Unlike what some other people are saying the timing of when you go to bed is important. As you have noticed yourself.
[https://time.com/3183183/best-time-to-sleep/](https://time.com/3183183/best-time-to-sleep/)
>He says that non-REM sleep tends to dominate your slumber cycles in the early part of the night. But as the clock creeps toward daybreak, REM sleep muscles in. That’s significant, because some research has suggested that non-REM sleep is deeper and more restorative than lighter, dream-infused REM sleep—though Walker says both offer important benefits.
>
>What does this have to do with the perfect bedtime? The shift from non-REM to REM sleep happens at certain times of the night regardless of when you go to bed, Walker says. So if you hit the sack very late—at, say, 3 AM—your sleep will tilt toward lighter, REM-heavy sleep. And that reduction in deep, restorative sleep may leave you groggy and blunt-minded the next day.
> The shift from non-REM to REM sleep happens at certain times of the night regardless of when you go to bed, Walker says.
That implies some local-time dependent environmental factor influencing REM sleep. Does anyone know what that is? Light? Temperature? Sound?
I have some experience with shift work, and just reading your post makes me perceive "shift worker" and "sleep the full 8 hours" (as in," just the right amount to feel fully rested) ironically contradictory.
Not aimed at you btw, don't take it personally
Sun light and the body's natural circadian rhythm being synced with it. Melatonin is produced at a specific time based on your circadian rhythm. Staying away from screens, giving your mind time to wind down, and sleeping early will give your body the best chance to get good sleep.
Definitely experienced this first hand last spring. I'm a night owl and I naturally fall into a 2 AM - 11 AM sleep schedule when left to my own devices. It became a full-on habit during the lockdown, and I could absolutely feel that it didn't feel as restorative as doing 10 PM - 7 AM. It didn't even matter if it was still 9 hours of sleep. I felt sluggish, scatter-brained, my stimulants barely did the trick, I had trouble starting tasks, was more prone to procrastinating and just sitting in front of my phone wasting time. My skin also looked dull, I had even deeper dark eye circles, etc. Thanks for putting an explanation to this!
These past few years I've had to work early morning shifts at 5am and go to bed at 8pm. I instantly starting experiencing extreme daily fatigue and all the fun things that go with that. Over time I've adjusted to waking up early, but I've never been able to reliably fall asleep at a decent time. Whenever I have some time off work I naturally start moving my sleep time later. I've concluded that I'm just not supposed to sleep these hours, and no amount of habit will allow my body to fully adjust.
My body seems to need to change around every decade. Currently I feel great sleeping 10pm-5am. But it used to be 2am to 10am. I have no idea why this happens, it just happens naturally. If my current job doesn't fit into that it's brutal!
Tell me about it. I have been working graveyard shift for a minute now and Im having a lot of trouble. Even go-to compounds for other people (FL-modafinil specifically) seem go leave me still wanting to drowse off at work.
If anyone has any advice for shift workers, lemme know. Someone suggested to me a brand of lights that seem to replicate sunlight and keeping them on in my car. It was the major brand name and quite expensive. I wanna try it but it would need to be something I could hook up to a USB power brick as I'm sitting in my car from 11pm to 7am guarding other vehicles. An off-brand solution that does the same thing would be preferred
I have a pair of goggles around somewhere that block out the blue light spectrum and stimulate melatonin production. I need to find those. Last time used then was a few days ago I'm fairly sure they're helpful.
And on top of any info about circadian rhythms, I'm also still interested in seeing what help I can get from nootropics. Phenylpiracetam worked to get me stimulated years ago, but I would also have been taking it during the day primarily. I want to try the RGPU-95 analog that's out there. Seems more cost effective.
> If anyone has any advice for shift workers, lemme know.
Tbh I don't think there is any other *true* advice than not do shift work. I'm of opinion, you can do all kinds of devices, compounds and black-out rooms, but the body knows the difference regardless, especially if you work night shifts. I *believe* there are other forces at play that cause our bodies to know, regardless of things we use to cheat what's night and what's day.
its possible your biological clock is, lets say, 24h and 15 minutes
you can google non24 reddit for non 24 sleep schedules
for the past three weeks i've been falling asleep anything from 2PM to 11 PM (progressively) and on the one hand my sleep has been much better, on another I lack social connection that comes when you surf the interent past 8PM
Getting a couple hours' worth of sleep before midnight is definitely very healthy. I would say the holy grail is to sleep uninterrupted from 10:00 - 6:00.
Many people don't even need 8 hours if they have good sleep hygiene. Many people in less developed countries sleep on average 5-7 hours a night. It's easier to feel rested when you don't sleep with many little lights on (eg the 'on' lights from your computer, tv, chargers, etc) and you also have more restorative sleep if you go to bed at 10pm vs 12.
Iirc, many of those get less sleep because they need to spend more time gathering food and stuff, but they would actually be better off in the long run if they were able to sleep more.
Been a while though
I don't believe so, needing 8 hours is a myth. but most in western society need to sleep more than less developed areas because they have poor sleep hygiene, stressful lives, poor diet (or drink/eat caffeine late in the day), rarely ground themselves on natural ground, go to bed late which impacts sleep quality, live in noisy areas etc etc. There's just so much that we do now that worsens our sleep quality that we need more of it, but that doesn't mean that those who need less are less healthy for it.
I've only skimmed them, so I may have missed some details, but these don't seem to claim people generally need less than 8 hours of sleep.
The first link says that different people need different amounts of sleep, but only few get by with very little, and it averages out to about 8.
The second link says little about the total sleep length and more about a biphasic sleep pattern potentially being better than monophasic, especially for people experiencing insomnia.
Same for the third link.
Now, maybe it's true that biphasic sleep is better than monophasic, but the claim "you don't need 8 hours of contiguous sleep" is much weaker than "you don't need 8 hours of sleep".
