All these weird comments about alcohol abstinence...must be a religious fundamentalist, must be an ex-alcoholic, etc. I have a drink maybe 5-10 times per year, and I'm not actively trying to abstain. It tastes gross, and I'm not drawn to it. Why is it so hard for some people to understand that alcohol isn't appealing to everyone?
A lot of people confuse the secondary effects of alcohol (basically, mostly, social permission) with the primary effects. Most developed countries have purged almost all ritual from their cultures, which means that there aren't really occasions for people to experiment with their behavior - and it provides air cover for engaging in riskier behaviors - and so alcohol provides the outlet for them.
Alcohol is one of the most boring psychoactive experiences there is, it's the safest, the most predictable and the most repeatable. There's nothing challenging about it - happy drunks are going to be happy drunks, angry/emotional drunks are going to be angry/emotional drunks, people who use the context of alcohol to excuse behaviors that they feel they would otherwise be judged for (promiscuity, "I love you guys! no I really do!", etc. etc.) are doing just that. The only drug with more predictability than alcohol is caffeine, with the common opiates being next in line for being absolutely predictable - do X get Y.
Alcohol is boring. Even pot or tobacco are more interesting, but they lack the social context that provides behavioral permissibility which is really what drives the ritual-lite use - going drinking on the weekend.
Alcohol is one of the most STANDARDIZED substances on the planet. 5% at 500 mil is always going to be the same amount of alcohol. Of course it's going to be predictable and socially acceptable. Try doing any other drug and you have no clue what you're getting, even if you get it from the the same source time and time again.
The predictability is a FEATURE. And btw, it's not boring at all.
Weed in the US is starting to get this way as well. It’s amazing the amount of actually useful drug information you can get from products sold at weed shops these days. Meanwhile you don’t even get nutritional facts or ingredients with beer. I wish I liked either drug but I should be happy I don’t.
aye. the only times I've eaten pot brownies they were overly strong and not fun. same for psychodelics -- hit wayyyy harder than I'd ever think, and while it was quite a ride, I'm not game to try that again without knowing the dose.
meanwhile 2-3 beers with friends I haven't seen in a while is a good time, good convo, and we can chill out and sip water for 30 min to make sure we're safe to drive. like, I'm looking to have a pint with the lads and have nice conversation, not undergo ego death.
Safe compared to meth maybe but not compared to caffeine.
Setting aside alcohol addiction, the costs of alcohol abuse to your health (e.g., brain damage, liver disease, etc.), and the risk of killing yourself by drinking too much in a sitting, there's also the way it drastically increases the risk of drunk driving and domestic violence.
I'm not saying we should ban it or anything, but we should not be underplaying the very real risks and costs associated with it.
the counter argument I hear is that few extra years of life you get by being 100% sober are not worth it.
Think of alcohol as ancient painkiller/antidepressant that helped people to get through the challenges of their lifes and make it through the life without walking out of the window
So, I could get behind a lot of the idea you are pushing here. But, I question whether you have evidence to back it up?
For one, to claim that most developed countries have purged ritual feels more like you are referring to some specific rituals. Or have amusing cuts on what you consider developed countries.
You also sort of undercut yourself by noting that alcohol hits people in different, if repeatable ways; but you seem to think that will not be true for other drugs? From my experience, I would expect the same for pot. Tobacco, I confess I never really saw it impact anyone. Outside of getting them addicted.
Simply stated, why do you think you would not see such variability of how other items impact people?
>For one, to claim that most developed countries have purged ritual feels more like you are referring to some specific rituals.
They most likely mean all kinds of overt rituals societies used to have and some non-western societies still have.
What kind of rituals do we have that you have in mind that we still have, and that are not either very peripheral to everyday life or have not been diminishing in importance and attendance year by year?
Ignoring that there are non-western developed countries; many western societies still have church attendance, for one. Then there are the ball game rituals that have risen quite a bit. We still largely have the same holidays, as well.
Do we still do the same rituals as we did in the past? Of course not. Which is why I would largely agree. I suspect the evidence will be such that there are still more rituals than folks admit to. Graduation ceremonies. Weddings. Etc.
Yeah, no. According to CDC data, more than 150,000 people die from excessive alcohol consumption per year [1], which is about how many people died of heroin overdoses in the past 20 years [2].
By and large, the labels "safe" or "dangerous" are subjective and highly cultural, at least when it comes to substances.
> According to CDC data, more than 150,000 people die from excessive alcohol consumption per year [1], which is about how many people died of heroin overdoses in the past 20 years [2]
Easy, everyone drinks, almost nobody shoots up. There you go, explained.
I feel like nowadays it is more socially acceptable to say you don’t drink than even just 10 years ago.
I can’t recall the last time I was asked “why” after telling someone I don’t drink. All in all, I was fortunate that during university a close friend of mine also didn’t drink. Being the “odd one out” seems harder than being the “odd pair out” lol.
edit: culture plays a role as well in how acceptable it is. I’m from a country that is heavy on alcohol usage though (Belgium).
In the US it’s far more acceptable. I don’t drink and while I’ve been offered, no one ever pushes back. And I’ve never had problems being the only one at parties who didn’t.
This is YMMV. I still get a lot of “why don’t you drink?!! Come on, man!!” in the US. Especially in a city like NYC - you’re signing up to be a bit of a social outcast.
I’m in my early 40s. My ability to metabolize alcohol took a steep nosedive a few years ago. I love a great marg/old fashioned/IPA, but I will feel depressed the next day no matter what. I’ve tried electrolyte supplementation, eating a lot, eating “right,” drinking a lot of water, etc.
My body has a hard time with it. So it’s rare that I seek it out. A small container of sake early in the evening might be my indulgence from now on.
I had a similar thing until I stopped eating a certain brand of muesli. A different brand with seemingly the same ingredients was fine. I think it's something to do with processing of dried fruit. I believe there was some reaction between that and the alcohol I consumed later in the day. I only realised it was breakfast related on holiday and my breakfast habits changed. I found drinking to be consequence free as opposed to 1/2 a pint causing a certain headache the next afternoon. I experimented when I got home and completely solved my problem.
I was also in my early 40s when this happened for what that's worth.
I’m about to hit 40, and I’ve had this exact same experience. Even a single beer, shot of whiskey or glass of wine will leave me feeling depressed for at least a day afterwards.
For me it seems to correlate with having had COVID back in 2021, where prior to that I could still have 2-3 drinks and feel okay the next day. My suspicion/intuition is that it has something to do with a shift in my gut microbiome - from what I understand, alcohol can very easily disrupt one’s microbiome, and the state of my microbiome seems to have a significant influence on my mood.
I haven’t missed the alcohol though. It’s actually been a blessing for my general health and wellbeing.
I had a similar experience. For years I drank about 2 beers a night. Then in my early 40s, had a bout of "long covid" that lasted about 6 months. I have fully recovered, but can't drink like I used to. If I have one or two beers, I feel crappy and down the next day. Also the buzz isn't quite the same.
