Nobody speaks about the effect of little kids on young parents. It is nightmarish and there is nothing to do about it. I wonder how much damage we get to our minds due to sleep deprivation and shocks. Yes shocks. I once laughed at a report of a mercenary saying he was woken up several times a night with ABBA as a form of torture. I then internally cried thinking of the amount of times I woke up just to hear screams, and put them near my hear in the middle of the night. Or finally falling asleep only for screaming to start, and the rush to stop one child from waking the other, and leading to double screaming. On rough weeks I feel I get ptsd or fear of night time.
I honestly do not understand why evolution gave us this harsh treatment.
FWIW — and not to criticize you, I’m a parent and know what you’re going through — evolution didn’t do this to us, we did. If we look at our closest relatives, the other primates, infants all sleep snuggled with their mothers. As they get older, they snuggle together or with other relatives. It’s very rare for any of them to sleep alone.
Imagine a baby chimp or gorilla waking up alone in the forest after having fallen asleep snuggled with its mother. Of course it would be terrified, of course it would cry for help.
Many modern cultures choose to make infants sleep alone. That doesn’t do away with the infant’s hard-wired responses, long-set in its genome.
If the mother doesn't drink/smoke, has normal sleep, and the baby is healthy, it's not considered dangerous and was practiced by all of humankind for most of its past. Separate rooms and separate beds are a very, very recent invention. For most of humankind's history mothers slept with their babies.
Yes but due to malnutrition, dysentery, accidents and a general lack of public health and medical care, not because their parents crushed them in their sleep.
I slept with my kid (I'm a father) for almost a year and trust me, you're still deeply aware of them when they're next to you.
Smothering does happen, statistically speaking, but the odds are so tiny and the benefits so great, it's basically a misinformation campaign based on bunk 1950's science.
100%, I think what has happened is smothering/SIDS/co-sleeping deaths got kinda lumped together into a single statistic and I know at least for me as a new parent it really freaked me out.
When I read more into the numbers it seemed that where co-sleeping has a real risk is when it happens outside of the bed, when the caretaker falls asleep in a chair. All of the deaths get lumped together and we are just told that you need to X so you reduce the risk of SIDs. It kinda sucks because it is so hard being a new parent, it would be nice to better understand up front what the real risks are.
Like all things there are risks and some things have greater risk than others but are still low enough that they are not worrisome enough.
There is a lot of misinformation around SIDs and its relationship with co-sleeping. Co-sleeping is riskier than the baby sleeping in its own bed but generally not measurably so. Where a lot of co-sleeping deaths happen is when the caretaker falls sleep in a chair or a couch holding the baby and baby falls or gets into a bad breathing position. The number of deaths from smothering do exist but pale in comparison.
Of course every baby/person is different and you have to find what works for you as a parent.
Not true. “Often” in this context is a wild overstatement. Humans around the world have co-slept with infants for thousands of years and it’s generally safe.
There are known risk factors for infant smothering during sleep. E.g., parental drinking or smoking, infant low birth weight or respiratory issues (as a sibling comment said). Education and care control for these well.
Plus, with today's technology, it seems it shouldn't be that difficult to have a machine detect if the baby is getting smothered, and wake up the parents with a loud alarm if so. Some googling yields "The 6 Best Baby Breathing Monitors".
Insisting that human babies cry themselves to sleep night after night, solidifying neuropathways of despair and terror before anything else is insane. Also, somehow culturally acceptable so it’s become the default.
False, co-sleeping while not in a bed has a high risk of injury to the infant. Co-sleeping in a bed is of course riskier than not sharing a bed with a baby but is no where near as high as co-sleeping happening outside of the bed.
Is this only an issue with modern life? Before modernity ruined everything the family and community were closer and there was a support structure. Losing sleep at night is only a problem when you still need to get to work the next day.
i don't think its evolution, its the fact that both the parents work and they need to balance the demands of parenthood with the demands of work (among other things). Not to mention how uptight and anxious some parents are these days about random things related to their child (doing tons of research for everything).
This is what we're working on at https://soundmind.co - improving the efficiency of deep sleep by monitoring your brain for slow wave sleep, and using auditory stimulation to increase delta power.
We're about to begin testing with our first users in the next few weeks.
To answer your question about evolution, I speculate...
1) the evolutionary element was likely only adapted to impact mothers, and still impacts mothers more than fathers. But fathers (I believe) are now more involved.