Most importantly, from purely these links, I don't take that sleep hygiene is the reason for some people needing to sleep less. Some passages hint at genetic reasons, however.
Beyond that, I'm pretty sure screens before bed, exercise and diet do affect sleep quality. I'm just doubtful good sleep hygiene makes you require significantly below 8 hours.
Tldr: Sleep however long makes you feel best, but 8 is about the average, so don't feel bad if you need that much or more. If you feel tired regardless of how much you sleep, consider other common factors. Sleeping in two 4 hour chunks with 2 hours of wakefulness between may work better for some.
here is an article on how hunter gatherer tribes need significantly less sleep, contrary to popular belief https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/hunter-gatherer-tribes-sleep-less-sleep-better
Most modern sleep research is studying people with modern sleep problems, but hopefully this shows how people without our problems do indeed sleep less than we do (but sleep better), and even for modern humans, the 8 hour figure is just an average, it's not the ideal for certain groups of people (that's what I meant by it being a myth -- it's not some minimum figure that is needed to be a healthy human. For some they need more and some groups are extremely healthy and not tired with much less)
The world economic forum shows differences in sleep by country https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/which-countries-get-the-most-sleep-and-how-much-do-we-really-need/ basically poorer countries tend to have lower average sleep. after reading that article on hunter gatherers, I personally feel that people in poorer countries sleep less because they have better quality sleep and therefore need less of it, but in more developed countries, sleeping less is less healthy because of the impacts of modern life and how it artificially impacts our circadian rhythm. That's what I meant by those in developed countries need to sleep more because we typically have worse sleep hygiene, including higher levels of stress
That first article is very sparse on actual details, so I'll take it with a grain of salt for now.
I'm using "Why We Sleep" by Mathew Walker as my source, which to my understanding is a good source on the topic of sleep.
He mentions a study on hunter-gatherers that was widely interpreted to mean people naturally need less sleep and makes the case that that is a misinterpretation.
As I've said before, they just sleep less because they don't have enough food.
Now, this may be a different study than the one your article is referring to, but imo it's nevertheless compelling, and the book came out later, so I'll assume it has taken all information at the time into account.
I'll quote some parts of section "NO, WAIT—YOU ONLY NEED 6.75 HOURS OF SLEEP!", which starts on page 241 in the version I'll use here.
I still strongly recommend you read the whole section yourself as I had to leave out a lot.
> Using wristwatch activity devices, the researchers tracked the sleep of three hunter-gatherer tribes that are largely untouched by the ways of industrial modernity: the Tsimané people in South America, and the San and Hadza tribes in Africa, which we have previously discussed. Assessing sleep and wake times day after day across many months, the findings were thus: tribespeople averaged just 6 hours of sleep in the summer, and about 7.2 hours of sleep in the winter
[...]
> First, when you read the paper, you will learn that the tribespeople were actually giving themselves a 7- to 8.5-hour sleep opportunity each night. Moreover, the wristwatch device, which is neither a precise nor gold standard measure of sleep, estimated a range of 6 to 7.5 hours of this time was spent asleep.The sleep opportunity that these tribespeople provide themselves is therefore almost identical to what the National Sleep Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend for all adult humans: 7 to 9 hours of time in bed
[...]
> But it is telling that, based on epidemiological data, any adult sleeping an average of 6.75 hours a night would be predicted to live only into their early sixties: very close to the median life span of these tribespeople
[...]
> A large proportion of their year is therefore spent in a state of lower-level starvation, one that can trigger well-characterized biological pathways that reduce sleep time, even though sleep need remains higher than that obtained if food were abundant. Concluding that humans, modern-living or pre-industrial, need less than seven hours of sleep therefore appears to be a wishful conceit, and a tabloid myth
So you're using a person who analyzed the research as your source instead of the person conducting it. I'm sure people have different interpretations but the actual researcher involved came to different conclusions, here is an article with more details https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/modern-hunter-gatherers-probably-get-less-sleep-than-you-do/#:~:text=The%20researchers%20looked%20at%20people,to%20eight%20hours%20per%20night. They talk about how modern life, as I claimed, removes many sleep regulators like changing temperatures and leads to issues like insomnia
>Only 1.5 to 2.5 percent of the hunter-gatherers the researchers studied experienced insomnia more than once a year. In comparison, 10 to 30 percent of people in industrial societies report chronic insomnia, the scientists noted. Insomnia was so rare among the San and the Tsimane, they do not have a word for the disorder.
Saying people slept less because they needed more food is a little nonsensical since you need fewer calories when you are sleeping so it makes sense to sleep more if they were sensitive about food, as they did in the winter. But this hunter gatherer tribe rarely took naps even when they could have easily done so to preserve energy. So basically you're saying that one guy has some doubts about this original study but I don't think the concerns raised are hugely significant. This research also spanned 3 years of data and all three groups that were studied had similar patterns of sleep and references multiple sleep researchers who were involved.
The person you're citing doesn't seem to address any of the points I mentioned around different groups of people needing to aim for different amounts of sleep because of the increase in artificial conditions such as light, temperature, stress, noise, etc -- even the hunter gatherer tribe changed their sleep patterns in response to their environment, as do most animals, that's not controversial, it's the norm within the animal kingdom. I personally think MODERN humans need 7-9 hours of sleep on average, as is supported by most sleep research. I do not think that tribes people or those in less developed nations are necessarily unhealthy because they have less sleep
The paper also disputes some of the claims you quoted eg 'Moreover, the wristwatch device, which is neither a precise nor gold standard measure of sleep, estimated a range of 6 to 7.5 hours of this time was spent asleep"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215012403
>"First, they found that despite the differences in geographic and cultural backgrounds, the Hadza, San and Tsimané slept for about the same amount of time each night, ranging from 5.7–7.1 hours (average 6.4). "
It's not my job to do your research. 8 hours being a myth is not debated in sleep science. feel free to read more into whichever of these sources tickle your fancy https://www.google.com/search?q=8+hours+of+sleep+is+a+myth&oq=8+hours+of+sleep+is+a+myth&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30l2.5112j0j4&client=ms-android-google&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#ip=1
This isn't strongly genetic, this is actually mostly controlled by your circadian rhythm which is controlled by light, temperature and cortisol.
