Doesn't matter for me. I hardly get much deep sleep due to anatomical issues essentially blocking my airways. I can't afford the surgery (even though I have insurance) nor will my government contribute to it (even though it would increase my productivity multiple times over, meanwhile they throw trillions at universities offering useless degrees).
But yes, we have a culture that doesn't value sleep. I know of people who schedule emails to be sent in the middle of the night just so they appear to be working all the time. Construction can begin at 7AM in NYC, waking up hundreds of people in surrounding buildings. Gas leaf blowers emit one of the most stressful drone sounds out in the suburbs, causing stress to dozens of neighbors, so one man can clear a pavement of dead leaves quicker.
And just this morning over Manhattan, a helicopter hovered at 6AM for at least an hour. An hour, sitting there, hovering, for God knows what reason, awaking possibly thousands of people early, causing possibly millions in lost productivity today.
You can really feel the anger in your comment and it resonates with me. I am a light sleeper and constantly amazed at what we as a society deem acceptable when it comes to noise at certain hours.
Why does the fire truck needs to blast its horns at 3am on a Tuesday going down a large empty street? There is no need and in some countries that would be against noise pollution laws. Doesn't seem to matter here.
Leaf blowers and lawn mowing at 7am on a Sunday are also a major annoyance yet I understand that some people, especially older people, like to get up early and who am I to complain that they do?
They say having a major lack of sleep is comparable to being intoxicated yet there are no protections in place to prevent it. Instead we wax on about "pulling an all-nighter" like it's a competition on who can be the most sleep deprived.
Yes. I actually got into confrontations with the leaf blowers once (the manager, and the property owner). I also called the police because they are clearly violating the city's own noise ordinance. Nobody cares, the owner called me and told me that it doesn't matter because the work day starts at X a.m. What about people who work odd shifts, or students?
Resistance is futile. I just started using wax earplugs and find they make a huge difference and actually drown out a lot of noise.
I am also a light sleeper. I lived in the centre of the city for almost three years. I used to get woken up at all hours. I started off with earplugs, but those hurt my ears. Eventually I started shutting my windows and curtains and putting a powerful fan on and it really works well.
Edit: a bonus one gets with the fan is that it also cools you off during summer when a shut window might have caused problems otherwise. (Aircon is uncommon here.)
Yes, when I lived on Powell street in SF (right on the cable car tracks) ear plugs were essential but they can become a crutch too. I've also come to the same conclusion as you about having a fan in the room.
Just in the city. The exurbs and suburbs are still very much the south in all the ways the south is stereotyped (poor govt services, anti govt rhetoric, tons of gun culture, overly accepting of racism if not racism itself, bevy of fundamentalists in local and state govt, etc). Also hideous commutes for suburban living. While some people would feel at home there (especially if white and Christian), many others would not find it as normal as places in other regions of the country.
Atlanta (the city, not the region) is basically the freaks and geeks vacuum for the South (and also a middle class black mecca too). The city is great. The metro area is far more questionable. Tons of affordable homes in the city, tons of trees (we're literally "The City of Trees"), and lots of little pockets of whatever you like.
Some of the close in suburbs are more like Atlanta than it's suburbs, but honestly, it's go with a home in the city or go home IMO.
(Fulton county too, not DeKalb...it's complicated but important).
> There is no need and in some countries that would be against noise pollution laws.
Emergency vehicles are exempt from those laws, as they should be. Safety is more important than your sleep. Trains blow their horns at crossings for the same reason.
Also, I have to laugh at your indignation at someone mowing their lawn at 7am because they are awake but you aren't right after complaining about an empty street at 3am because everyone is asleep.
I have almost hit several emergency vehicles during the day due to my car's sound dampening and my car stereo (which doesn't have to be loud to block out sirens). At night, this has never happened because I have never not seen the seizure-inducing lights. My sample size may be less than a hundred, but you're making an assumption that piercing sirens at night are the most effective way to alert the public of an emergency. And for those blind pedestrians, low-frequency (or even lower decibel) sirens are more than sufficient.