Precisely the same experience here. Since Covid even a single drink makes me feel bad enough to not want to again… and I always had bad hangovers. This is different
Interesting. I never connected it to covid-19, and truly cannot remember if it hit me as hard the next day or not prior to the pandemic. (Also, obviously I was younger then, too.) The only symptom I can connect to covid-19 is persistent tinnitus, which is pretty common among long-haulers (though I don't count myself among them).
However, I've also heard mention of people drinking less in general which could suggest a link.
There is some new evidence that changes occur at various stages in our lives, specifically one in the early-to-mid forties, that can affect things like alcohol metabolism[0][1]. I find this type of thing and the "epigenetic clock" research to be pretty fascinating to read about now that I'm approaching mid-life myself.
Never had a drink till junior year of high school, but immediately found I could drink incredible amounts of alcohol, 15-20+ cocktails, shots, beer, wine (mixing never caused me problems) and be virtually sober (obviously not clinically sober, and have no bio data) an hour or two after a long night.
Also kept a clear mind and mindful awareness throughout. Just euphoric & more social.
Then at 53, after some extreme stress, that completely changed. One drink slowly is usually fine. 2-3 drinks will upset my sleep. Any more and my next day suffers.
At 4-5 drinks my body feels like it has a slight fever over night. I feel overheated, whether I really am I don’t know. Just can’t process it efficiently.
More than that & I get socially sloppy. Not bad, but not welcome either.
But my very petite daughter in her mid 20’s inherited my relevant genes. Since high school she has to down two hard cocktails within ten minutes to start an evening of (more paced, but still steady) drinking with friends just to feel the effects, like I did most of my life.
She can out drink companions 2x her weight.
Also in common, neither of us is at alcohol addiction risk. Drinking is completely social/situational, no cravings or problems with abstention. We both enjoy the taste of alcohol. Scotch,
neat, tastes like candy to me.
Drinking has always been at least as much about the gourmand exploration of flavors and varieties as the psychological effect.
I got my DNA analysis and one chromosome is 68% Caribbean pirate, 32% Viking, the other is split equally Russian/Irish.
Joking - but would be interested if relevant genes could be identified. I would happily sign up for gene or epigenetic therapy to resume my old life of refined epicureanism in excess.
Drinking mixed with lots of sparkling water, diet sodas, and a powder mixture of creatine, minerals, protein & fiber, before & after, reliably helps a bit.
My experience is similar. I can tolerate at most one cocktail, glass of wine, or beer (although I'll go malty over hoppy every time). One positive is that because of this limitation, I think I enjoy the drinks I do have a lot more.
A change that came along with this is some kind of sensitivity to sugar. I love candy and baked goods. A short stack of pancakes with maple syrup and berries is the best, but that kind of carb bomb can leave me feeling almost hungover.
Same here. Quit alcohol when I turned 40, the side-effects the next day of even 1-2 beers were not making it worth the buzz during drinking. Sleep issues, less focus and concentration, weaker performance in the gym, anxiety the next day etc. etc. It became a no brainer to simply stop drinking. To those with better ability to metabolize alcohol, cheers to you.
For me, the type of drink makes a huge difference the older I get.
I used to like wine, but the older I got, the more I started noticing having a terrible hangover the next day, even if it wasn't enough to get actually drunk or even buzzed. Type/brand of wine didn't seem to matter. But whiskey or vodka mixed with soda, no problem.
How much of that is your ability to metabolize dropped, versus the strength of common drinks has sky rocketed? Especially mentioning IPAs. It is not uncommon to find them in the 9% range. I remember drinking a ton of Guinness back in the day. Highly amused to find that that would be considered a light beer today.
This somewhat intrigues me. An old fashioned and a 4% lager are very different, but you seem to be saying both will give you the same regret the next day?
Note that I largely resonate with the idea that aging reduces tolerance to alcohol. Love the Oatmeal's https://theoatmeal.com/comics/hungover. Hasn't quite hit me that hard, yet. Thankfully.
I'm a similar age and also a heavy drinker (15-25 drinks per week) but also run 40-50 miles per week + 5000-7000 feet of vert per week. My friends/family are astonished that I can crush 10 beers in an evening and run 15 miles the next morning w/o food. I suspect metabolism has alot to do with it.
We're just hypothesizing why at the population level abstinence from alcohol might not actually cause cognitive decline as (somewhat) implied by the data. Don't take it personally.
You mean why abstinence isn't causing better cognitive performance, right, RIGHT?
Obviously the study result is BS. Because if the the same people, drinkers with higher than their abstinent peers cognitive scores, didn't drink, their performance would be THE SAME.
But it's impossible to find out. They should totally continue to study all that, tho. Maybe at some point in the future we can cut people open alive and look properly inside, fuck around & find out, and then close them up and send them back to work again.
> Obviously the study result is BS. Because if the the same people, drinkers with higher than their abstinent peers cognitive scores, didn't drink, their performance would be THE SAME.
Stupid (cognitively easy) stereotypes, backed by "everybody's gotta drink!" machismo/insecurity/conformist culture, backed by "all the people I know" (who aren't silenced by stereotypes and peer pressure) experience, backed by decade after decade of massive advertising by the alcohol industry (and adjacent industries).
You are fortunate. There are many alcoholics who would trade anything to switch places with you. Probably a lot of the responses are from people who have seen how destructive alcohol can be when used in excess.
I grew up in a blue-collar rural area where alcoholism wasn't just common, it was flat-out normal. Anyone who could get away with nursing a beer or 12 the whole day long and not get fired, usually did. My dad drank a lot and it caused a ton of problems with his marriage (leading to divorce) but at least he wasn't abusive.
I am also somewhat lucky in that I never could acquire a taste for beer. Based on my family history and upbringing, I could have very easily slid into alcoholism otherwise. I'll never know for sure, but to keep even the possibility at bay, I have two hard rules: no drinking during the day and no drinking the night before work or having to be somewhere the next day.
I assume because technical people would think something like:
- there are tens of thousand drinks on the planet,
- all with their different nuances in how they alter mood and thinking patterns.
Not appealing just can't be true except if you 'score' low in novelty seeking/curiosity ... except if you were only exposed to bad drunks and pathetic alcoholics ...
Something like that. But it might also be because marketers see people like you as a challenge, a trophy to collect, and the non-marketing types just want to 'seduce' you.
They do the same to babies and minors all the time. "Say this or that, do this or that." And BAM, some brain cells practically useless forever.
"all with their different nuances in how they alter mood and thinking patterns"
This is honestly not true unless you are including absinthe. Ethanol is the only active ingredient and it has one of the most well understood dose-response curves and one of the most heavily studied effects. The rest is all in your head.
There just isn't that much to the alcohol, it's very one note, moreso than any psychedelic, moreso than even smoking (where dose control significantly varies the effects) or even cannabis which is also relatively one note.
I am quite certain that if you talked to a variety of people who like to drink, they will
tell you that tequila hits different than a single barrel rye whiskey or champagne, for example. And it's more than just the amount of sugar. There are amounts of hints of various aromas in different liquor and these small differences do quite a bit in the brain, which you did propose yourself when you said
> The rest is all in your head.