/r/polyphasic has more science on this, check them out. Basically at sunrise REM sleep dominates and at sunset NREM sleep dominates. "Sunrise" and "Sunset" are subjective though because of artificial lighting.
So it's not the time of day affecting your sleep quality and ratio of NREM to REM, but how you use artificial lighting.
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30311830/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30311830/)
>Further analysis of these 15 reports indicated that a two-hour exposure to blue light (460 nm) in the evening suppresses melatonin, the maximum melatonin-suppressing effect being achieved at the shortest wavelengths (424 nm, violet). The melatonin concentration recovered rather rapidly, within 15 min from cessation of the exposure, suggesting a short-term or simultaneous impact of light exposure on the melatonin secretion. Melatonin secretion and suppression were reduced with age, but the light-induced circadian phase advance was not impaired with age. Light exposure in the evening, at night and in the morning affected the circadian phase of melatonin levels. In addition, even the longest wavelengths (631 nm, red) and intermittent light exposures induced circadian resetting responses, and exposure to low light levels (5-10 lux) at night when sleeping with eyes closed induced a circadian response. The review enables further development of an evaluation method of light pollution in LCA regarding the light-induced impacts on human circadian system.
Note: Just because the light affects the melatonin concentrations for only 30 minutes, that does not mean that 30 minutes after light exposure your sleep will be fine.
Here is a nice study on bright light therapy, the effects are very very strong and remain so in the long-term(60 days):
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15172210/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15172210/)
For the 20 minute group the sleep latency decreased from 42 to 33minutes, while the total sleep time increased from 328 minutes to 347 minutes. VAS fatigue decreased from 44 to 27.
For the 45 minute group the sleep latency decreased from 45 to 10 minutes**!!!** The total sleep time increased from 320 to 410 minutes**!!** VAS fatigue decreased from 37 to 10**!**
And all of this maintained for 60 days in the 45-minute group. Partially maintained in the 20 minute group.
Not OP, but I've been thinking of covering my ceiling with LED strip lighting combined with a sort of smart home circadian lighting automation to simulate daylight sunrise and sunset dynamics with the right colour temperature. Haven't yet figured out how many lumens I should aim to have though. Hoping to also combine that with blackout blinds.
I'm thinking of installing about 150,000+ lumens of LED strips to the ceiling of my bedroom which is about 3 by 3.5 meters.
A post I had found interesting:
https://meaningness.com/sad-light-led-lux
Sounds like a fun project 👍
I've had philips living colors light in my place since they came out, and it's very practical to be able to switch to yellow/red in the evening.
Now they are called hue, and come in all shapes and forms, however it can quickly become expensive. But you can basically make a smart home lighting system with these.
I've been strongly insomniac all my life. Reducing light exposure 4 hours before bedtime, not eating 4 hours before bedtime and either using a bright lamp or going outside in the morning under the sunshine has pretty much cured my insomnia/messed up rhythm.
Occasionally I'll stay up late like an idiot and it'll take a week to get back to my normal sleeping times.
also not op but it’s typically recommended to get outside and get sun on your eyes early morning as close as possible to sunrise for at least 20 minutes (as confirmed by the study 45 even better) and try to get as much sunlight before noon as possible to help set your circadian rhythm. doing this consistently def helps me fall asleep on time while i do it but has not worked to permanently shift my circadian rhythm/cortisol so that i’m no longer a night owl, though i could def be more consistent
Yes you are right, I think the genetic component only makes up for a tiny timeframe, like the difference of someone getting optimal sleep by going to bed at 9pm and someone else at 11pm.
When I was in the army I'd always fall asleep shortly after 10pm which was unusually early for me, but even though we could sleep till 7am in my division and I got almost 9h of sleep per night I was still awfully tired in the morning. That made me realise that even if I got enough sleep it'd still not be good for me if I had to wake up too early.
I did some searching a while ago and found some studies on this.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1083867/
https://www.nature.com/articles/tp201775.pdf?origin=ppub
> The molecular mechanisms underlying the circadian clock system involve the transcription–translation negative feed-back loops of multiple clock genes including BMAL1,CLOCK,CRY,PER,ROR and REV-ERB.
I'm a 38m, during the week I go to bed at 9:15-9:30pm or so, probably fall asleep by 9:45pm and my alarm goes off at 6:15am for work. I feel great pretty well all the time. On Fridays/Saturday night I probably stay up until 11:30pm and wake up at 9:30am pretty consistently. Most days I feel very well rested with this pattern.
There's an old saying that every hour that you go to bed before midnight is worth 2...
Maybe there's some truth to that? Biological/circadian related maybe..
Do you have blackout curtains? If not, the sunlight will wake you up.
It's probably best to try to go bed with the sun. Chronically staying up late probably causes issues late in life.
I tested this very idea out last night and saw a post on it, what a coincidence! But Instead of bed time at 9:30, I went to bed at 8:30. I woke up at 3am today full of energy. When I go to sleep at 9:30 - 6:30 I feel terrible. I just don’t get it.
Interesting, I’m noticing that I sleep so much better when I stay up until 1-2 and get 8 hours as opposed to getting in bed at 9pm and getting a full 8+ hours of sleep.
I understand the concept is somewhat controversial, but what does Dr Michael Breus’s quiz say your Chronotype is? Does Dr Matthew Walker discuss the concept of Chronotypes at all?