I live on the 9th floor of a condo building that unfortunately has single-pane windows. If I don't have an extremely loud fan blowing, I will be woken up by everything from emergency vehicles to motorcyclists. I realize this comes with the territory of living in a city, but if cosmopolitan cities like Geneva can incorporate effective noise pollution laws* then there's room to improve.
> Also, I have to laugh at your indignation at someone mowing their lawn at 7am because they are awake but you aren't right after complaining about an empty street at 3am because everyone is asleep.
I'm not sure what you mean here? I was saying I don't think emergency vehicles need to use their sirens on a quiet street at 3 am in the morning. I was also bemoaning the use of leaf blowers at 7am on a Sunday. Both of those things are annoying yet "technically" I'd say 7am is probably a good time to consider as the start of the day and therefore removal of any noise restrictions. In fact, I think in the UK noise pollution restrictions apply from 11pm - 7am most nights.
Only on reading this thread have I learned that I am a very heavy sleeper. I've always taken for granted that low level noise is easy to sleep through. Now I feel:
1. Bad that I've caused as much noise as I have at some times.
2. Very sorry for those of you that have to deal with easily disturbed sleep.
To me it seems we have a culture that doesn't value well-being in general. People might say that they do, but the entire culture is set up against it. Sleep is just one more neglected aspect of well-being. We also have ridiculous working hours, insane commutes, pathetic diet and exercise habits, and a health record to show for it. Keeping busy at one's job is valued above most else.
I've removed commuting of my daily life. I can now enjoy between 1 hour to 2 hours a night more sleep because of this... feels great to sleep 8-9 hours every night.
>Keeping busy at one's job is valued above most else.
I also hate how our smalltalk starts with "What do you do for a living?" That's a fair question, but its depressing when that's the first one and all we really talk about.
Its a puritan's overworked culture serving the elites. This shutdown is about this as well. We really need to have European-style vacation time and healthcare. I hope my generation gets it right and the status quo of the baby boomers is seen as the horrific thing that it truly is.
> I also hate how our smalltalk starts with "What do you do for a living?" That's a fair question, but its depressing when that's the first one and all we really talk about.
What's so depressing about that, and what would you suggest people ask instead? People's careers take up a lot of their time and provide their livelihood, and a lot of people are quite proud of their careers. Sure, things like sleep and diet are probably more fundamental to a person's wellbeing, but it's pointless to start smalltalk with "how much sleep have you been getting?" or "what is your diet like?".
'I also hate how our smalltalk starts with "What do you do for a living?"'
I consider it a clear improvement over its primary competition in other cultures, "Where are you from?" and "Who are your parents?" At least this one, if you don't like the answer you're giving, you have power to change it.
>our smalltalk starts with "What do you do for a living?"
I agree - it's not good small-talk. Since this was pointed out to me (~15 years ago) I've made a conscious effort never to ask people what they do for a living. One friend I knew for a year before I found out what he did (that's a rare situation, granted). If you haven't tried it then I highly recommend it.
I love this idea, but I've struggled with what to replace it with. "Tell me about yourself" is the best thing I've come up with, but it sounds like an interview. "What are you interested in?" is another option, but it too sounds formal. I want to ask people what they care about without having it be awkward. How do you open small talk with someone you've just met?
Good question, but I think the answer is in the question:
I want to __ask__ people what they __care__ about...
How do you open __small talk__ ...
I would make small talk about something small, like the weather (I'm British :), or about whatever common experience around us we're sharing (the music, how bumpy the bus is, how full the flight is). Taking a random walk through conversation-space should fairly quickly get to something that they care about, so long as they want to talk, and have their self-interest-heuristic turned on.
So I don't think you need to seek what they care about. You just need to make the conversation worth continuing and it will get their on its own.
"How do you spend your time" is a good alternative. If people are out of work, or hate their job, it doesn't alienate them, yet allows them to talk about it if it is important to them.
>I also hate how our smalltalk starts with "What do you do for a living?"
In my experience this usually takes the form of "what do you do?" The question irks me because I know that what's implied is the "for work" part, and that in turn implies that somehow, the way I make money is the signature aspect of my being. The assumption is built in to our [American] society of course. My response to this query is always either "do for what?" or a list of things that I do that I consider important (walk, ride my bike, work out, travel, listen to jazz, read ...).
