.
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Friday April 19 2019, @12:26AM
I can see the problem there, your wife would probably prefer that you felt like an uncooked carrot in the morning. Any not a baby carrot either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @12:11PM (8 children)
The problem is not in continuous or not. The problem has to do with interruptions in with blue light (ie. white light, screen light, etc.) which will screw up your melatonin levels. And that has been linked to all sorts of problems like cancer and heart disease.
So if you want to do some light reading, get a red LED (like astronomers use for night vision preservation) and read with that. If you insist on using your computer, you can use an overlay program that will adjust your screen to only emit red light and may some green. There are also special glasses that can do this...
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-has-a-dark-side [harvard.edu]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @12:18PM (1 child)
you say "overlay program"
I think you mean redshift: http://jonls.dk/redshift/ [jonls.dk]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday April 18 2019, @08:35PM
or f.lux [justgetflux.com]
They have a Linux version too
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @12:46PM (5 children)
SN is way ahead of the curve (or retro if you think about it that way), I use VT100 mode -- green text on black. VT220 red also available... There are still white/colored parts of the window border, but minimal. For anyone that hasn't looked, the settings (assuming logged in) are at https://soylentnews.org/my/homepage [soylentnews.org]
Unless I'm really tired, I usually wake up after about 5 hours and this is a problem--get very sleepy in the late afternoon but usually can't nap. I've tried the "get up and read for an hour" at 4am and sometimes that helps, but not consistently. Another one that helps to calm my internal dialog is to get up and make a to-do list, this sometimes lets me stop worrying about getting everything done.
Doesn't help that I'm under a lot of stress, with daily visits to a high maintenance, ailing, older relative.
(Score: 2) by DavePolaschek on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:16PM (2 children)
I wake up in the middle of the night. It's not a problem as long as I get a chance to make up the lost time, either by sleeping later or getting a nap. Luckily I'm retiring in 10 weeks, so naps won't be as awkward.
Making a list definitely helps. That keeps my brain from trying to make a list and waking me up completely. Oh, I don't have to worry about that, it's on the list.
(Score: 5, Funny) by hendrikboom on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:33PM (1 child)
Yes. A todo list by the bed. You worry that you'll forget to do something in the morning. So you add it to the list instead of doing it in the middle of the night.
You can even write with the light off if you know how full the list is. Or with a dim red light if you don't. You go back to sleep, comfy and secure that important things will not be forgotten.
Then in the morning, when you are fully awake, you review the list and conclude ,"I don't want to paint the cat blue."
You've had a better night's sleep. And the cat didn't get rudely awakened or painted blue.
(Score: 2) by DavePolaschek on Friday April 19 2019, @02:15PM
And yet, it's morning and I still think painting the cat blue is a fine idea. Made me think of pictish cats, which led to Viking Kittens [youtube.com].
(Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:25PM (1 child)
Wow! There are a lot more options there than I expected. Let me advise everyone to go there and see for (him)(her)(their)sel(f)(ves).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @04:52PM
In the 1980s I had both green and amber monochrome displays before color monitors of reasonable quality became more affordable.
Tried the SN VT220 red/orange for awhile, but went back to VT100 green. Set for something that looks about like 12 point text, the green reminds me of my Ann Arbor terminal with 60(?) text lines in portrait display--running on a CP/M Z-80 system. On my laptop the text is much sharper than the Ann Arbor CRT.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @01:12PM (1 child)
Humans only segment their sleep cycle into two when day light falls under 10 hours a day for energy saving. In modern times due to artificial lightning and more cognitive labor people do in fact require a continues sleep cycle and quite the long one.
The bi-phase cycles are still around is due to soldier's guard duties. And even where the light permits it the (northern European) armies had to enforce some very strict regulations regarding shifts and sleep over all the training accidents and the likes they've experienced.
It's similarly part of truckers on-road driving limits. A lot of money was spent lobbying to let truckers split their hours at the benefit of the employers but the huge increase in accidents forced the regulators to take it seriously.
The only exception is old people. Their bladder is so weak they end up waking up to take a piss at least once every night. The result is that their bodies are forced into bi-phase cycles regardless. So for them it's recommended to throw in a couple a more hours of sleep during the night and around the afternoon. But this is already damage control and there been Alzheimer and Parkinson studies showing the links to these habits can't be easily disputed.
Overall, sleep as much as you physically can whenever you feel tired and don't watch television / use a smartphone a few hours before you go to bed. Is it a practical advice? Nope. But it's your responsibility to put it into practice even if your doctors don't do it themselves.