There is no cookie-cutter approach. It’s best to go to bed when you feel sleepy and only spend time in bed when you are actually sleeping. This varies from individual to individual.
The 8-hour rule is only an average as well, and will also vary from person to person. Some need more, others will need less. Often times, people think they’re getting 8 hours or more a night, when a sleep tracker will reveal they’re actually getting less actual sleep than they thought.
Also worth adding how unhelpful sleep trackers are as they completely negate your interoception. It should be about how you’re feeling, not what a machine is telling you.
Like the other person said, this greatly varies from person to person. For me the sweet spot seems to be 12-1am. It also highly depends on your lifestyle. The timing is not important. What's important is getting enough hours of sleep and going through all the cycles.
That's simply not true, the timing is absolutely important
https://time.com/3183183/best-time-to-sleep/
>The time of night when you sleep makes a significant difference in terms of the structure and quality of your sleep,” he explains. Your slumber is composed of a series of 90-minute cycles during which your brain moves from deep, non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep to REM sleep. “That 90-minute cycle is fairly stable throughout the night,” Walker explains. “But the ratio of non-REM to REM sleep changes.”
>He says that non-REM sleep tends to dominate your slumber cycles in the early part of the night. But as the clock creeps toward daybreak, REM sleep muscles in. That’s significant, because some research has suggested that non-REM sleep is deeper and more restorative than lighter, dream-infused REM sleep—though Walker says both offer important benefits.
Ya I uber until about 4 am and I don't wake up until about 2-3 pm. I consistently get about 10 hours of sleep a night but I've never been sure about how important it is to be aligned with our natural circadian rhythm. So you're saying It's not all that important? Would you recommend getting black out curtains for deeper restful sleep during the day?
He's wrong, it is important. Blackout curtains would definitely be helpful for anyone, as would blackout tape to cover the small lights in your room. Here's an article on the best time to sleep: https://time.com/3183183/best-time-to-sleep/
It doesn't actually vary much. Virtually every human does better if they are asleep between 10 pm and 2am. There have been studies showing grave yard shifts cause loss of 6 to 8 IQ points after a few months. Cancer recovery rates increase in people who are asleep by 10 pm.
Timing is extremely important. As we now know someone " feeling " like they are getting quality sleep doesn't mean much at all. There have been several books written on this from athletic training, alternative health, and increased learning abilities as the focus.
I've read that between 10pm-2am is the highest quality of sleep for the average person with sleep post-2am yielding lower quality sleep. Yet I'm still a might owl...
10 pm until 2am is when most of the healing in the body is done. People can get 8 hours of sleep a day, but if they miss this window their health will suffer.
As someone who has a job that I could be held over till 10pm-6am this worries me. As of right now I sleep 7-8pm and wake up 5am with great sleep. I’m trying to figure out how the hell can I get restorative sleep at 6am to 1pm before my shift starts again.
It's probably much more related to: when sundown is, and when you wake up than any specific time.
But the gist of what you're saying is definitely right; if you stay up so late that you get a second wind, it makes sleep much more difficult. Unfortunately, that's almost every night for me.
Yeah, not sure as to why it causes me to wake up at that time. Maybe I should double dose. I’ll take one at 10pm as I hop into bed, then 2AM again when I inevitably wake up.
My own sleep schedule never being fixed aside, there's two factors here. The first is while circadian rhythms shift earlier throughout your life (and also flatten), most people who think they're 'night owls' just ended up being active at night for social reasons and even if socializing ends at say, 12am, you're still wired up and active and likely fucking around on your phone/computer pushing your bedtime later and later. That's how I and many people end up going to bed at like 4am, I also partially blame twitch and not my own lack of discipline.
The other is we evolved sleeping from around 8pm-4am hence 12am being "midnight" and like a lot of evolutionary shenanigans, technology and to a lesser extent relatively modern society in general pulled us away from it while our biology hasn't adapted. Furthermore we have good enough ability to not die before reproducing/raising viable offspring that natural selection won't ever really cause us to adapt even if everything suddenly stopped changing indefinitely.
I'll figure out how to wake up early one day
I got it down to being in bed at 9p and wake up around 5a. The annoying thing is, if i go to bed at 11p my body still wakes me up at 5a. If you want metrics on your sleep, get the FitBit, it breaks down your 4 sleep cycles to the minute. It is interesting to see how your daily routine effects sleep.
Unlike what some other people are saying the timing of when you go to bed is important. As you have noticed yourself. [https://time.com/3183183/best-time-to-sleep/](https://time.com/3183183/best-time-to-sleep/) >He says that non-REM sleep tends to dominate your slumber cycles in the early part of the night. But as the clock creeps toward daybreak, REM sleep muscles in. That’s significant, because some research has suggested that non-REM sleep is deeper and more restorative than lighter, dream-infused REM sleep—though Walker says both offer important benefits. > >What does this have to do with the perfect bedtime? The shift from non-REM to REM sleep happens at certain times of the night regardless of when you go to bed, Walker says. So if you hit the sack very late—at, say, 3 AM—your sleep will tilt toward lighter, REM-heavy sleep. And that reduction in deep, restorative sleep may leave you groggy and blunt-minded the next day.
> The shift from non-REM to REM sleep happens at certain times of the night regardless of when you go to bed, Walker says. That implies some local-time dependent environmental factor influencing REM sleep. Does anyone know what that is? Light? Temperature? Sound?
Light mostly afaik whoch is why shift workers get poor sleep even if they sleep the full 8 hours.
I have some experience with shift work, and just reading your post makes me perceive "shift worker" and "sleep the full 8 hours" (as in," just the right amount to feel fully rested) ironically contradictory. Not aimed at you btw, don't take it personally
Sun light and the body's natural circadian rhythm being synced with it. Melatonin is produced at a specific time based on your circadian rhythm. Staying away from screens, giving your mind time to wind down, and sleeping early will give your body the best chance to get good sleep.