2) for mothers, less sleep may be linked to less memories of the pain of early child rearing, which may make them more likely to have more children.
Lastly, new mothers had a (if I recall correctly) 15% chance of dying during childbirth or shortly thereafter. From an evolutionary standpoint, the mother had mostly done their job, as long as a village was left to raise the young.
The priority for evolution was to get the child through the first year or so with the mother intact. Beyond that, mother nature didn't prioritize the mothers health over their offspring.
All our units are spoken for, and we have a LONG list. If "not a typical sleep schedule" means working shifts or something, research has shown that day time sleep is not as impacted by slow wave enhancement (what we do) as night-time, so it appears the stimulation is not ideally suited to shift workers.
Having said that, I haven't looked closely at the protocols of those studies, but one of the researchers we collaborate with is strongly convinced that daytime sleepers is not a good target for us.
You're closer to being correct than my initial estimate. I was taking the average number of children born to a woman at 8. The population wasn't stable, it was growing.
Mortality during childbirth either 1 or 2%.
So somewhere in the 12-15% range that a woman would die of (one of her) childbirths.
So, yeah seems about right. What is .85 in your calculation?
I have a different opinion. My sleep improved a million fold when we put our daughter in her own room. All the small noises, the movement. Being able to close a door once in a while, was much better.
> On rough weeks I feel I get ptsd or fear of night time.
Been a while since it was very bad, but I do have a low-level anxiety about time after 23:00. There are days when I stay up late to catch up with stuff, while my wife goes to sleep, and I recently realized that I'm no longer able to do much then, because starting 23:00, I keep expecting one of our kids to wake up and start the 30 to 90-minute cycle of trying to get them back to sleep. That waiting is terrible for focus.
In fact, I'm writing this comment in the middle of such cycle.
We work in the sleep efficiency space, so I've thought about this quite a bit.
My thinking, knowing the research around the area, but not having researched this specific case.
1) we are having children later in life. Evolution designed child rearing age to be 16-25. We have pushed that later and later as we've matured as a species, and in Australia (and Canada) from my experience we are now regularly in the 30+ for first children. I know of many mothers who's first child was born when they were 40 or later.
2) Sleep does not return to normal levels until the youngest child on average reaches 6 years old.
3) Our sleep naturally degrades as we age. Particularly in mid-30s. So if you have a child at 33, and you return to "normal sleep" at 39, you are expecting to return to your restful self, but your sleep has declined during that time.
I think having young kids in the mid-30s is a modern trend though, humans generally had their first kids in the mid 20s or even younger which would be an easier age to live with less sleep (at least from my personal experience).
Actually, in the middle-age at least, lowerclass people would marry and have kids surprisingly late, like in their late 30ies. It was a posh thing to get married early.
Of course, a very effective way of eliminating all negative aspects of a situation is to not enter that situation in the first place.
It's also a rather useless truism, since it applies to everything, and if people followed it, nothing whatsoever would ever get done, and humanity would've died out in their caves long ago.
I'd think that large families, clans, or tribes of the past and present, worked it out pretty well. If it's too much for 2 people, then it might be just right for 5 or 7. That would require those people to live together, and we can't have that right now for some reason. Parents want children out of their hair ASAP, and children want to get as far away as possible as soon as they can, too. Elderly are left alone, and increasingly so once the neighbors start to die off. Visiting once a week is already too much, even for people who live in the same city.
I'm very much like that myself and as I'm nearing my 40s, I started to regret it quite a bit. I started to think that the brand of individualism that we imported from you-know-where is somehow broken and dysfunctional when transplanted anywhere else. It's way too late to do anything about it, though, other than praying to Strauss and Howe and hoping the trend will reverse itself in a generation or two. Though, it might not pass, as their theory is also pretty closely tied to the environment and might depend on some factors we don't, or can't, replicate over here.
To the TeMPOral sibling comment: yeah, humanity survived in those caves by sticking together. I thinks it's important, and the fact that it took half my life to realize this is, in hindsight, rather strange and sus.
Tangentially-related to the article, but if you tend to get insomnia like I do, I can't recommend cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-i) enough.
It's really simple (sleep during a fixed window at the same time everyday; use the bed for sleeping and sex; challenge negative thoughts associated with "getting bad sleep") but has completely changed my worldview on sleep and is, so far, making my insomnia extremely manageable.