Brains are incredible. The "sensitivity and specificity" of receptors goes way beyond what we understand for now, both hardware and software-wise, and that is true on the level of synapses as well as within any metabolism anywhere in their chains in the body and in how they work together to achieve their own objectives, as well as the ones they share.
Take any approach within the range of broken - buggy - normal - amplified and apply it to any sphere of single and networked mechanism. Wear and tear and age change all this even further and never forget that we are still evolving, over very long time spans in very small changes.
It's an insane ride from bio-chemistry to character in different states of mind and body/brain and that ride morphs quite a bit based on anything we consume via active and passive channels.
And that's just part of the story as it evolves in my head.
Hops in beer have a mildly sedative effect. Sugar, caffeine, taurin in mix drinks cause more alertness and euphoria. There really is more to drinks than just the amount of ethanol.
I've always found weird how people draw conclusions from small correlations, specially when other studies show the opposite result. They call it hypothesis, but weirdly enough these conclusions often coincide with their world view. Look at that, now I'm the one drawing conclusions, must be human nature to try to make sense of things. But what I've found is that often reality is counter intuitive, and that's more fun.
> Interestingly, our study did not identify a significant relationship between sleep quality—that is, sleeplessness/insomnia and cognitive performance—
contrary to some previous findings
> The regression highlighted a positive association
between normal sleep duration (7–9 hours) and cognitive
scores... while extended sleep duration negatively impacted
scores across both cohorts
> intermediate and evening types, were linked to superior
cognitive function
More like propaganda by Big Alcohol, given the following
> Individuals who abstained from alcohol showed lower cognitive scores than those who consumed alcohol, conflicting with previous research that has connected moderate drinking with cognitive impairment. Weekly and monthly alcohol consumption, as opposed to daily drinking, was found to somewhat correlate with lower cognitive scores.
and that need grows exponentially with your understanding of the world until a certain point.
That need can be reduced to a healthy "Mom said everything is fine in moderate amounts" once you choose to not live by conflicting standards, or rather: when you choose to not support implicitly AND explicitly conflicting causes ( many on the left, finboys & fingirls, law enforcement, ... but unemployed who don't work on themselves or their environment as well )
Not really, you need a coping mechanism with all the crap and stupidity across society, and how powerless truth and correct moral behavior can be.
Alcohol is one of the worst ones, you just blunt yourself while still realizing all failures, just temporarily a bit downtuned, next morning back to misery. No solution or even improvement is happening, just basically giving up (or a bit of complaining which is just group psychological therapy).
Sports, meditation, maybe even occasional psychedelics steered in right direction, active vacations, good food, good sleep. Life is much easier in such mode.
Those who abstain entirely are disproportionately likely to be former alcoholics - which explains eg the apparent protective effect of moderate drinking
Maybe in the US where the whole AA thing is popular and widespread. I'd be surprised if that's a factor at all elsewhere. Where I'm from I've never met anyone who would label themselves as 'former alcoholics'.
I'm more inclined to think intelligence often times comes with a good dose of social anxiety and alcohol helps with managing it.
You might have zero contacts with lower working class then. I live very far from the US in a very different society and know many former alcoholics who abstain entirely, or at least try to. Because it's hard enough for an alcoholic to avoid drinking, it's even harder to have just one drink and not slide into a full-blown, months-long binge.
Back then I knew the problem was the *quality* of the alcohol/drinks.
Now, some years later. "My homie Jamal's" liquor costs 5-10 times that much and he puts effort into the mixtures, trying recipes, playing around with accent ingredients and modifiers and stuff. If we drink--we still drink quite a bit. But there's no month long binges no more and the immediate negative side effects on cognition are *GONE*.
Most AA alumni don't call themselves former alcoholics. They see themselves as addicts who are glad they didn't have a drink yesterday and are doing their best to extend that streak through today.
I don’t see how that’s the most likely reason to abstain. A lot of religious people have never consumed an alcoholic drink; at least that is the case for South Asians: Muslims in particular, but also many Hindus and Sikhs.
This type of led to statistical issues that skewed our understanding of the health effects of alcohol consumption. Unless abstainers who previously abused alcohol are excluded or controlled for statistically, their health effects can skew results [0]. Here’s a blurb from a recent NYT article:
> Fillmore was concerned about possible misleading variables in the studies: To start, they included ex-drinkers in the category of “abstainers,” which meant they were failing to account for the possibility that some people had stopped drinking specifically because of illness. The moderate drinkers looked healthy by comparison, creating the illusion that a moderate amount of alcohol was beneficial.
And it's fairly difficult to make it an apples-to-apples comparison, suitable for causal analysis, by excluding the lifelong teetotalers who would have become alcoholics if they had ever partaken.
The Presbyterian church my parents took me to used actual wine (with an option for grape juice) at communion. I think most people participating in the ceremony didn't consider that having a drink any more than if their prescription medicine contained alcohol.
Another factor is that people who have serious health problems are less likely to consume alcohol. These health problems may have an (indirect) effect on cognitive performance.
I haven't read the whole study so maybe it's not the right meaning, but I tend to agree with you if "to abstain" has been chosen for its actual meaning.
Personally I don't drink alcohol, but I would never say that I am abstaining from drinking alcohol. I just don't do it. Same as eating green olives.
Meanwhile, as you're pointing it out, people who say that they are abstaining from alcohol are likely to be former alcoholics.
And say, people who's faith forbid them from drinking alcohol would probably fit in both : some just don't do it, others have to make a conscious effort to not do it.
Every study I have ever read emphasized importance of sleep. Many show grey matter reduction long term the less you sleep. Sleep studies literally use a little alcohol to disrupt sleep. All the research out there indicates alcohol also directly shrinks your grey matter. These findings are hard to believe for sure.
Grey matter correlates with cognition and ethanol consumption, but that doesn't necessarily mean it makes every cohort (age, amount, duration, etc) worse at every cognitive battery.
There are studies that show alcohol consumption is associated with greater novelty seeking, learning capacity, etc.
I generally think the direction is being smarter/curious first and alcohol comes along. Chemically, I don’t see how alcohol can make you have better cognition in the long run. In some narrow ways, I can see it. Long term is more interesting to me than a peak healthy person that also uses alcohol.
The study appears to say alcohol consumption has protective effect on cognition. Those who drank had less cognitive decline compared to those who abstained completely. If this is correct, this directly contradicts the other studies that says alcohol has zero benefits?
A lot of studies that don't control for confounding factors like the fact that many people who 100% abstain from alcohol are former alcoholics show benefits to small amounts of alcohol consumption compared to no alcohol consumption.
However, the studies that make more of an effort to control for those confounding factors have generally found that there are no health benefits, so right now the evidence seems to favor the idea that there are no health benefits to alcohol and in the studies that show otherwise it is due to confounding factors.
This study doesn't seem to have particularly attempted to control for these factors (it just controlled for specific cardiovascular diseases, etc.) so it's not surprising that the results match older studies that showed positive effects from small amounts of alcohol.
This is a situation of correlation ≠ causation, because — as all Rick & Morty fans know — some geniuses are drinking copiously just to slow down their turbo-charged intellects. :-)
You have to put 2 spaces at the head of each line to get code formatting, otherwise your artistic endeavors are fed to the HN paragraph enforcement daemons.