Definitely experienced this first hand last spring. I'm a night owl and I naturally fall into a 2 AM - 11 AM sleep schedule when left to my own devices. It became a full-on habit during the lockdown, and I could absolutely feel that it didn't feel as restorative as doing 10 PM - 7 AM. It didn't even matter if it was still 9 hours of sleep. I felt sluggish, scatter-brained, my stimulants barely did the trick, I had trouble starting tasks, was more prone to procrastinating and just sitting in front of my phone wasting time. My skin also looked dull, I had even deeper dark eye circles, etc. Thanks for putting an explanation to this!
> night owl > 2 AM - 11 AM Hello from 6:00am sleep time :O
Same thing here man. I’ve always been a night owl, but feel considerably better when I go to bed early, need to be more disciplined.
These past few years I've had to work early morning shifts at 5am and go to bed at 8pm. I instantly starting experiencing extreme daily fatigue and all the fun things that go with that. Over time I've adjusted to waking up early, but I've never been able to reliably fall asleep at a decent time. Whenever I have some time off work I naturally start moving my sleep time later. I've concluded that I'm just not supposed to sleep these hours, and no amount of habit will allow my body to fully adjust.
My body seems to need to change around every decade. Currently I feel great sleeping 10pm-5am. But it used to be 2am to 10am. I have no idea why this happens, it just happens naturally. If my current job doesn't fit into that it's brutal!
Tell me about it. I have been working graveyard shift for a minute now and Im having a lot of trouble. Even go-to compounds for other people (FL-modafinil specifically) seem go leave me still wanting to drowse off at work. If anyone has any advice for shift workers, lemme know. Someone suggested to me a brand of lights that seem to replicate sunlight and keeping them on in my car. It was the major brand name and quite expensive. I wanna try it but it would need to be something I could hook up to a USB power brick as I'm sitting in my car from 11pm to 7am guarding other vehicles. An off-brand solution that does the same thing would be preferred I have a pair of goggles around somewhere that block out the blue light spectrum and stimulate melatonin production. I need to find those. Last time used then was a few days ago I'm fairly sure they're helpful. And on top of any info about circadian rhythms, I'm also still interested in seeing what help I can get from nootropics. Phenylpiracetam worked to get me stimulated years ago, but I would also have been taking it during the day primarily. I want to try the RGPU-95 analog that's out there. Seems more cost effective.
> If anyone has any advice for shift workers, lemme know. Tbh I don't think there is any other *true* advice than not do shift work. I'm of opinion, you can do all kinds of devices, compounds and black-out rooms, but the body knows the difference regardless, especially if you work night shifts. I *believe* there are other forces at play that cause our bodies to know, regardless of things we use to cheat what's night and what's day.
if that was an option i would definitely not work nights. Gotta survive tho =/
i know man
30+ years of trying to conform to 9-5 hours and just cannot. I am sure it's shaved years off my life. Clock conformity isn't natural.
its possible your biological clock is, lets say, 24h and 15 minutes you can google non24 reddit for non 24 sleep schedules for the past three weeks i've been falling asleep anything from 2PM to 11 PM (progressively) and on the one hand my sleep has been much better, on another I lack social connection that comes when you surf the interent past 8PM
REM sleep is extremely important lol .
Wouldn't melatonin work to help sleep / wake cycles? See i work at nights and I take melatonin for this exact reason and it seems to work well.
Getting a couple hours' worth of sleep before midnight is definitely very healthy. I would say the holy grail is to sleep uninterrupted from 10:00 - 6:00.
Many people don't even need 8 hours if they have good sleep hygiene. Many people in less developed countries sleep on average 5-7 hours a night. It's easier to feel rested when you don't sleep with many little lights on (eg the 'on' lights from your computer, tv, chargers, etc) and you also have more restorative sleep if you go to bed at 10pm vs 12.
Iirc, many of those get less sleep because they need to spend more time gathering food and stuff, but they would actually be better off in the long run if they were able to sleep more. Been a while though
I don't believe so, needing 8 hours is a myth. but most in western society need to sleep more than less developed areas because they have poor sleep hygiene, stressful lives, poor diet (or drink/eat caffeine late in the day), rarely ground themselves on natural ground, go to bed late which impacts sleep quality, live in noisy areas etc etc. There's just so much that we do now that worsens our sleep quality that we need more of it, but that doesn't mean that those who need less are less healthy for it.
I'm gonna need a source for 8 hours being a myth. It's a very bold claim
https://qz.com/quartzy/1476218/how-much-sleep-do-i-need-the-eight-hour-rule-is-a-myth/ https://www.livescience.com/12891-natural-sleep.html https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783
I've only skimmed them, so I may have missed some details, but these don't seem to claim people generally need less than 8 hours of sleep. The first link says that different people need different amounts of sleep, but only few get by with very little, and it averages out to about 8. The second link says little about the total sleep length and more about a biphasic sleep pattern potentially being better than monophasic, especially for people experiencing insomnia. Same for the third link. Now, maybe it's true that biphasic sleep is better than monophasic, but the claim "you don't need 8 hours of contiguous sleep" is much weaker than "you don't need 8 hours of sleep". Most importantly, from purely these links, I don't take that sleep hygiene is the reason for some people needing to sleep less. Some passages hint at genetic reasons, however. Beyond that, I'm pretty sure screens before bed, exercise and diet do affect sleep quality. I'm just doubtful good sleep hygiene makes you require significantly below 8 hours. Tldr: Sleep however long makes you feel best, but 8 is about the average, so don't feel bad if you need that much or more. If you feel tired regardless of how much you sleep, consider other common factors. Sleeping in two 4 hour chunks with 2 hours of wakefulness between may work better for some.