Have you had a sleep study done? It's 2 doctors office visits, 2 nights in a funky hotel room type lab, and they will often prescribe a machine called a CPAP if you really do have obstructive sleep problems.
I just spoke with my doctor regarding CPAPs recently, and the price has gone down considerably since I looked into it a few years ago… I hear it's less than a thousand
I don't need one (mild hypopnea) yet, but it's nice to know that options exist.
I had a coworker who, years ago, had sleep apnea (would fall asleep at keyboard at work), who subsequently got a CPAP and it's a night and day difference. I'm really glad for his improvements.
> I hardly get much deep sleep due to anatomical issues essentially blocking my airways. I can't afford the surgery (even though I have insurance)
I have snore-caused sleep apnea, are you referring to that? If so, a CPAP device could help you. It's a small cube you put on your nightdesk with a tube and a face (or nose) mask attached to it that allows you clear breathing, but increases pressure in your respiratory system so you won't snore as easily. I live in germany and my insurance covered it, but even if yours doesn't, 1k$ isn't too much for such a thing:
In LA the trash get's collected at 5am, it feels as though i have the trash cans next to me that's how loud it is. To top this off, they building an off ramp nearby, so i wake up at 1am but i can hear this drilling in the distance very faint, it doesn't disturb me, but i can hear it. I started thinking about those people living right there, how the hell are they sleeping, these guys are drilling 1am in the morning!
That said, there is a special place in hell for people who move next to an airport and then complain about the noise. The special place next to hell's airport.
We are probably 7-10km from an airport, but to the side, not in line with runway. We checked out the noise, multiple time a week for months prior to buying. We moved in. Then without warning the airport changes the flight paths to be over our house to make a few more pennies. It's been a bit painful to them so far (see link), and we will see how it goes. I set up an email template and just fill in the time and hit send to the noise complaints section at the council, aviation authority and local MP. It's quite therapeutic. They are installing a noise monitoring thing in our back garden this week at some expense (30k of gear they tell me). http://i.stuff.co.nz/travel/travel-troubles/9162498/Auckland...
I wonder what are all the scenarios that lead to this pattern "sleep deprived ---> low energy levels ---> less activity ---> weight gain ---> heart disease ---> death". Another issue i wonder is about will power, if self control is mentally taxing, therefore your diet should be affected as well.
I wonder how they took exhaust emissions out of the equation? Aircraft noise is disturbing as hell when you first encounter it, either because you moved under a flight path or because the flight path moved over you, but in my experience you just don't hear it anymore after a few weeks. It's one of the easier environmental sounds to tune out.
In my neighborhood, the trash collecting on Sundays takes place (for whatever "reason") at, believe it or not, 6:15AM. Then the recycling people appear later on, at 8:15AM.
I guess they are trying to get people motivated during the week-end?
More likely, they have a finite number of trucks and staff, and any reasonable arrangement of them is going to result in someone's neighborhood getting hit at 6:15AM on Sunday, and you just got lucky.
I doubt it: Sunday is not the only day of trash-collection, there are plenty of cleaning stuff in this city. The problem is we (well, the city council) are obsessed with cleanliness to absurd levels. You will be amazed at the number of gardening stuff we have for a city like mine...
As to the sounds -- it's not a perfect fix, but combinations of ear plugs / ear-plug-style-headphones / white noise can do wonders, both during sleep and in noisy offices, or when helicopters/leaf blowers/etc. are going.
When construction in Manhattan starts at 7am on Saturday, it wakes me up, but I put the ear plugs back in and turn on white noise and I'm fine. When I'm at work and there's a helicopter or union strike or noisy coworker, I throw in the in-ear headphones (they form a seal) and turn on the white noise app on my phone. It totally sucks we have to do these things, but they can help a lot.
I have double-pane glass with an Argon spacer, and live close to a minor road that gets daily traffic (school/commute times). Plenty of sound gets through; the most effective sound insulating filler (Sulfur hexaflouride) is no longer available due to being a highly potent greenhouse gas.
I heard the hovering helicopter too (it was yesterday morning IIRC); it was around until at least 8am. I was so surprised by the continual sound (rather than passing-by) that I even googled how long a helicopter can hover for on a full tank.