I used to take some form of sleep aid (melatonin, zzzquil, benadryl) for years before discovering this. I don't need anything to sleep now.
+1. Never had issues with sleep and out of nowhere got hit with insomnia hard last year around this time.
Absolutely brutal, but with solid CBT and sleep deprivation therapy, alongside a few sessions with a sleep psychologist, I knocked it on the head. It took a solid 9 months, but it’s now not even remotely an issue.
From everything I understand (and I work in the sleep space), this statement is wrong "In general, you need less sleep as you age".
You get less sleep as you age, and that lack of sleep has been linked to the decline in health.
That doesn't mean you "need" less.
We're working on improving the neurological function of the brain during sleep at https://soundmind.co and very keen to see if we can have a long-term impact on health and longevity by increasing the depth of deep sleep.
From the study linked in the article, you're right. It acknowledges that sleep changes in adults/older adults, but not whether this is considered okay due to their age.
On stimulant medication (dextroamphetamine for ADHD) I have no trouble sleeping but I'll only stay asleep for around 7 hours, at which point I can't go back to sleep.
If so, no. We are currently not focused on increasing time asleep, the main reason being that I have not seen compelling evidence of a method to achieve that in any peer reviewed literature.
One day we hope to do more than just the slow wave enhancement work we are doing, but I just don't think the science is there yet, so we're going to stay focused on a solid body of research, and a use case we can solve for.
There was a device called the Dreem headband that used EEG and bone conduction earphones to play special tones at specific points of your sleep cycle, the goal being to extend the REM segments. Unfortunately that function was software limited to the EU market for whatever reason and then they stopped selling it to the public. I almost got one before they did but I couldn't guarantee that I would have that functionality. Hopefully it goes on sale again soon.
I had one of these! Very cool piece of technology, but a slew of papercuts (buggy app, connectivity issues, poorly designed charger) made me give up on it after a couple weeks.
Yeah I’m not sold on this. I exercise a lot - for ultra distance races - and I’m convinced that my body is sacrificing REM for deep sleep in order to repair my body. I find that I can only train or do intense cerebral work, never both during the same period. I think if you train up to a certain point of repair this may hold.
yeah of course there's an optimum amount of exercise before it becomes more harmful than helpful. training for ultra distance races definitely sounds like pushing the limits of human capabilities, which means you're probably trading off other parts of your life to make it happen.
for anyone that doesn't obsess over exercise it's probably almost always a net positive, including for sleep (from personal, anecdotal experience).
I exercise a fair amount (run 80km a week). When I first started, I noticed I was more tired and slept better, now after doing it 10+ years I'd say I'm adapted and it has no effect. There's probably some better way of mixing exercises to reduce adaptation and keep getting tired (as well as the calorie burn, etc)
Also, I read that when doing more demanding training, in particular very long distances, it's possible to get into a "hypermetabolic" state where one doesn't sleep as well. Anecdotally I've felt this way after doing what for me are longer runs, say > 30 km.
I haven't experienced inability to think hard, even when I was doing more intense running. The more plodding kind I do these days I find is great for brain work as it lets me clear my mind of distractions and think about problems I'm working on. But it sounds like you are training harder than me
Plodding is amazing for quietening the mind. A side effect of less REM is inability to concentrate - so I’m speculating that excess exercise means more repair more deep less REM less concentration. The time both take up is a factor too.
Currently reading a book on this topic. Can be repetitive at times but has a lot of really good insight. Had no idea your REM as a percentage of sleep is highest in the last few weeks before you are born.
He's been very public about correcting for the errors he made, and as a good scientist, he now clearly states "the current body of knowledge actually says..."
There is no reason to discredit his claims as "false", unless you believe he made the false claim intentionally - which I don't believe he did.
He took complicated research and tried to simplify it and make it digestible to a general audience, and was successful at that.
I had a similar reaction when I first read the book, that some of his conclusions didn't make sense, but I've since backed off as I hear him speak, and believe he is one of the better researchers in the sleep space.
Of note, I work in the sleep space, and there is a TON of crap "science" out there, so I like to give support to those I believe are doing good work.
My general perception of what happened is that Walker wrote a highly-praised, to the point of hyped, popular science book that was very much celebrated on HN. A blogger wrote a meticulous analysis attacking several details in the book, but probably more nitpicking than actually demolishing its main thesis. That similarly popular analysis has since caused the pendulum to swing to the other extreme on HN, as those who were skeptical of the initial hype has since leapt to it to denounce Walker.
