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Posted by gmays 2 days ago

Attention lapses due to sleep deprivation due to flushing fluid from brain(news.mit.edu)
594 points | 283 commentspage 2
cyberdrunk2 2 days ago|
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/

Citizen8396 2 days ago||
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/

jorvi 2 days ago|||
Mix your cheap instant coffee with creatine powder and ORS for that ultimate early morning flavor bomb!
huemaahn 2 days ago|||
Welp, now I’m bout to make the nastiest coffee known to man for the next 3 months
pawelduda 2 days ago||||
Don't forget to intensely shake your head after consumption for a proper brain flush
zer00eyz 2 days ago|||
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!

layer8 2 days ago||
It’s not clear how water retention would help with the needed flushing.
regularfry 2 days ago||
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 2 days ago||
Less flushing sounds like it would also worsen the sleep deprivation, even if it reduces the momentary lapses.
cdelsolar 2 days ago||
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 2 days ago||
Probably negatively correlated cause you have someone to interact with in your old age/better chance of community :)
skeeter2020 2 days ago||
Also I think of (hopefully at least one of) my three kids as a diversed retirement portfolio :)
arethuza 2 days ago|||
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 2 days ago||
Long days and short years.

Did you have empty nest syndrome?

arethuza 2 days ago||
More like empty head syndrome - but getting a dog was the best thing I've done in years.
Mizza 2 days ago|||
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.
sarchertech 2 days ago|||
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.
grumpy-de-sre 2 days ago|||
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.

Tade0 2 days ago|||
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.

zurichisstained 2 days ago|||
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. :)

micromacrofoot 2 days ago|||
Yeah that's the trick, sleep asap
debo_ 2 days ago|||
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 2 days ago||
And when that happens, of course HN has the answer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15997016
debo_ 2 days ago||
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.

zoeysmithe 2 days ago|||
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.

randerson 2 days ago|||
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 2 days ago||
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.

randerson 2 days ago||
Thanks for elaborating. I have an autistic child, and you might've just explained why my kid has more energy at night than during the day. She tends to fall asleep around midnight (but at least gets a solid 8 hours of sleep from there). We're lucky to have a school with a late start time.
chasebank 2 days ago|||
"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 2 days ago||
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.

sureglymop 2 days ago|||
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.

chasebank 2 days ago|||
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.
freedomben 2 days ago|||
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 2 days ago||
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 ...
aliljet 2 days ago||
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..
SilentM68 2 days ago||
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 2 days ago|
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…

epsilonic 2 days ago||
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 2 days ago|
Could you go into detail what you take, how much, and when? I could always use a little boost for my sleep!
epsilonic 2 days ago||
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. β-hydroxybutyrate is a metabolic regulator of proteostasis in the aged and Alzheimer disease brain (https://www.sciencedirect.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/articles/10.3...)

My motivation for pursuing this was protracted sleep disturbance from long-covid.

tim333 1 day ago||
Wikipedia has a nice moving MRI of the flushing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebrospinal_fluid#Circulatio...
shomp 2 days ago||
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.
pstuart 2 days ago||
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.
hyperjeff 2 days ago||
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.)
assimpleaspossi 2 days ago||
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 2 days ago|
How long did it take you to orient or to get home (whichever one happened first)?
assimpleaspossi 2 days ago||
It was very brief. Only a few seconds
gwbas1c 2 days ago|
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.
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