My pet theory is that extended sleep correlates with hide-away, hunger and depression modes - which signal to our body that energy must be conserved. And cognition without the ability to act is the definition of energy waste.
I've been taking creatine for a while and it has interesting effects. On one hand, it seems making my sleep worse, i.e. sleeping less and kind of lightly? On the other hand, it helps me with cognitive performance, I get way less mentally exhausted during the day than I used to.
Show me one employed person with a life that manages to get 8 hours sleep on average. Most commuters would have to go to bed at 2100 to get a breakfast and enough time to get to work. I only get 8 hours when I know I am sleep deprived and go to bed at 2100. However, this is not "normal", and I bet it isn't normal for most. So why do we call it normal, then?
Most days I'm in bed (and asleep withing 5 minutes) at 22:00 and awake at 05:30. I'm over 60, 7.5 hours sleep is just right for me. I have a one-hour commute each way and usually leave home at 06:45 and arrive back around 18:00.
It doesn't matter what time I go to bed, my eyes pop open at 05:30 and I have to get up (a) to micturate (did I mention I'm over 60?) and (2) feed the cats. The latter have trained me using medieval methods. When I was younger I would sleep as late as I could: my record was sleeping in until 16:00, and boys oh boys did that cause me to feel wretched.
In the EU it's quite normal for the average person to get the 8 hours of sleep. Of course, it depends on the work sector you are in, but for most jobs you don't have to wake up at 6 AM. Also, most people live close to their work, within 30 minutes of biking/driving/public transport.
One way? That's anything but normal. Even if it's two-way it's nowhere near the norm.
The EU records this for pretty much all member states, and Ireland shows an average of 28 minutes.[0]
> In 2019, more than half (61.3%) of employed people in the EU traveled less than 30 minutes from home to work.
You are correct that Ireland is part of the group of countries which has a larger subset of people with long commutes, but hovering around 10% is not what I'd call "normal".
> The largest shares of the longest commuting times were observed in Latvia (13.5%), Ireland (11.2%), Belgium (10.7%) and Hungary (10.6%), where more than 10% of employed people had to travel from home to work for 60 minutes or more.
Yes in the "EU" (500 millions people) everyone lives in a quaint old city centre where people cycle to the greengrocer and everyone has stellar labour rights and sleeps soundly at night.
No, exactly that's the point. It's a lot of smaller countries and cities, and usually people live/relocate where they work.
People travelling daily longest for work are usually living in the (poorer) rural side, where yes, they have to get up early and take the (limited) public transport available, sometimes having only 2 buses per day.
I go to sleep at 9:30 and wake up at 5:30 every day. Sometimes I go crazy and stay up till 10, but that's rare. My bus leaves at 7 AM (40 minute commute), so that's plenty of time for coffee & breakfast & a shower before I have to head out the door. I get home from work at about 4:30 PM, plenty of time to cook dinner or do home stuff or go see friends or whatever before going to bed at 9.
My bus also leaves at 7 AM, with 40 minute commute, but unfortunately I have a very bad case of internet / youtube addiction, plus I'm basically a night person.
So I go to sleep around 12:30 AM each night (sometimes even after 1 AM), and I wake up at 5:50 AM.
That's not enough sleep at all.
I do sleep till very late during the weekend.
I've been doing this for 20 years now, and some day it's probably going to catch up on me.
My breakfast is a cup of coffee and toast usually but since I live a 25 min bike ride from my work (in New England USA) I can usually leave around 800, which means I can sleep at 2300 for 8 hours easily.
Now, does my body do that?... no, usually it wakes me up after 6-7, but whatever.
I ran a consulting business for a long time. Sleeping that much is no problem if you prioritize it. Kids, wife, etc. You just have to organize your life around your priorities. It does mean little time for extraneous entertainment during the week, but that’s ok.
Most adults (with responsibilities) don't sleep for 8 hours daily. They sleep far less.
And sleeping less than that is enough to live a very healthy life.
If you feel your body/mind didn't rest well because you didn't get your 8 hour sleep, it's likely because you've been exposed to, and came to believe all these articles saying you do need 8 hrs min sleep.
It's simply not the case. You can function very well on 6.5/7 hrs of sleep. I'm nearing 40 and I do.
I work a full time tech job, I am out with friends or on a “date night” with my partner three or four times a week every week, and I have a few hobbies like music production and combat robotics.
I get at least 8 hours every night. My “must be home and in bed” time on a weeknight is by 12:30AM, and I sleep in until 8:45AM. I am normally woken by my alarm.
Weekends I simply set an alarm for 9 hours after I get in bed, which sometimes means sleeping until 2PM.
I don’t eat breakfast, and I basically never commute in the morning, but if I do, my office is about 15 minutes away.
"Normal" in the context of the body's actual sleep needs, not "normal" in the sense that everyone has the time or life management skills to achieve those needs.
("Normal" also depends on age: babies sleep a lot more than 8 hours a day, teenagers also typically need more sleep than they actually get.)
This is one of those funny studies that looks at so much but then falls short to realize one thing: How well a person can breathe through their nose and the side effects of not being able to do that on nervous system, beginning with facial muscles, neck muscles and so on ... there's also a direct relationship of all that on the prefrontal cortex.
I admit tho, that I never checked if there are studies like that. If only I could travel backwards in time .......
I pretty definitely can't breath through my nose as well as I should be able to (deviated septum), and have been wondering for a while how much this actually impacts me. What was your experience like?
Have you had a sleep study done? You may have low oxygen saturation when you sleep. I had literally no symptoms of sleep apnea, no major risk factors, but my body was struggling to breathe when I slept due to my anatomy. I have started CPAP treatment and am excited to see if my cognition improves despite not really feeling bad.
Oh wow this is the first time I've read about this. Did you wake up frequently during the night or were there any other signs?
I have somewhat of a deviated septum, and even had surgery done half a year ago, but it didn't really change much unfortunately. I always need >=9 hours of sleep to feel good. I've slept on average 7 hours the past 2 weeks & I feel horrible (completely different reason for the reduced sleep). I did a sleep study a few years ago because I suspected sleep apnea, but because of anxiety or sleeping in a new place, I only ended up sleeping 1-2 hours that night. They didn't find anything, but I wonder if I should try again.
I don’t have memories of waking up frequently, but you tend to forget shorter wakeful periods. No other signs. No snoring, nothing that would indicate sleep issues.
I have headaches but they are related to other sinus issues, though the doctor seems to think the CPAP should help. I’m not so sure but open to the possibility!
So far I haven't, nope, though it might be worthwhile to look into, given that I basically need 8+ hours of sleep to function well.
I do have a fitness watch though that can (supposedly) measure SpO2, and while that showed the occasional dip, it seemed more like a measurement error, and generally the values were in the normal range.
I've a FitBit Sense 2 and as I understand it that measures variations in SpO2. I'm not convinced how accurate nor how quickly it responds, it derives an estimate rather than directly measuring. I think it's also sensitive to any movements of the watch on your wrist.