It's all very much groupthink, but that's sort of how pop scientific consensus works- with popular narratives and groups of datapoints and conclusions seemingly overthrowing other narratives and groups of datapoints and conclusions. The average layman is too busy to read either the book or the meticulous critique; I've only listened to about fifteen minutes of one of Walker's hour-long podcast interviews.
> A blogger wrote a meticulous analysis attacking several details in the book, but probably more nitpicking than actually demolishing its main thesis.
The takedown gets nitpicky certainly, but the first sections are very much targeting the main thesis of the book, which is that people are not getting enough sleep and that this lack of sleep is causing significant harm. Walker makes claims about the effect of sleep on lifespan and risk of disease that are completely unsupported, and in some cases even contradicted by the sources he provides.
You're right that it's groupthink, but it's also basic economy of attention. If the most basic of scrutiny of the opening chapter reveals sweeping unsupported claims, contradictions, and apparent outright fabrications I don't think it's unreasonable to disregard the author as a charlatan, if only because no one has infinite time to dig down to the foundations of every piece of pop-sci in the world.
> There is no reason to discredit his claims as "false"
I'm just pointing out that he made false claims. I'm not concerned with whether it was intentional - many of the claims he made in the book was false. Some of the premises he attempts to support were supported with conflicting information.
I simply wouldn't trust anything he's written in that book unless he republishes it with the corrected information, and retracts the mistakes. Has he done so?
The fact that he allows the book to continue to be publish and circulated is enough for me.
Also, he's been found citing his own books in his research papers - nothing shockingly wrong with that, but poor practice as far as research goes.
This is the case for almost every drug/agent that has “sleep aid” properties.
From Benadryl to Ambien and alcohol, marijuana, etc they help induce sleep (fall asleep faster) but generally the actual quality of sleep is worse.
I always take pause when I hear people talk about the “benefit” of having a drink or using marijuana (typically “Indica strain”) before bed to help sleep.
We’re all unique but generally I wonder how they would view their restfulness compared to ideal sleep strategies like diet, exercise, screen usage/stimulation, routine, etc.
I don't think it is the case that diphenhydramine (Benadryl) reduces REM sleep (or other antihistamines like low dose doxepin), at least not by much. Certainly it didn't seem to in my case when I took diphenhydramine before my sleep study and ended up with high amounts of REM sleep. Some drugs have a very large reduction in REM or deep sleep, but I don't think this applies to many of the currently used sleep mediations. Additionally, the difference in sleep architecture in healthy study participants is a very different thing from the effect on people who are having trouble sleeping vs what sleep they would get without the sleep aid.
In my experience the daytime effects of sleep medication are much more severe than any issues with sleep quality (at least the worst of these seem much more likely to be direct effects than effects of poor sleep quality due to the timinv vs the half life of the medication). Tolerance seems like a bigger issue with long term use than sleep architecture as such, you end up with all negatives because you are mostly or entirely back to how you would be without the sleep medication but still getting the side effects and quitting causes sleep to get worse.
In general I agree that avoiding medication generally as much as possible is a good idea, but sleep medication can in the short term have quite positive effects if you are sufficiently sleep deprived. In my case (various severe sleep issues), non-medication strategies don't have nearly the positive effect as medication. For somewhat longer use I've found it helpful to alternate sleep medications, although I'm not aware of any actual studies doing that and it is always possible that it could cause damage. I'm doubtful that current methods of evaluating long term effects related to sleep are effective so it is best to be careful if possible. But with enough sleep deprevation it is extremely obvious that the immediate effects of short term sleep medication use can be quite positive.
These are excellent points. I haven't done much (any?) research on the topic nor have I ever had significant problems with sleep - certainly not to the point of participating in a sleep study.
What I do know from VERY occasional use of these sleep aids (< 5 times/yr) there is a trade-off for wakefulness and cognitive performance the next day. As you note Benadryl especially has a certain hangover groggy/fuzzy feel to it. I attributed that to reduction in sleep quality but it could certainly be due to Benadry half-life (or something). However, from a quick search it appears the max half-life for Benadryl is 9.2 hours, which given the recommendation of only taking it when you are able (ideally) to get ~8 hours of sleep makes sense.
I also notice this in my friends who (as I mentioned) use alcohol and/or marijuana as sleep aids. You can definitely see the cognitive decline.
