The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Hey guys, what's your experience with chronic sleep deprivation?
Like a huge fraction of the population, I don't get that healthy 8 hours of sleep on a consistent schedule every night, and consuming caffeine before bed certainly doesn't help. So a few weeks ago, I woke up after a 2 hour sleep with some incredible brain fog which was scary, but it soon went away. According to Matthew Walker, some effects are permanent. However, I happened across this Japanese gentleman the other day who had a stroke on a livestream. I'll quote part of his post below:
And he still streams, too! Very energetic, quick-minded... not at all what you'd expect. Now, I write this because a man named Matt Walker comes up on the topic of sleep debt, and his stance is that long-term sleep debt cannot be recovered from. And I cannot help but feel this may be a form of health scaremongering. Obviously, don't treat your body and mind like shit, health is the #1 priority, you know the deal. But I'm increasingly skeptical of these health gurus online who seem to make a career from either promising you the world or scaring you into relying on their advice.
For your average person who isn't sleeping well I would strongly recommend moderate cardio, cutting out caffeine and no screens for an hour or two before bed (books, podcasts, kindles ok). Even better if you can switch in some basic mindfulness meditation.
Also, if you've never done one, go for a sleep study and get yourself tested for sleep apnea.
Good stuff. Will also add keeping your muscles relaxed before bed is quite important.
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I think I never slept normally. So my whole life? I seem to have a circadian rhythm that just pushes me an hour later every night no matter what. If I wake up consistently at the same time every day I will just feel permanently deprived of one hour of sleep, and I will consistently stay up an hour later than I should.
If my sleep schedule is totally unmoored from a specific wake up time it will just drift forward again and again. It will do this until I'm napping through the day and staying awake all night (like I am right now).
I need about 5-6 hours of sleep sober and about 8-10 if I'm drinking. Good sleep is something I highly value. I've occasionally taken medicine to fall asleep (nyquil, melatonin?/melanin?), but it seems to lose effectiveness, and I've avoided the addictive habit forming stuff.
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