I also have had a finger pulse oximeter which logs and exports to an app via USB. If I sleep with that on it seems to be very reliable at recording the levels, the data certainly looks good and feels much more reliable than the Sense.
Deviated septum as well, but it's not the only reason for drying mucous membranes, which I never got around to getting checked. In part, it results from nutritional habits, sometimes (still), a bit too much coffee but the amount that causes it varies so it must be something else in one of the underlying metabolisms.
A few weeks ago, I tried Nasal Strips again, and for some reason, they are helping now and the difference is like day and night. I can only assume that it's because I got older and my life style changed, including nutrition, which was really bad when I was young. So dry mucous had too much effect for me to notice the benefits of the nasal strips or it's really just the bigger size of my nose :P
But the biggest change, compared to my young years, is that I am much more resilient to unhealthy stress and not continuously stressed as I was back then, when I was also regularly exposed to stress amplifications without time to recover.
And being able to breathe properly through my nose now amplifies everything for the much much better: mood, psychological resilience, performance --both cognitive and athletic-- time to fall asleep, sleep, with the latter two coming with their own boosts for the next day.
Most notable was the effect on my facial muscles. With the loss of those specific tensions came a direct effect on focus and concentration and self-control, which is all, to a great extent, mediated by the prefrontal cortex.
Just read Breath by James Nestor. You can thank me later. Fellow ran experiments on himself (and monkeys too) on exactly that, mousebreathing vs. nosebreathing. The difference is drastic. Catasthropically drastic.
I wonder if they tried to correct for 'exercise intensity' for that, because (fun fact), exercising regularly is negatively correlated with regularly taking all kinds of drugs -- except for alcohol, where the correlation is apparently positive [1].
Furthermore, drinking weekly seems better than monthly.
But frequency doesn't mean much unless we know amounts. For example, small amounts weekly could be benefiting social relations and regulating things like anxiety. Binging monthly might not give these benefits.
Before we rush to conclusions and make up just-so stories, note this passage from the research:
"The relationship between cognitive function and lifestyle factors such as alcohol consumption and smoking
proved complex. Individuals who abstained from alcohol
showed lower cognitive scores than those who consumed
alcohol, conflicting with previous research[1] that has
connected moderate drinking with cognitive impairment"
[1] Topiwala A, Allan CL, Valkanova V, et al. Moderate alcohol
consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive
decline: longitudinal cohort study. BMJ 2017;357:j2353.
Yes, the parent comment incorporated and was consistent with that. I.e., there's something confounding these results. It then hypothesized the confounder.
First Reaction: These days, less-clever folks are mostly in situations where they're lucky if they can afford food and rent. Alcohol just another out-of-reach luxury.
Re-read the "Methods" section, on page 2 of the PDF. I'm not too familiar with the UK Biobank database, but the researchers broadly exclude anyone whose record (in the DB) did not include completion of multiple cognitive tests. And prioritized people whose data include rather comprehensive sleep & related data.
Again I don't know this dataset well...but I'd really suspect that few of the UK's homeless would have passed this study's selection criteria.
its an interesting idea, but its very complex because of varying attitudes to alcohol within and between religions.
It is interesting that fundamentalists tend to be anti-alcohol across religions with different attitudes in mainstream believers (say Christianity that commonly uses alcohol in religious rites and hose founder's first miracle was to give people alcohol, Buddhism, and Islam which is clearly anti-alcohol).
I think that means you are onto something in that there is an important correlation there. Not sure it is as simple as lower income (there are lots of rich fundamentalists of all religions) or cognition. Personality traits or associated cultural factors more likely?
> A hunch would be that alcohol abstinence is strongly correlated with religious fundamentalism which is correlated with lower income and cognition.
It seems you are pointing to second largest religion in the world - islam. It covers over 2 billions of people. They largely don't drink not because they are fundamentalists, they just follow basic premises of their religion. And my various travels to various countries with them being either majority or minority its extremely common, even when they resettle ie to Europe. There are also completely dry countries in North africa for example, they are not full of religious fundamentalists.
Please educate yourself about the world a bit before making such harsh and discriminating statements, they have no place on this forum.
night owls are people who are sensitive to light/noise/environment and therefore more productive in the night - when they can focus and be productive for prolonged periods of time without million of distractions.
when you don't have people calling, texting, slacking, zooming you, environmental noises (car, neighbours, other people, dogs), when you don't have personal life distractions (wife, kids, personal email, social media etc) - you can be in a flow state for prolonged time and be quite productive.
even such a small thing as lunch break, and other snack breaks - divides your day into two killing the flow.
Nah. As a night owl myself it’s simply that I have trouble falling asleep due to an overactive mind. Add two hours or more of rolling around and instead of getting up at 7 I’m getting up at 9.
And before someone chimes in with sleep advice, please don’t. I’ve tried it all. Some rings help a bit but at the end of the day nothing makes enough of a difference. I just need those two hours my feet to the point when I can sleep.
Also no, going to bed before everyone else is not an option. I’m not giving up having a social life.
A night owl who feels pressured to wake at 7 or even 9am is a genuine tragedy.
I am extremely fortunate to have a career where I can sleep my natural hours of somewhere around 4:30 AM until after noon. But I had to fight for it, and set boundaries. I would encourage everyone with a late chronotype to seriously consider spending some time finding such work, as finally getting good sleep will be a major unlock for your life and happiness.
>A night owl who feels pressured to wake at 7 or even 9am is a genuine tragedy.
I'm very much a night owl. My whole childhood, I've been told by people that I can't choose to get out of bed late once I start working. Their message was clear: "Quit this lazy and childish behavior."
Nowadays, I sleep at 0:00-1:00 and get up at 7.30. I hate it. The world lacks empathy for us.
An anecdote, but I used to be a night owl. Like you, I had trouble falling asleep in the evening and then getting up in the morning.
Now in my thirties, it turned around. I fall dead asleep at 9-10 PM and wake up at 4-5 AM, not being able to sleep further. The change coincides with me getting kids, but I don't think it alone can explain this.
In my 30s I went from wanting to stay up until 2am or later, and getting up at 9-10am, to wanting to be asleep by 10pm and getting up before 6am, every day of the week, including weekends - staying out late socialising is now weirdly hard work, and I'm basically done with work by 4:30-5pm and ready to start winding down.
I don't have kids, something just flipped over the course of a year or two.
I'm flipping regularly, every month or two. All you need is lack of constant schedule and ADHD; suddenly days start to be longer than 24h and you can't just go to bed earlier (well, you can, but you'll just lay there awake for hours). For a while I had one meeting each week at work and free rein otherwise - so sometimes I was waking up early for it, and sometimes went to bed late because of it.
I've noticed that when I'm flipped to be awake in early morning, I get tired really fast. It's like a cutoff hour - I have missed some concerts just because they started at 7-8 PM which was around bed time for me at the time. When I'm in the evening/night mode, I can be much more flexible.
It seems much harder to flip out of morning mode than to flip into it, even though I really don't like how I'm feeling across the day. It requires conscious effort to beat the cutoff, while flipping out of evening mode just happens on its own eventually if I'm not careful enough.