Your comments about long-term use are helpful as well. I think it's pretty well established that they can be "habit forming" with an effectiveness drop-off relatively quickly - for some as soon as a few days of consistent use. For things like Ambien there are also the "Ambien zombie" stories which, while seemingly rare, can be pretty scary. But, from what I remember, prescribing physicians generally recommend no more than two weeks of consistent use?
Not having sleep issues personally I certainly don't judge those who do and are trying to balance the significant quality of life reductions experienced with chronic sleep deprivation vs negatives in the use of sleep aids. There's a reason sleep deprivation is used for torture and if you look at new parents (especially the "two under two" crowd) they often seem very vacant and generally out of it to the point where it seems pretty dangerous.
I suppose I'm lucky in that I only experience minor sleep issues very occasionally when my diet and exercise routine is thrown off.
Thanks, and yes it is hard to tell for sure what is causing what (particularly since as you alluded to there is a huge variation between people when it comes to sleep). When I'm sufficiently rested in general (at least relatively speaking) I'll usually see the effect that has been noted in depression that sleeping less one night makes me more alert the next day (at least for a while - sleep deprevation usually makes me crash earlier in the day and makes later days worse) and like many people I often find that sleeping more than usual can make me feel more tired the next day (however, it still has quite a positive effect beyond that day). So even without considering medication deviations from usual can have differing short term vs long term effects.
I often get weeks of < 5 hours of sleep a night most nights where the effects of sleep deprevation are huge and all of the sleep medications I've tried that let me sleep longer all have a positive effect on that functioning (I stay away from the GABA-A receptor agonists due to the various negatives and addiction potential, however I've heard a number of others say the same thing about them; I have tried a bunch of unusual stuff). The effect of the sleep deprevation also feels different from the direct medication effect and at least I would expect that sleep quality issues would feel more like sleep deprevation.
Diphenhydramine is one of the better ones for me, but remember the half life is only the half life (except that it doesn't necessarily decay fully regularly like radiation, there is often a point where it gets fully cleared fairly quickly). I've noticed that even balofen (helps me stay asleep), which has a shorter half life, will loose its effectiveness much faster if I take it every day vs. every other day and two days off is better. Taking it for more days at a time requires more days off to recover effectiveness. Again hard to tell what is causing that (part of it for sure is "resetting" the adaptation) but it does often seem to have some positive residual effect the next night (particularly when taking it multiple days in a row).
On the other side, low dose doxepin has a long half life and completely wipes me out during the day (although so do some second generation antihistamines so it is possible there is some unusal indirect effect). When I stoped taking it after most of a month of daily use I felt much better than usual during the day for a few days (I'm guessing this is what pitolisant (Wakix) feels like) even though I wasn't sleeping much at night (the reason I haven't tried pitolisant :/). During that month I took doxepin it gradually had less effect but I generally got better sleep than usual and the tiredness felt different from the sleep deprevation tiredness.
Diphenhydramine if anything affects me in the morning and more with higher doses (the commonly recommended dose for sleep is way to high IMO, half of a fresh 25mg tablet works well for me, a full tablet even fairly old has the groggy effect the next morning; I do generally seem to have a very slow metabolism, though). I try not to take it too often since it has some widespread effects and may not be all that healthy.
Two weeks of consistent use max is what I've seen recommended as well, although in my experience it is much better to avoid taking anything consecutive days if you can help it. Also, the lowest effective dose is best, often the recommended dose is higher than needed.
Sleep issues can cause cognitive decline (it has for me certainly) so that also is hard to tell what is causing what. It is hard to really acknowledge cognitive decline (to yourself even) and I suspect trying to improve sleep in some way is an instinctive response. Alcohol and marijuana both potentially have some short term positive effects on sleep but may be damaging in various ways long term (particularly alcohol) and more so with heavier use. I think marijuana could potentially have some legit sleep use but it is often very pesticide heavy at this point and it also seems fairly addictive. For alcohol, in addition to being addictive it has quite the negative liver effect and I think the liver and kidneys are underappreciated when it comes to sleep quality (actually doxpein seems to be not that great on the liver either :( ).
That is my thinking anyway, thanks for the discussion.
Interesting enough, I always wondered why it seemed like I slept better with alcohol, and getting a sleep tracker helped me understand: alcohol lowers REM sleep, but increases deep sleep. In my case, without alcohol I’m abundant in REM but lacking in deep sleep.