Two cents...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @01:31AM
It was historical research that established that people used to wake up in the middle of the night and use the time. This was even before electric light.
For a sleep aid, I recommend a podcast called "Sleep With Me". The guy tells rambling stories without much inflection and it usually knocks me right out. It doesn't always work, but chemicals don't always work either.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday April 18 2019, @01:49PM (1 child)
TFA completely omits any consideration of whether sex will interfere with falling asleep.
The emphasis on continuous uninterrupted sleep would seem to indicate that it is not a best practice to have sex in the middle of the night.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 19 2019, @12:08PM
pffffft
I'll take it whenever I can get it
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Thursday April 18 2019, @01:50PM (5 children)
Isn't the 8h of continuous sleep an age thing? When I was young(er) I could sleep non-stop for 8+ hours without any issue. But as I got older it sort of stopped working and instead I entered into some kind of bi-phasic sleep cycle. I started to nod off in the evening and then woke again after an hour or so and then did some other things and then eventually bed again and usually sleeping for about 4-6h and then I'm done. I might wake up during that time and drink some water and then go back to sleep again.
As for the other myths I'm less certain. I can still watch screens and sleep, I usually fall asleep tho cause the shows are boring. I don't snooze so I wouldn't know. I don't really fancy the idea of becoming an evening alcoholic that somehow requires a drink every evening so they can sleep -- if you do require it then yes you are an alcoholic.
Folding socks? Who folds socks? Just stick one sock into the other and make a little ball of it. Done. Folding socks ....
Also the Red Wedding wasn't relaxing? The way RR Martin writes always put me sleep. It took a real long time to read those books since he has a disturbing style that drags things out. Also there was a big difference between the book and the show but when they mention it now I just assume they are all talking about the show since apparently people don't really read much anymore. I think I felt worse for the direwolf then I did for the Starks. Also it might be a matter of perspective, but isn't it relaxing when a plan comes together and you get to vanquish your enemies? It's not like someone important really died in the show, even Robb Stark is now nothing but a distant memory in the boobs-and-dragons show.
(Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:24PM (1 child)
Amount of sleep does indeed change (lessens) with age, but never drops below 7-8 hours by age 65 and older. (Source [sleepfoundation.org]). But this is still an average - there are people who will function with 6 hours and people who require 10 hours. The myth being cracked, though, is the "4 hours a day and I'm fine".... such people might indeed exist, maybe, but are far more rare than what is claimed is the gist of TFA because such people don't consider long-term issues that seem to form. And there's a difference between doing something temporarily and being a regular pattern, too.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:46PM
When they claim to sleep less then 4h per day I constantly wonder how many drugs they need to take to keep awake. It's not that it's impossible to do once in a while but it's just not going to be a quality day.
Another interesting factor for the 4h per day sleepers that are known is that most, or a lot, of them appear to be people in power. As in people with staffs that cater to all their whims and needs -- that do the heavy lifting so to speak. These people have somehow managed to remove all, or most, of the dull tasks in their lives that the rest of us are still stuck doing. Most people don't have the wealth (or power) required to get all these perks -- servants, a private chauffeur, your own jet-plane or just a butler that manages all aspects of your household. If anything they are already abnormal in more ways then their lack of sleep. Perhaps one comes from the other, they don't need the sleep cause they are not really doing all the things the rest of us are still doing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:40PM (1 child)
When I was consulting and found myself on the road, I'd often read in bed before going to sleep.