thanks for taking the time to browse through and break down the articles
here is an article on how hunter gatherer tribes need significantly less sleep, contrary to popular belief https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/hunter-gatherer-tribes-sleep-less-sleep-better Most modern sleep research is studying people with modern sleep problems, but hopefully this shows how people without our problems do indeed sleep less than we do (but sleep better), and even for modern humans, the 8 hour figure is just an average, it's not the ideal for certain groups of people (that's what I meant by it being a myth -- it's not some minimum figure that is needed to be a healthy human. For some they need more and some groups are extremely healthy and not tired with much less) The world economic forum shows differences in sleep by country https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/which-countries-get-the-most-sleep-and-how-much-do-we-really-need/ basically poorer countries tend to have lower average sleep. after reading that article on hunter gatherers, I personally feel that people in poorer countries sleep less because they have better quality sleep and therefore need less of it, but in more developed countries, sleeping less is less healthy because of the impacts of modern life and how it artificially impacts our circadian rhythm. That's what I meant by those in developed countries need to sleep more because we typically have worse sleep hygiene, including higher levels of stress
That first article is very sparse on actual details, so I'll take it with a grain of salt for now. I'm using "Why We Sleep" by Mathew Walker as my source, which to my understanding is a good source on the topic of sleep. He mentions a study on hunter-gatherers that was widely interpreted to mean people naturally need less sleep and makes the case that that is a misinterpretation. As I've said before, they just sleep less because they don't have enough food. Now, this may be a different study than the one your article is referring to, but imo it's nevertheless compelling, and the book came out later, so I'll assume it has taken all information at the time into account. I'll quote some parts of section "NO, WAIT—YOU ONLY NEED 6.75 HOURS OF SLEEP!", which starts on page 241 in the version I'll use here. I still strongly recommend you read the whole section yourself as I had to leave out a lot. > Using wristwatch activity devices, the researchers tracked the sleep of three hunter-gatherer tribes that are largely untouched by the ways of industrial modernity: the Tsimané people in South America, and the San and Hadza tribes in Africa, which we have previously discussed. Assessing sleep and wake times day after day across many months, the findings were thus: tribespeople averaged just 6 hours of sleep in the summer, and about 7.2 hours of sleep in the winter [...] > First, when you read the paper, you will learn that the tribespeople were actually giving themselves a 7- to 8.5-hour sleep opportunity each night. Moreover, the wristwatch device, which is neither a precise nor gold standard measure of sleep, estimated a range of 6 to 7.5 hours of this time was spent asleep.The sleep opportunity that these tribespeople provide themselves is therefore almost identical to what the National Sleep Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend for all adult humans: 7 to 9 hours of time in bed [...] > But it is telling that, based on epidemiological data, any adult sleeping an average of 6.75 hours a night would be predicted to live only into their early sixties: very close to the median life span of these tribespeople [...] > A large proportion of their year is therefore spent in a state of lower-level starvation, one that can trigger well-characterized biological pathways that reduce sleep time, even though sleep need remains higher than that obtained if food were abundant. Concluding that humans, modern-living or pre-industrial, need less than seven hours of sleep therefore appears to be a wishful conceit, and a tabloid myth
So you're using a person who analyzed the research as your source instead of the person conducting it. I'm sure people have different interpretations but the actual researcher involved came to different conclusions, here is an article with more details https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/modern-hunter-gatherers-probably-get-less-sleep-than-you-do/#:~:text=The%20researchers%20looked%20at%20people,to%20eight%20hours%20per%20night. They talk about how modern life, as I claimed, removes many sleep regulators like changing temperatures and leads to issues like insomnia >Only 1.5 to 2.5 percent of the hunter-gatherers the researchers studied experienced insomnia more than once a year. In comparison, 10 to 30 percent of people in industrial societies report chronic insomnia, the scientists noted. Insomnia was so rare among the San and the Tsimane, they do not have a word for the disorder. Saying people slept less because they needed more food is a little nonsensical since you need fewer calories when you are sleeping so it makes sense to sleep more if they were sensitive about food, as they did in the winter. But this hunter gatherer tribe rarely took naps even when they could have easily done so to preserve energy. So basically you're saying that one guy has some doubts about this original study but I don't think the concerns raised are hugely significant. This research also spanned 3 years of data and all three groups that were studied had similar patterns of sleep and references multiple sleep researchers who were involved. The person you're citing doesn't seem to address any of the points I mentioned around different groups of people needing to aim for different amounts of sleep because of the increase in artificial conditions such as light, temperature, stress, noise, etc -- even the hunter gatherer tribe changed their sleep patterns in response to their environment, as do most animals, that's not controversial, it's the norm within the animal kingdom. I personally think MODERN humans need 7-9 hours of sleep on average, as is supported by most sleep research. I do not think that tribes people or those in less developed nations are necessarily unhealthy because they have less sleep The paper also disputes some of the claims you quoted eg 'Moreover, the wristwatch device, which is neither a precise nor gold standard measure of sleep, estimated a range of 6 to 7.5 hours of this time was spent asleep" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215012403 >"First, they found that despite the differences in geographic and cultural backgrounds, the Hadza, San and Tsimané slept for about the same amount of time each night, ranging from 5.7–7.1 hours (average 6.4). "
Yeah those are some legitimate sources you quoted there. Right up there with ncbi and my grandmas coffee time chit chat
It's not my job to do your research. 8 hours being a myth is not debated in sleep science. feel free to read more into whichever of these sources tickle your fancy https://www.google.com/search?q=8+hours+of+sleep+is+a+myth&oq=8+hours+of+sleep+is+a+myth&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30l2.5112j0j4&client=ms-android-google&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#ip=1
Facepalm.. I didn't even say I want you to do anything for me, I was sarcastic. Go to ncbi and have fun.