So in my case, one drink improves my sleep quality! However I don’t think alcohol is healthy, so I don’t regularly imbibe, but it would be nice to find something healthy that would make that trade off for me.
Alcohol is a GABA receptor agonist, similar to many sleep drugs. It isn't necessarly REM vs deep sleep; it sounds like alcohol is metabolized quickly enough that there can be a REM rebound effect later in the night when most REM sleep happens anyway[1]. I doubt REM and deep sleep cover much of of the important aspects of how medication affects sleep, it is just the available measurement not necessarily a particularly good one (not that it is unimporatant, it is just an extremely high level overview of what is going on).
I’m certainly not a doctor but I’ve heard varying reports on melatonin. While produced naturally it’s like anything else - we have receptors for everything from marijuana to heroin because our bodies produce similar molecules (endorphins for pain suppression during fight or flight, dopamine for reward systems, etc). So saying we “produce melatonin” doesn’t imply safety.
From what little I’ve read and understand it does seem to be very individualized, dosage dependent, etc.
I’m far from an expert here, but I’ve noticed quite a few prominent scientists including Dr. Andrew Huberman recommending against frequent use of it, particularly in children. Part of the issue is label accuracy on supplements for it can be off by several orders of magnitude.
I've found that, like alcohol and caffeine, limiting your weed intake directly before sleep seems to minimize the negative effects it has on the quality of sleep.
Based on fitbit data and morning grogginess, over two to four hours before sleep seems to be a good window, but it definitely depends on the strength, quantity, and how you're consuming it.
It wouldn't surprise me though if most of the negative associations with weed usage (laziness, lack of motivation, depression, etc.) are really just the results of a lack of REM sleep.
It seems to be a pretty important process as far as I can tell.
I replaced drinking with weed for awhile but I noticed I wasn't feeling all that much better. Then I started tracking my sleep with an Apple Watch and found that with both alcohol and pot, the amount of deep sleep I get is super impacted.
I'm sure it's not 100% scientific but it correlates well enough that I'm convinced. Even a couple drinks will knock me down to 15-45 minutes of deep sleep in a night, vs. 90+ that I get during the week.
Once I stopped both alcohol & pot I found that I felt much better, the way I expected to feel after I quit drinking.
Your cognitive skills and memory are likely improve if you take a break. I think this is related to the impact of THC/CBD/CBN on different sleep stages and their function wrt memory and processing information.
It's likely that you'll experience a period of very vivid dreams and increased energy. It's good to put that energy into something that will get you tired (and sleepy!), e.g. sport.
The hardest part about quitting weed for me was terrifying, vivid nightmares. Ironic considering how these "hallucinations" are an order of magnitude more powerful than any you would get from the drug itself. I relapsed several times because of this. But if you stick to quitting for long enough, that symptom will subside.
The article makes no mention of the effects of THC consumption on sleep. Anecdotally, there are people who smoke weed every day and still sleep well at night.
If you quit weed, how will you measure whether there is any increase in REM sleep?
1. Remembering some dreams in the morning. Especially that I dreamt right before waking up.
2. Calmer mood, less jittery, harder to irritate.
3. Easier to maintain focus on things that are not fun, easier to resist distractions.
How I tell the level of cannabinoids/alcohol in the body fell enough to allow good sleep with both deep and REM phases:
- The first night you sleep with a proper REM phase you get a REM sleep rebound. It's characterized by lot of vivid, intense, often rare dreams. Easy to notice after a period in which you pretty much don't remember any dreams. Happens because there is much pressure in the body to catch up for lost REM sleep, but rebounds are not enough to catch up.
The sad and deeply diabolical thing about cannabis is that it's half time in body is quite long (though adapted bodies metabolize it faster), so smoking/consuming chronicly (defined in Huberman Lab as 2 times per week or more often) is enough to pretty much completely rob you of REM sleep. You can't remember any dreams and even worse, you loose your everyday free emotional therapist that is REM sleep. If you add some other negative experiences or just a difficult period in life, you're in for depression or at least sad/tired/boring days. And what you might escape into in these days? Often more weed.
x: anecdotal, most likely influenced by huberman lab's episodes on marijuana and on sleep. They describe what roles both deep sleep and REM sleep perform. Episode on weed is a must - listen for people consuming cannabis in any form, even sporadically, because lot of things around cannabis are counter intuitive (f.ex. that it doesn't help with sleep). If you thing problems with sleep affect you or that your sleep quality suffers because of drug (including alcohol) use, consider listening to these Huberman Lab episodes or talking to a specialist if that's available to you.