Sleep apnea? I have it too and couldn't stomach the CPAP machine. I read my sleep report and it turns out I didn't have any symptoms on my side. So I trained myself to sleep on my side and the symptoms went away. I wish my doctor told me that was an option before spending thousands on treatments, not to mention the time and stress of it all.
If side sleeping doesn't help, I know there are DIY oral appliances you can buy. They're usually marketed just for snoring, but have the same effect on SA. You need to boil it, put it in your mouth so it gets an impression of your teeth, let it cool and wear it at night. It keeps your mouth open enough to help with airway issues. Might as well try it. I think its $20.
Would suggest to anyone concerted with noise (not you I understand you have another issue as well) to get custom fitted ear plugs.
Can be done by an an Audiologist.
Make sure to also use the lubricant as well (helps with comfort and importantly blocks more sound). Price I paid was under $100. Bought a 2nd pair. They are great much better than the temporarily sound plugs (not to mention cheaper in the long run).
I'm right there with you. Thanks to my infant and a merciless cat, it's been a couple of years since I've slept past 4:30am. I try to get to bed early as often as possible, but it's hard to simply 'give up' and go to bed at the end of a long day when you've finally got a moment to yourself.
I'm in the same boat. Two children both under four and two cats. I used to be a real night owl. Now I'm in bed at 9:30 pm almost every night.
Cats are better now. We have confined them away from our bedroom At night and we used a water spray (fine mist) which put them off scratching at the door. After a week or so of getting wet they stopped scratching.
Tried the old water spary trick on our oldest child when she kept waking me up at 5 am. Didn't work. Made her cry.
Do you have an automatic feeder for the cat? I use the Crown Majestic (search on Amazon) and it works pretty well--my cat stopped sniffing my face at 6am...
I bought the same feeder in the hopes that this would occur, but it seems my cat just can never get enough. So I run into the trade off between health (my cat's) and sanity (my own). I would still suggest the feeder to everyone to try however, it really is a well made product that could easily fix bad habits in your animals feedings.
My threshold for the number mornings the cat on a diet begins the wake-up call is rapidly approaching the point at which I get around to building some sort of time-release RFID tag access-controlled (two cats, only one on a diet) feeder.
Thanks for the suggestion. We leave food out all night, so it seems to be less about wanting to be fed than wanting (me specifically) to be up and downstairs.
Oddly, our teenager did the "sleep in" thing for about six months, now he bounces out of bed at 6:45 most mornings and 6:00 when he is going to rugby training!
My school offered a few tracks. The earliest track had you out of school earlier, but classes started at 7AM. Everyone took that track at my school because people could get out earlier and do things when it's still light outside. I regularly woke up at 5:30AM with no trouble. It's not really uncommon for teenagers to wake up at 6AM. For some weird reason that changes in college, and everyone gets lazy and sleeps in. (despite college usually offering superior choice of schedule)
Deep sleep sounds restful, but during it our brains are actually working hard. One of the main things the brain is doing is moving memories from short-term storage into long-term storage, allowing us more short-term memory space for the next day. If you don't get adequate deep sleep then these memories will be lost.
Yeah, if I drink any form of caffeine, this deep sleep is less effective. I can tell if I am on a caffeine binge working all the time, my days blur into one.
With our technologies for stress monitoring, I've been amazed at how much naps seem to reduce stress. You go from being pretty high to pretty low within twenty minutes.
My FitBit tells me that my average sleep time is 7.5 hours. That's pretty good for me since I'm a light sleeper. My girlfriend moving in bed wakes me up.
Worse than that is that if I do have a lie in, or I sleep longer than 8 hours — yes, I recorded sleep before my FitBit — I'd end up with headaches all day and night, worsening my sleep the next night. 7.5 hours seems to be my perfect sleep duration.
I've never been able to have a lie in, even when growing up with my parents and going through puberty. I'd want to lie in, but my parents would have me up by 8:30 every day. 9AM on rare occasions. I wonder if that's got anything to do with it.