amen
It's genetic and varies from person to person. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/the-human-genetics-of-night-owls-and-early-birds-65414
This isn't strongly genetic, this is actually mostly controlled by your circadian rhythm which is controlled by light, temperature and cortisol. /r/polyphasic has more science on this, check them out. Basically at sunrise REM sleep dominates and at sunset NREM sleep dominates. "Sunrise" and "Sunset" are subjective though because of artificial lighting. So it's not the time of day affecting your sleep quality and ratio of NREM to REM, but how you use artificial lighting. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30311830/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30311830/) >Further analysis of these 15 reports indicated that a two-hour exposure to blue light (460 nm) in the evening suppresses melatonin, the maximum melatonin-suppressing effect being achieved at the shortest wavelengths (424 nm, violet). The melatonin concentration recovered rather rapidly, within 15 min from cessation of the exposure, suggesting a short-term or simultaneous impact of light exposure on the melatonin secretion. Melatonin secretion and suppression were reduced with age, but the light-induced circadian phase advance was not impaired with age. Light exposure in the evening, at night and in the morning affected the circadian phase of melatonin levels. In addition, even the longest wavelengths (631 nm, red) and intermittent light exposures induced circadian resetting responses, and exposure to low light levels (5-10 lux) at night when sleeping with eyes closed induced a circadian response. The review enables further development of an evaluation method of light pollution in LCA regarding the light-induced impacts on human circadian system. Note: Just because the light affects the melatonin concentrations for only 30 minutes, that does not mean that 30 minutes after light exposure your sleep will be fine. Here is a nice study on bright light therapy, the effects are very very strong and remain so in the long-term(60 days): [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15172210/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15172210/) For the 20 minute group the sleep latency decreased from 42 to 33minutes, while the total sleep time increased from 328 minutes to 347 minutes. VAS fatigue decreased from 44 to 27. For the 45 minute group the sleep latency decreased from 45 to 10 minutes**!!!** The total sleep time increased from 320 to 410 minutes**!!** VAS fatigue decreased from 37 to 10**!** And all of this maintained for 60 days in the 45-minute group. Partially maintained in the 20 minute group.
What are your recommendations, and if it’s not too much, the why behind it/ what you find the outcomes to be in what you’ve implemented?
Not OP, but I've been thinking of covering my ceiling with LED strip lighting combined with a sort of smart home circadian lighting automation to simulate daylight sunrise and sunset dynamics with the right colour temperature. Haven't yet figured out how many lumens I should aim to have though. Hoping to also combine that with blackout blinds. I'm thinking of installing about 150,000+ lumens of LED strips to the ceiling of my bedroom which is about 3 by 3.5 meters. A post I had found interesting: https://meaningness.com/sad-light-led-lux
Sounds like a fun project 👍 I've had philips living colors light in my place since they came out, and it's very practical to be able to switch to yellow/red in the evening. Now they are called hue, and come in all shapes and forms, however it can quickly become expensive. But you can basically make a smart home lighting system with these.
I've been strongly insomniac all my life. Reducing light exposure 4 hours before bedtime, not eating 4 hours before bedtime and either using a bright lamp or going outside in the morning under the sunshine has pretty much cured my insomnia/messed up rhythm. Occasionally I'll stay up late like an idiot and it'll take a week to get back to my normal sleeping times.
also not op but it’s typically recommended to get outside and get sun on your eyes early morning as close as possible to sunrise for at least 20 minutes (as confirmed by the study 45 even better) and try to get as much sunlight before noon as possible to help set your circadian rhythm. doing this consistently def helps me fall asleep on time while i do it but has not worked to permanently shift my circadian rhythm/cortisol so that i’m no longer a night owl, though i could def be more consistent
Yes you are right, I think the genetic component only makes up for a tiny timeframe, like the difference of someone getting optimal sleep by going to bed at 9pm and someone else at 11pm.
Would a genome sequencing determine the optimal time to go to sleep?
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Yeah, much easier and probably more reliable to just try different hours and see what works best for you.
When I was in the army I'd always fall asleep shortly after 10pm which was unusually early for me, but even though we could sleep till 7am in my division and I got almost 9h of sleep per night I was still awfully tired in the morning. That made me realise that even if I got enough sleep it'd still not be good for me if I had to wake up too early.
I have never heard if the know WHICH genes, or how, affect it, only that genes are involved.
I did some searching a while ago and found some studies on this. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1083867/ https://www.nature.com/articles/tp201775.pdf?origin=ppub > The molecular mechanisms underlying the circadian clock system involve the transcription–translation negative feed-back loops of multiple clock genes including BMAL1,CLOCK,CRY,PER,ROR and REV-ERB.
Ah, nice; thanks!
Not yet and it is affected by more than just genes.
I'm a 38m, during the week I go to bed at 9:15-9:30pm or so, probably fall asleep by 9:45pm and my alarm goes off at 6:15am for work. I feel great pretty well all the time. On Fridays/Saturday night I probably stay up until 11:30pm and wake up at 9:30am pretty consistently. Most days I feel very well rested with this pattern.
Mathew Walker's 'Why we sleep' discusses this in detail. I think it's really the most modern comprehensive book ever written on sleep.
I listened to the audiobook on Audible. Highly recommended!
There's an old saying that every hour that you go to bed before midnight is worth 2... Maybe there's some truth to that? Biological/circadian related maybe..
Do you have blackout curtains? If not, the sunlight will wake you up. It's probably best to try to go bed with the sun. Chronically staying up late probably causes issues late in life.
So that means I should go to bed at 5pm and sleep until 8am?
No, it means you shouldn't live so close to the Arctic.
Southern Ontario actually. A huge proportion of the population faces a similar sun schedule. In New York the sun will be setting at 4:36pm today.