I smoked weed every day for 10 years and basically forgot what dreaming was, people would tell me about their dreams and I thought they're nuts... I presumed I must be dreaming but I just didn't remember it, but the idea people could remember these extreme vivid crazy dreams they could control seemed totally foreign to me. I moved to a country where weed was very illegal and stopped smoking it, after about 5 months of no weed I started to have the most insane, crazy cool, very very vivid dreams. Then I moved back to Canada for a year and started to toke, again, I almost immediately stopped dreaming. When I left Canada again, and stopped weed again, dreams came back again. My personal very unscientific hypothesis is that I process a lot more of that emotional/thoughtful stuff when I'm awake and stoned, but honestly, who knows.. I find it somewhat concerning to be honest, the difference in my dreaming on and off weed is markedly very stark.
I almost wanted to start smoking again after I quit just to stop dreaming. Quit 3 years ago and the dreams are just so vivid and intense versus the dreamless sleep when I was smoking.
I can totally relate, I actually really don't enjoy the intense dreaming either. I find it overwhelming and uncomfortable and much prefer my dreamless sleeping. That being said, I also accept there is evidence that dreaming is important for your health. I don't particularly enjoy having to go pee throughout the day either, but if I stopped doing it, I'd be pretty concerned for my health.
Not disagreeing with you overall, but I just wanted to add a bit of nuance to things you've mentioned.
> Anecdotally, there are people who smoke weed every day and still sleep well at night.
First, as far as I know, smoking weed would only affect your sleep if you consumed it a couple of hours or so before sleep (exact numbers vary per person, but you get the idea). If someone consumed some weed during lunch, I would expect theit nighttime sleep to be pretty much unaffected.
Second, what do you mean by "sleep well"? They might fall asleep faster and stay asleep throughout the night. But how good was their sleep quality in reality? We are talking in terms of measuring REM cycle length and such.
From anecdotal experience, I also thought that my sleep shortly after consuming was "good", as I would fall asleep easier. However, I can confirm that it wasn't high quality sleep at all for me, my REM cycle was very short, and I definitely noticed extra groginess after waking up (along with the rest of the things mentioned in sibling comments, like lack of dreams and such). Doing some more A/B testing on my sleep in regards to consumption of weed pretty much made it clear that it makes my sleep quality worse, but makes it easier to fall asleep.
I measure it with a Mi Band. It might not be the most precise measuring method, but I feel like I'm able to correlate "better sleep" shown in the app with "better mood" or "feeling better" the day after. And quitting weed does improve both of those measures.
Of course I was not able to notice this when I was younger. Only now at 32 and a family these measurements are starting to actually be noticeable.
> I feel like I'm able to correlate "better sleep" shown in the app with "better mood" or "feeling better" the day after
If you look at the app and see that it says "better sleep" before starting the day and then notice that you had a good mood or felt better after that could be a placebo effect.
You could check that by not looking at the app until after your day is done and you have noted if you had a good mood or felt better. If the app and your day's mood still correlate then it probably is something real.
On the other hand checking if it is real risks making it no longer work, and a good mood is a good mood even if it was caused by a placebo. I'm not sure I'd check.
> On the other hand checking if it is real risks making it no longer work,
The placebo effect doesn't go away if you know it's a placebo: if it's worked in the past because you thought it did, it will continue to work if you think it will. https://xkcd.com/1526/
So... don't do that? If it worked before, but it doesn't work in theory, it works.
It might not even be placebo! Perhaps the combination of (well rested) + (optimistic) means you have a good day, and the experiment changes those conditions enough that you get different results. Heck, you might end up having better days more often. You never know if you don't try.
There have been studies on it. Whether its harmful or not I do not know. [1]
"To address this question, Feinberg, et al. (1975) compared the sleep patterns of experienced marijuana users on tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and a placebo. Feinberg, et al. (1975) reported reduced eye movement activity and less REM sleep in the THC condition. They also reported a REM rebound effect, which is more REM activity, on withdrawal from THC. So, there exists some scientific evidence that marijuana interferes with REM sleep." [1]
Studies don’t tell you facts about your own experience, especially weak studies. Studies only tell you about statistical patterns in whatever population they represent. Here, the study is so poor that it doesn’t actually say anything reliable at all. Check your references, folks!