I often wondered about sleep recommendations that focus on the amount of time. I realize that if you try to sleep for seven hours instead of six you are likely to get more sleep. But my problem is that not every person is getting the same quality of sleep in that period of time. If I sleep seven hours I may be getting as much rest as another person who sleeps six or a person who sleeps eight or nine hours.
Sleep is another of those things that is not one-size-fits-all and I guess having a sleep study done is the only way to find out for sure what you need individually.
There are some products out there that attempt to measure sleep quality via leaving your phone on the bed, or wearing a bracelet. I'm not sure of the accuracy, though.
I hope these will get even better (maybe a non-intrusive headpiece that can measure brainwaves?) in the future.
I know there's a lot of research in the effects of sleep deprivation on health, but the study referenced in the article had only 7 participants, segmented into two groups. Doesn't that seem like a really small sample size?
Note that you can use it to your advantage too. Bad allergy? Sleep less, it'll raise your corti??? and reduce the effect of the allergy. Not a long term solution, but works well when you are at the pick of it.
I think it would be the opposite effect actually. Sleeping less, according to the article, seems to increase inflammatory and immune system responses, which are what cause allergies. So sleeping more, presumably, may decrease a person's allergic reactions.
Of course, this whole article is based on a really small sample size...I would take it more as a suggestion than a solid scientific result.
Sleep deprivation increase the levels of cortisol which is in part why you tend to put on weight when not sleeping enough. Cortisol is an anti-inflammatory.
I wouldn't be surprised if chronic lack of sleep increase inflammatory, due to some other mechanism, but for sure, short bouts of sleep deprivation has worked wonder for me to stop allergic reactions (I'm talking sleeping less than 4 hours/24 hours period - I usually need between 7 and 9 hours).
I don't believe all of this claims about sleep. I sleep 10 to 12 hours a night and I always feel like shit. Even when I had to go to school, I used to sleep 8 hours a night and I was drowsy for most of the day.
> I don't believe it when research claims X because of personal experience.
That's a horrible way to look at any research conclusion. Have you considered you are possibly oversleeping? 7.5 hours might be a magic number (exactly 5 rem cycles) as opposed to 6.5 which will put you waking up in the middle of a rem cycle. Studies can be faulty for a whole bunch of reasons but dismissing a body of work because your little n=1 experiment didn't sync up with their conclusion is just willful ignorance.
First of all, that has nothing to do with the point I made in my last comment; which is you can't dismiss peer-reviewed research based on personal experience.
Second, that is not how it works. There are varying levels of sleep. Some better than others. When your body doesn't need to go through rem sleep anymore it is sufficiently rested but that doesn't mean you feel like a ray of sunshine and immediately jump out of bed. There are other factors which make a person want to stay in bed longer than they should which leads to shitty non-rem sleep. Too much of this makes you feel groggy.
When you're awake? 'cause people who have sleep apnea don't usually have any trouble breathing whatsoever either. Use your phone to record a nights sleep, or at least SOME sleep, and you might hear: snoring, no breathing, sudden panicked gasping for breath, all without waking up. Or hopefully, just the snoring. Also, you were great in Sin City. :)
You can be completely fine while awake, but still have apnoea while asleep. If you are sleeping that much and not feeling refreshed, it definitely seems like something to get checked.
Depends on how old you are, really. For a young guy like me it's no issue, i just didn't get much rest, since during the night my blood oxygen level was like that of an 80 year old. Once you're elderly though it can easily lead to an untimely demise.
10 to 12 sounds excessive. Sometimes I sleep 14+ hours a day. It's usually because of another problem, and oversleeping often drives a depressive state. Going a day without sleep, or getting 3 hours, usually makes me very hyper.
You should consider doing some research or consulting with a doctor.
But yes, we have a culture that doesn't value sleep. I know of people who schedule emails to be sent in the middle of the night just so they appear to be working all the time. Construction can begin at 7AM in NYC, waking up hundreds of people in surrounding buildings. Gas leaf blowers emit one of the most stressful drone sounds out in the suburbs, causing stress to dozens of neighbors, so one man can clear a pavement of dead leaves quicker.
And just this morning over Manhattan, a helicopter hovered at 6AM for at least an hour. An hour, sitting there, hovering, for God knows what reason, awaking possibly thousands of people early, causing possibly millions in lost productivity today.