I was never a morning person whenever I had to follow a schedule.
I think structuring days can help. I often am up at 6am with nothing to do for hours on end (it's a Sunday, my partner is not getting up until 10am, so I guess it's reading time or going for a walk time...?), but what I've found helps is marking blocks out in my calendar and then getting a reminder what its time to do.
Some weekdays at a certain time, it's time to go for a run. Saturday afternoons are side projects or spending time doing something with friends and family. Weekday evenings have a broad pattern to them (you won't see me in a cinema on a Friday night, or in the pub on a Monday...)
This structure seems to help regulate a ton of stuff, including eating, sleeping and so on. Some people "don't like routine", which I get, but you can basically block out sleep (plus an hour either side), and then riff in the middle, the key is try and get your head down around the same time, 7 nights a week, and try and learn the military sleep method [1] to get some consistency if you need it.
Good luck with settling it down, if that's what you want/need!
But only (any one of) three things have proven to reliably get me all the way to being able to sleep like a normal person every day (while sustained):
1) Being totally exhausted by my day. This requires a lot of physical activity. Basically impossible on a work day or if I have significant amounts of anything not-very-active to do. I rarely achieve this one on except on vacation.
2) Zero electronics, including electric lights, after sundown (or at least for a full two or more hours before I want to be asleep).
3) 5mg of weed gummy
Only the third one is compatible with normal modern life with an office job.
Oh yeah, I've improved over time for sure. Right now I need those extra two hours, when I was younger I'd roll around for 4-5h at times. In high school I routinely slept through my morning classes (in class), and in university I just stopped taking classes before noon.
Now I can almost do a 9-5 if I get up at 9 to be at work for 10. It's a vast improvement!
Even when controlling for what’s noted, I’ve always been more productive of an evening and have been since a child. It’s not limited to me and there seems to be some genetic component. My mother, grandmother, aunts etc. All night owls, and all of us averaging 6-7 hours of sleep at best.
Regardless of what’s occurred before hand, my brain seems to kick into some higher gear at around 9-10pm. Like there is a noticeable change in my energy/cognitive capabilities.
Ironically, the only time this has ever deviated was two months I spent in Russia where for the first time in my life, I adapted almost instantly to what one might call a “normal” sleep schedule. As soon as I returned to my own time zone, it reverted back to me being a night owl again.
I’ve given up attempting to work around it and simply moved to a role that can accomodate it. It’s been huge for my physical and mental health to end the 30 odd years I’ve spent fighting what seems to be a natural schedule for me.
I have found that I'm most creative and productive right after waking, but it doesn't last long. My energy levels crash some hours after waking, then slowly rise as the day turns into evening hours. At that point, I'm not as energetic as I am right after waking, but that state can last well into the night until I can't stay awake any longer. Even as I'm getting tired at night, it seems different than the crash at midday. So, I think it's true you can have a higher level of productivity in the morning for a short period, but also get more done in the evening because of the extended period of "good enough" energy. Morning people and evening people are both correct. Circumstances generally determine which of those two ends are most easily exploitable. Because I work from home, I can take advantage of both.
I'm the same way. I wonder if it has to do with food or even the expectation of food. Maybe eating (or even drinking water) sends the body on a rollercoaster that mostly settles down by evening time.
I personally find daylight itself to be "distracting" -- like that basic sensory input alone consumes some non-trivial amount of cognitive energy. I much prefer to think in a dark space. I've never met anyone IRL who relates to this though.
I feel the same, but I've never actually talked to anybody about it since it felt like such a strange thing to say. Thanks for letting me know I'm not alone!
Yeah, there’s something about the day itself that’s distracting. Maybe it’s the light + some latent emotion I have from residual expectations about what I “should” be doing. Not sure.
At my worst I procrastinate my whole day away at home and not enter deep work until late at night where I become feverishly productive.
Disagree. I'm a night owl, and I work best with bustle around. Silence is eerie and distracting. I would keep the tv on when studying late into the night and I worked best in groups.
I found that a basement is a good substitute during the day. Reduced noise, distraction and no sunlight which often changes intensity every time a cloud rolls by.
Owls could have the same amount of productive focus time in the early morning before everyone else starts to distract them - the reason they chose not to do that is mostly due to chronobiology, which is determined by genes, not social constructs like "lunch time".
I would argue no because, while you’re doing stuff that matters to you, everyone else is done with their day and partying. You’d just be asleep while everyone else is pretending to do their work.
Great study - I find that anecdotally 7 hours of sleep generally outperforms 8 hours in terms of cognitive function early in the day, but suffers later in the day - likely favored by "morning" people that tend to do more in the beginning of their day.
Not sure about the study. But I've watched some fitness you tubers, I mean the real deal ones, that train for a specific sport. And they obsess with their sleep as much if not more than their training. Using bands and watches to track the quality of their sleep. Very important for recovery and training, at elite levels.
One theory is that sleep, is a time when the brain cleans itself. If the theory is correct, maybe missing one cleaning is not detrimental. But continued, it will lead to performance decreases. Not just sports. But mental ability.
The relationship between sleep quality and recovery is pretty well known in exercise circles. A lot of "amateur" elites, like very competitive marathon runners that take it quite serious around a day job, have to work in long low intensity cardio workouts around their schedules, so you start thinking very hard about recovery. When you think about recovery that hard you also start prioritizing sleep a lot, especially if you're up at 4am for a 2 hour run, for example.
Missing a lot of sleep for successive days is almost guaranteed to lead to injury when you're training very hard. The effect on your cardio performance (even just average BPM) can be stark. I don't know how some resident doctors, for example, can also be very good marathon runners. Just managing that sleep schedule must be crazy.
So some studies show a positive correlation on cognitive performance and some negative correlation for "morningness" and "eveningness".
The obvious conclusion to me is that there is no strong effect. Or that at some portions of the year, or parts of the globe, certain chronotypes have advantages, this certainly matches my anecdotal experience.
To the contrary. It's possible that the correlation is caused solely by a culture that raises owls as larks, "dumbing down" the latter with individuals maladapted to the lark life style. The effect could be increased by smarter owls being able to resist the conversion therapy a little better than less smarter owls – resulting in a selection bias.
Irony apart, my idea (borrowed somewhere I can't remember) is that body functions are too intertwined to just isolate a single variable, or determine a single cause.
People, consume what you want, sleep how you want, and assess what it is that you "want" individually. It's not hard too see if alcohol, sleep deprivation, etc. causes you harm or not.
As for long-range damage or good: look at people who lived long (and healthy).
So the study shows that night owls and people with flexible sleep patterns might have a slight advantage in terms of cognitive performance implying that it’s not just how much sleep you get, but also when you prefer to sleep that matters for keeping your brain sharp.
i found one thing helpful. if you drink coffee and then sleep immediately , i got a better sleep. it acted as good as melatonin gummies.
anyone like me out there? is it normal? or am i addicted?
Do you have ADHD? I read once that for normal people caffiene pushes dopamine levels too high, and stops them from sleeping, but for people with ADHD caffeine can push dopamine levels from too low to normal, calming them and helping with sleep.