> Studies don’t tell you facts about your own experience
I'm not even sure how to respond to this. Personal experience not based in science is something that should never be regarded as factual or can be broadly attributed to others biological effects. This is just one study. There have been others, but enjoy your experience.
>Anecdotally, there are people who smoke weed every day and still sleep well at night.
Sleep well, or "sleep enough hours"/"don't have insomnia"?
Because sleeping well and REM sleep can't be deduced from the latter, it needs to be measured.
Not even self-reporting is enough - because chronic bad sleep becomes the baseline, so people used it to just consider their mental clarity/energy levels when they wake up normal (like a person with shortsightedness, who doesn't know he has it -- they're then suprised when they finally get glasses and see that, no, it wasn't normal actually).
Anecdotally i learned stopping a few hours before sleep gives a way better sleep that night, but many smoke weed to fall asleep which is sort of counter productive..
Pretty much every sedative, ambian, alcohol, etc, will decrease REM sleep and increase deep sleep. I have no idea about THC but assume the effect is similar.
I'm curious now...how does it work legally if you really baked in a jurisdiction where weed is legal, immediately fly to a place where weed is not legal, and are still baked when you arrive?
Word of caution - this does not apply to countries with the most severe drug laws and associated punishments.
There have been cases in UAE and especially Singapore[0] where travelers are drug tested on arrival and the presence of banned substances in blood or other bodily fluids is against the law.
Correct. In the U.S., you can report to a police officer that, "yeah man, I'm high out my mind. Stoned as fuck, bro." As long as you aren't driving or causing a disturbance, they legally can't do anything other than search your person for the substance.
I don't see any reason as to why this was downvoted. The username ChatGPT's first activity was this day, and thus colored green hence my very valid comment.
Perhaps prior to downvote access, a user should be educated and quizzed.
I don't think we know enough about it, other than to say, "sleep is important and disrupting it should be minimized."
There's a medication called trazodone which is used off-label for people with issues falling or staying asleep. It increases the total percentage of time spent in slow-wave sleep (stage 3).
Even though this comes at the expense of REM, in elderly people with cognitive or neurodegenerative issues, this appears to confer a protective benefit (the rate of deterioration is slowed comparatively).
That said, it would probably be ideal if they slept well without medication and altered sleep architectures.
I often wonder if that's the key to why I feel different whenever I'm able to quit weed for a while. It doesn't help to just limit usage and dosage, it still affects my REM sleep.
I know he’s become YouTube hype bros favorite source for click bait videos, but the Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman has some great podcast episodes about sleep and also how weed/alcohol greatly impact it. I found it really insightful in terms of how even moderate use of alcohol/weed can greatly impact sleep quality.
My question was specifically referring to how the OP knows their lack of dreams rather than generally speaking, but thanks for sharing info that might help someone reading this.
I see. In that case, it’s also worth mentioning that the impact of THC on REM sleep has been the subject of multiple studies, with strong evidence showing a link between THC usage and reduced or missing REM stages.
So if someone has evidence that they are missing REM sleep (i.e. a tracker or a noted lack of dreams) and are also consuming THC, there are good reasons to suspect THC is the culprit over other possible causes.
My theory is that it’s an evolutionary adaptation to preserve awareness of threats when a group/camp of humans are sleeping at night. If some members of the group are in REM sleep at any given moment, then they will have constant awareness (outside stimuli will manifest in their dreams, or simply wake them up).
Lookup the research of Matt Williams, Gina Poe, Rajkumar Dasgupta, Rebecca Robbins, Indira Gurubhagavatula, and many many others. The article is not directed at an audience who wants to read the scientific evidence to support the claims - just the claims themselves.
There’s been a ton of research in sleep the last 10 years and it’s easy to find the studies and results.
>Ideally, you move through the four stages in 90- to 110-minute cycles that repeat four to six times in a typical night. Then, after your last REM cycle, you wake up rested and alert
This is the only reply to my snarky comment I can concur to so far. I missed the adverb which, you could argue, applies to both sentences. Other comments miss the fact that just having enough (or more) full sleep cycles and following basic "sleep hygiene" is still not enough to feel rested in the morning for a considerable part of population.
My original comment is not up to standard, I'm not trying to deny that.