Sometimes, I wouldn't have anything handy to read. I found that Numbers [wikipedia.org] in the Gideon's Bible [mentalfloss.com] was the best soporific. A page or so and I was out like a light!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday April 18 2019, @03:09PM
Numbers? Nah, that's way too lively. Try 1 Chronicles [skepticsannotatedbible.com] which starts with a real snoozefest of 9 chapters of "begats". Or, if you don't like that book too much, there's similar "excitement" from The Iliad's Book 2 [poetryintranslation.com] where Homer lists out exactly how many ships were sent from each city and who was in charge of them, most of whom have absolutely no role to play in the story.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday April 19 2019, @12:23AM
Do any of these "myths" actually exist, or did they just invent a bunch of random, obviously-wrong crap in order to myth-bust it? Looking at all of those, 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are obviously wrong, and I've never heard of 2. I'd expect it to be true because I know a number of people who will fall asleep after a glass of wine, but I assume they've set it up in a way where it's specialised enough that they can still "myth-bust" it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:13PM (1 child)
I sleep very well, since I had my sleep study done and was diagnosed with apnea. I was experiencing an apnea every 90 seconds when finally diagnosed and the warning signs were present for years. I was offered surgery or CPAP and chose CPAP. I know exactly how much sleep I need per night to function well the next day, and have been developing biphasic sleeping.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jjr on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:42PM
Same here. Even if I slept for 6 or 7 hours in a row, I felt like a zombie next morning. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and was offered to use a CPAP and my quality of life got a huge improvement. I lost also a lot of weight (around 17 kg) in two years, just by ditching food with lots of sugars and saturated fats, reducing in turn the amount of apneas. I'm still using the CPAP now, even I have a low number of apneas now. My sleep comes in two rounds usually, I get awake around one hour before the alarm sets off, I remove the CPAP and continue sleeping, but times may vary (sometimes I get awake at 2am and sometimes just 15 minutes before the alarm starts ringing). I've been using it for 4 years and get periodic reviews, the doctor says that if I feel good with the CPAP, just continue using it even if it's not as necessary as before.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:16PM (2 children)
Really?
Way back 30 years ago it was common knowledge that:
-you needs (should get) a good 8 hours of sleep each night
-alcohol disrupts and interferes with deep sleep.
-watching TV in bed keeps you up
-it's best to get of bed when the alarm goes off and not hit the snooze button
-and loud snoring can be a symptom of sleep apnea.
I find it fascinating that so much simple common knowledge from just a few decades ago did not become innate.
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Thursday April 18 2019, @04:08PM
I was also alive 30 years ago and have never heard a single one of the myths listed in the article.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @06:23PM
You don't know how stupid people are about sleep until you've slept in a room with 30 people for an extended period of time.
When I was in the navy. There was like 10% of the population who would fucking wake up early so they could spend an hour "waking up" by hitting snooze every 15 minutes.
When I was in A school I had horrible insomina and one of my roommates did this in essentially a 4 man dorm room, there was another guy who thought it was ok to softly play Shaggy on repeat all night long but that's a different story. I liked all of my roommates but they were different people once sleep routines were involved. I started telling him I was unplugging the alarm clock and if he went back to sleep without reprogramming it he was going get punished for waking up late. Sometimes I was awake for 4 days at a time. One day I realized I couldn't remember last time I took a shower. I was failing school (and ended up getting dropped from the program to spend the next 4 years doing hard labor) It wasn't even a hard school I just couldn't think. One time I literally forgot which order the vowels went in my first name.
I observed that if you force yourself to wake up instantly it gets easier and easier. It wasn't an exercise in willpower either you could see the difference in how fast people would get fully booted up. Their eyes would open faster, they'd be fully cognizant quicker. I'm sure the extra 20-60 minutes or so of deep sleep they were fucking themselves out of made a bit of difference too. Especially since a sleep cycle is 90 minutes so it would be common to only hit deep sleep once or twice with the amount of rack time you had.
When I became a petty officer I totally eradicated the practice in my division as one of my first actions. Your alarm clock went off and I woke up. You were not going back to sleep without at least putting on your uniform and taking it off. Even if it meant I was up the rest of the night softly whispering that you're a piece of shit buddy fucker who steals sleep from his shipmates. I would usually give people a mulligan if they accidently forgot to unset their alarm. But the problem was people would do this an hour before official reville or they'd spend an hour waking up before a late night watch. Fuck you buddy I know you wouldn't have completed boot camp if you can't wake up. Now get the fuck up.
Oddly enough after two weeks of pain all these fucks who claimed to be biologically incapable of rapidly waking up were cured and had reclaimed an hour of sleep or free time. This was in a world where you might only get an hour of sleep or free time for days at a time so it's a huge deal and I have tried to maintain that discipline since because I know snooze is such a bullshit life trap.
Then there is the idiocy of trying to entertain yourself to sleep. Go ahead and read a book or check your stocks or whatever while you're settling in but don't kid yourself that it's the only way you can get to sleep when you're up doing it until 1am every night. Get up and run your fatass around the block until you puke I assure you that your sleep problem will be solved in under an hour even if the act of running temporarily wakes you up.
Eh I need therapy people are fucking morons and I can't change that. I don't want to deal with another depression but if everyone had to miss a few meals or sleep on the ground a few times at least I could enjoy the rest of my life without getting into some fuck's battle to defend his first world self made problems.