I dont really have ADHD, but one time on nat geo channel i saw this video where they test two people , they were supposed to not sleep. after 12 hours they both were given coffee, one was allowed to sleep 30 mins, other was not . the one who had a nap recovered really well but the others conditioned worsened and he went to sleep even tho he didnt wanted to, his body gave up.
Alas, being of a certain age means that any kind of liquid before bed will result in an early-hours wakeup to relieve the bladder - negating any potential sleep benefits :(
That’s called a power nap. But you have to be a good sleeper in the first place. If you are not able to fall asleep before the caffeine kicks in, you’ll have a pretty different night/nap.
I have heard of people who say creatine helps them sleep. Creatine is technically not a stimulant, but in most people it causes a state of mental activation that would make it hard to sleep. I suspect you and the people who sleep better on creatine may have something in common.
This is funny. I started mixing ~3g of creatine into my morning coffee a couple of weeks ago. I never thought of it being stimulating or activating, but it's certainly possible: I usually don't stick long enough to things like this to form a habit, but my brain seems to nudge me into keeping up with it...
I don't find it dissolves or stays in suspension - at the end of the coffee most of the creatine is at the bottom of the mug. Which is a pity as otherwise it would be very efficient, tip it in while the machine makes the cup. Are you stirring it lots or similar?
The creatine I use is finely powdered and it immediately dissolves in very little boiling water. I add it to the second coffee of the day: first one is from the espresso machine for pleasure while waking up, second one is using instant coffee to maintain stable blood caffeine levels. The crema-faking bubbles from the instant espresso powder probably help getting the stuff to dissolve. Then drink it hot and quickly :)
That's why I use it with instant coffee ;) not much to ruin when your expectations are already low! Also, you need boiling water to properly dissolve the stuff. But to be honest: the coffee feels thicker, but there's no distinct change in taste due to creatine.
All these weird comments about alcohol abstinence...must be a religious fundamentalist, must be an ex-alcoholic, etc. I have a drink maybe 5-10 times per year, and I'm not actively trying to abstain. It tastes gross, and I'm not drawn to it. Why is it so hard for some people to understand that alcohol isn't appealing to everyone?
A lot of people confuse the secondary effects of alcohol (basically, mostly, social permission) with the primary effects. Most developed countries have purged almost all ritual from their cultures, which means that there aren't really occasions for people to experiment with their behavior - and it provides air cover for engaging in riskier behaviors - and so alcohol provides the outlet for them.
Alcohol is one of the most boring psychoactive experiences there is, it's the safest, the most predictable and the most repeatable. There's nothing challenging about it - happy drunks are going to be happy drunks, angry/emotional drunks are going to be angry/emotional drunks, people who use the context of alcohol to excuse behaviors that they feel they would otherwise be judged for (promiscuity, "I love you guys! no I really do!", etc. etc.) are doing just that. The only drug with more predictability than alcohol is caffeine, with the common opiates being next in line for being absolutely predictable - do X get Y.
Alcohol is boring. Even pot or tobacco are more interesting, but they lack the social context that provides behavioral permissibility which is really what drives the ritual-lite use - going drinking on the weekend.
Alcohol is one of the most STANDARDIZED substances on the planet. 5% at 500 mil is always going to be the same amount of alcohol. Of course it's going to be predictable and socially acceptable. Try doing any other drug and you have no clue what you're getting, even if you get it from the the same source time and time again.
The predictability is a FEATURE. And btw, it's not boring at all.
You are conflating boring with predictable.
Weed in the US is starting to get this way as well. It’s amazing the amount of actually useful drug information you can get from products sold at weed shops these days. Meanwhile you don’t even get nutritional facts or ingredients with beer. I wish I liked either drug but I should be happy I don’t.
aye. the only times I've eaten pot brownies they were overly strong and not fun. same for psychodelics -- hit wayyyy harder than I'd ever think, and while it was quite a ride, I'm not game to try that again without knowing the dose.
meanwhile 2-3 beers with friends I haven't seen in a while is a good time, good convo, and we can chill out and sip water for 30 min to make sure we're safe to drive. like, I'm looking to have a pint with the lads and have nice conversation, not undergo ego death.
Safe compared to meth maybe but not compared to caffeine.
Setting aside alcohol addiction, the costs of alcohol abuse to your health (e.g., brain damage, liver disease, etc.), and the risk of killing yourself by drinking too much in a sitting, there's also the way it drastically increases the risk of drunk driving and domestic violence.
I'm not saying we should ban it or anything, but we should not be underplaying the very real risks and costs associated with it.
the counter argument I hear is that few extra years of life you get by being 100% sober are not worth it.
Think of alcohol as ancient painkiller/antidepressant that helped people to get through the challenges of their lifes and make it through the life without walking out of the window
People who have that much of an issue with sobriety have other demons they need to address in therapy.
So, I could get behind a lot of the idea you are pushing here. But, I question whether you have evidence to back it up?
For one, to claim that most developed countries have purged ritual feels more like you are referring to some specific rituals. Or have amusing cuts on what you consider developed countries.
You also sort of undercut yourself by noting that alcohol hits people in different, if repeatable ways; but you seem to think that will not be true for other drugs? From my experience, I would expect the same for pot. Tobacco, I confess I never really saw it impact anyone. Outside of getting them addicted.
Simply stated, why do you think you would not see such variability of how other items impact people?
>For one, to claim that most developed countries have purged ritual feels more like you are referring to some specific rituals.
They most likely mean all kinds of overt rituals societies used to have and some non-western societies still have.
What kind of rituals do we have that you have in mind that we still have, and that are not either very peripheral to everyday life or have not been diminishing in importance and attendance year by year?
Ignoring that there are non-western developed countries; many western societies still have church attendance, for one. Then there are the ball game rituals that have risen quite a bit. We still largely have the same holidays, as well.
Do we still do the same rituals as we did in the past? Of course not. Which is why I would largely agree. I suspect the evidence will be such that there are still more rituals than folks admit to. Graduation ceremonies. Weddings. Etc.
> Alcohol is...the safest [psychoactive drug]
Yeah, no. According to CDC data, more than 150,000 people die from excessive alcohol consumption per year [1], which is about how many people died of heroin overdoses in the past 20 years [2].
By and large, the labels "safe" or "dangerous" are subjective and highly cultural, at least when it comes to substances.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/facts-stats/index.html
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/overdose-prevention/about/heroin.html
> According to CDC data, more than 150,000 people die from excessive alcohol consumption per year [1], which is about how many people died of heroin overdoses in the past 20 years [2]
Easy, everyone drinks, almost nobody shoots up. There you go, explained.
Could you normalise that data? Deaths per user?
I feel like nowadays it is more socially acceptable to say you don’t drink than even just 10 years ago.
I can’t recall the last time I was asked “why” after telling someone I don’t drink. All in all, I was fortunate that during university a close friend of mine also didn’t drink. Being the “odd one out” seems harder than being the “odd pair out” lol.
edit: culture plays a role as well in how acceptable it is. I’m from a country that is heavy on alcohol usage though (Belgium).