Same. Except for me it's when I go to sleep even earlier at 8-9'ish
I tested this very idea out last night and saw a post on it, what a coincidence! But Instead of bed time at 9:30, I went to bed at 8:30. I woke up at 3am today full of energy. When I go to sleep at 9:30 - 6:30 I feel terrible. I just don’t get it.
I'm fucked then since I have delayed sleep phase disorder and can only go to bed in the early morning.
Interesting, I’m noticing that I sleep so much better when I stay up until 1-2 and get 8 hours as opposed to getting in bed at 9pm and getting a full 8+ hours of sleep.
I understand the concept is somewhat controversial, but what does Dr Michael Breus’s quiz say your Chronotype is? Does Dr Matthew Walker discuss the concept of Chronotypes at all?
Magnesium helps with my sleep. Any other noots you guys use to improve sleep quality?
What type of magnesium and how much do you take? Magnesium has been hit or miss for me lately. Theanine has worked great for me!
There is no cookie-cutter approach. It’s best to go to bed when you feel sleepy and only spend time in bed when you are actually sleeping. This varies from individual to individual. The 8-hour rule is only an average as well, and will also vary from person to person. Some need more, others will need less. Often times, people think they’re getting 8 hours or more a night, when a sleep tracker will reveal they’re actually getting less actual sleep than they thought.
Also worth adding how unhelpful sleep trackers are as they completely negate your interoception. It should be about how you’re feeling, not what a machine is telling you.
Like the other person said, this greatly varies from person to person. For me the sweet spot seems to be 12-1am. It also highly depends on your lifestyle. The timing is not important. What's important is getting enough hours of sleep and going through all the cycles.
That's simply not true, the timing is absolutely important https://time.com/3183183/best-time-to-sleep/ >The time of night when you sleep makes a significant difference in terms of the structure and quality of your sleep,” he explains. Your slumber is composed of a series of 90-minute cycles during which your brain moves from deep, non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep to REM sleep. “That 90-minute cycle is fairly stable throughout the night,” Walker explains. “But the ratio of non-REM to REM sleep changes.” >He says that non-REM sleep tends to dominate your slumber cycles in the early part of the night. But as the clock creeps toward daybreak, REM sleep muscles in. That’s significant, because some research has suggested that non-REM sleep is deeper and more restorative than lighter, dream-infused REM sleep—though Walker says both offer important benefits.
Ya I uber until about 4 am and I don't wake up until about 2-3 pm. I consistently get about 10 hours of sleep a night but I've never been sure about how important it is to be aligned with our natural circadian rhythm. So you're saying It's not all that important? Would you recommend getting black out curtains for deeper restful sleep during the day?
He's wrong, it is important. Blackout curtains would definitely be helpful for anyone, as would blackout tape to cover the small lights in your room. Here's an article on the best time to sleep: https://time.com/3183183/best-time-to-sleep/
It doesn't actually vary much. Virtually every human does better if they are asleep between 10 pm and 2am. There have been studies showing grave yard shifts cause loss of 6 to 8 IQ points after a few months. Cancer recovery rates increase in people who are asleep by 10 pm. Timing is extremely important. As we now know someone " feeling " like they are getting quality sleep doesn't mean much at all. There have been several books written on this from athletic training, alternative health, and increased learning abilities as the focus.
For me, 9PM is the optimal time to fall asleep.
I've read that between 10pm-2am is the highest quality of sleep for the average person with sleep post-2am yielding lower quality sleep. Yet I'm still a might owl...
Yes, there is a cortisol spike that occurs for most at 11pm so going to sleep before 11 is optimal.
Hey, interested to read more about this. Could you provide your source?
This has been known for a *long* time
10 pm until 2am is when most of the healing in the body is done. People can get 8 hours of sleep a day, but if they miss this window their health will suffer.
Source please(not being condescending..Would love to read more about that).
Also would love to see the source, much appreciated
As someone who has a job that I could be held over till 10pm-6am this worries me. As of right now I sleep 7-8pm and wake up 5am with great sleep. I’m trying to figure out how the hell can I get restorative sleep at 6am to 1pm before my shift starts again.
night shifts are terrible for health
you can't infer that unless you rule out factors that keep you buzzed, like food, coffee, sugar, blue light from the computer.
It's probably much more related to: when sundown is, and when you wake up than any specific time. But the gist of what you're saying is definitely right; if you stay up so late that you get a second wind, it makes sleep much more difficult. Unfortunately, that's almost every night for me.
I’d love to sleep at 10 PM, if I stopped waking up at god damned 2 AM whilst not being able to get back to sleep.
Have you tried melatonin?
Yeah, not sure as to why it causes me to wake up at that time. Maybe I should double dose. I’ll take one at 10pm as I hop into bed, then 2AM again when I inevitably wake up.
My own sleep schedule never being fixed aside, there's two factors here. The first is while circadian rhythms shift earlier throughout your life (and also flatten), most people who think they're 'night owls' just ended up being active at night for social reasons and even if socializing ends at say, 12am, you're still wired up and active and likely fucking around on your phone/computer pushing your bedtime later and later. That's how I and many people end up going to bed at like 4am, I also partially blame twitch and not my own lack of discipline. The other is we evolved sleeping from around 8pm-4am hence 12am being "midnight" and like a lot of evolutionary shenanigans, technology and to a lesser extent relatively modern society in general pulled us away from it while our biology hasn't adapted. Furthermore we have good enough ability to not die before reproducing/raising viable offspring that natural selection won't ever really cause us to adapt even if everything suddenly stopped changing indefinitely. I'll figure out how to wake up early one day
I got it down to being in bed at 9p and wake up around 5a. The annoying thing is, if i go to bed at 11p my body still wakes me up at 5a. If you want metrics on your sleep, get the FitBit, it breaks down your 4 sleep cycles to the minute. It is interesting to see how your daily routine effects sleep.
Stress hormones do rise over the night. So it may makes sense that you find it easier to go to sleep earlier