In the US it’s far more acceptable. I don’t drink and while I’ve been offered, no one ever pushes back. And I’ve never had problems being the only one at parties who didn’t.
This is YMMV. I still get a lot of “why don’t you drink?!! Come on, man!!” in the US. Especially in a city like NYC - you’re signing up to be a bit of a social outcast.
I disassociate from allowing people like this into my life now.
Good for you.
However, in society at large, social influence (excuse the bit of circularity) is an extremely powerful force driving people's lifestyle.
I’m in my early 40s. My ability to metabolize alcohol took a steep nosedive a few years ago. I love a great marg/old fashioned/IPA, but I will feel depressed the next day no matter what. I’ve tried electrolyte supplementation, eating a lot, eating “right,” drinking a lot of water, etc.
My body has a hard time with it. So it’s rare that I seek it out. A small container of sake early in the evening might be my indulgence from now on.
I had a similar thing until I stopped eating a certain brand of muesli. A different brand with seemingly the same ingredients was fine. I think it's something to do with processing of dried fruit. I believe there was some reaction between that and the alcohol I consumed later in the day. I only realised it was breakfast related on holiday and my breakfast habits changed. I found drinking to be consequence free as opposed to 1/2 a pint causing a certain headache the next afternoon. I experimented when I got home and completely solved my problem.
I was also in my early 40s when this happened for what that's worth.
you might have FODMAP sensitivities.
I’m about to hit 40, and I’ve had this exact same experience. Even a single beer, shot of whiskey or glass of wine will leave me feeling depressed for at least a day afterwards.
For me it seems to correlate with having had COVID back in 2021, where prior to that I could still have 2-3 drinks and feel okay the next day. My suspicion/intuition is that it has something to do with a shift in my gut microbiome - from what I understand, alcohol can very easily disrupt one’s microbiome, and the state of my microbiome seems to have a significant influence on my mood.
I haven’t missed the alcohol though. It’s actually been a blessing for my general health and wellbeing.
I had a similar experience. For years I drank about 2 beers a night. Then in my early 40s, had a bout of "long covid" that lasted about 6 months. I have fully recovered, but can't drink like I used to. If I have one or two beers, I feel crappy and down the next day. Also the buzz isn't quite the same.
Precisely the same experience here. Since Covid even a single drink makes me feel bad enough to not want to again… and I always had bad hangovers. This is different
Interesting. I never connected it to covid-19, and truly cannot remember if it hit me as hard the next day or not prior to the pandemic. (Also, obviously I was younger then, too.) The only symptom I can connect to covid-19 is persistent tinnitus, which is pretty common among long-haulers (though I don't count myself among them).
However, I've also heard mention of people drinking less in general which could suggest a link.
There is some new evidence that changes occur at various stages in our lives, specifically one in the early-to-mid forties, that can affect things like alcohol metabolism[0][1]. I find this type of thing and the "epigenetic clock" research to be pretty fascinating to read about now that I'm approaching mid-life myself.
[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/drastic-molecular...
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-024-00692-2
Never had a drink till junior year of high school, but immediately found I could drink incredible amounts of alcohol, 15-20+ cocktails, shots, beer, wine (mixing never caused me problems) and be virtually sober (obviously not clinically sober, and have no bio data) an hour or two after a long night.
Also kept a clear mind and mindful awareness throughout. Just euphoric & more social.
Then at 53, after some extreme stress, that completely changed. One drink slowly is usually fine. 2-3 drinks will upset my sleep. Any more and my next day suffers.
At 4-5 drinks my body feels like it has a slight fever over night. I feel overheated, whether I really am I don’t know. Just can’t process it efficiently.
More than that & I get socially sloppy. Not bad, but not welcome either.
But my very petite daughter in her mid 20’s inherited my relevant genes. Since high school she has to down two hard cocktails within ten minutes to start an evening of (more paced, but still steady) drinking with friends just to feel the effects, like I did most of my life.
She can out drink companions 2x her weight.
Also in common, neither of us is at alcohol addiction risk. Drinking is completely social/situational, no cravings or problems with abstention. We both enjoy the taste of alcohol. Scotch, neat, tastes like candy to me.
Drinking has always been at least as much about the gourmand exploration of flavors and varieties as the psychological effect.
I got my DNA analysis and one chromosome is 68% Caribbean pirate, 32% Viking, the other is split equally Russian/Irish.
Joking - but would be interested if relevant genes could be identified. I would happily sign up for gene or epigenetic therapy to resume my old life of refined epicureanism in excess.
Drinking mixed with lots of sparkling water, diet sodas, and a powder mixture of creatine, minerals, protein & fiber, before & after, reliably helps a bit.
Also, liver health remains excellent.
Genes!
My experience is similar. I can tolerate at most one cocktail, glass of wine, or beer (although I'll go malty over hoppy every time). One positive is that because of this limitation, I think I enjoy the drinks I do have a lot more.
A change that came along with this is some kind of sensitivity to sugar. I love candy and baked goods. A short stack of pancakes with maple syrup and berries is the best, but that kind of carb bomb can leave me feeling almost hungover.
Same here. Quit alcohol when I turned 40, the side-effects the next day of even 1-2 beers were not making it worth the buzz during drinking. Sleep issues, less focus and concentration, weaker performance in the gym, anxiety the next day etc. etc. It became a no brainer to simply stop drinking. To those with better ability to metabolize alcohol, cheers to you.
For me, the type of drink makes a huge difference the older I get.
I used to like wine, but the older I got, the more I started noticing having a terrible hangover the next day, even if it wasn't enough to get actually drunk or even buzzed. Type/brand of wine didn't seem to matter. But whiskey or vodka mixed with soda, no problem.
How much of that is your ability to metabolize dropped, versus the strength of common drinks has sky rocketed? Especially mentioning IPAs. It is not uncommon to find them in the 9% range. I remember drinking a ton of Guinness back in the day. Highly amused to find that that would be considered a light beer today.
Light, heavy, it doesn't really matter. I can get very little or no buzz from a 4% lager and still regret drinking the next day.
This somewhat intrigues me. An old fashioned and a 4% lager are very different, but you seem to be saying both will give you the same regret the next day?
Note that I largely resonate with the idea that aging reduces tolerance to alcohol. Love the Oatmeal's https://theoatmeal.com/comics/hungover. Hasn't quite hit me that hard, yet. Thankfully.
I'm a similar age and also a heavy drinker (15-25 drinks per week) but also run 40-50 miles per week + 5000-7000 feet of vert per week. My friends/family are astonished that I can crush 10 beers in an evening and run 15 miles the next morning w/o food. I suspect metabolism has alot to do with it.
Post-30 I found any amount of alcohol I really noticed the next day and concluded it just wasn't worth it anymore.
>Why is it so hard for some people to understand that alcohol isn't appealing to everyone?
People often don't understand that not everyone experiences a thing the same way. That what it's like for you isn't the same as what it's like for me.
People think you experience alcoholic beverages exactly the same as they do and don't understand why you dislike them as a result.
> [I] must be a religious fundamentalist, must be an ex-alcoholic, etc.
Personally, no. Statistically, yes, at least enough for the difference to affect a study like this. That's the point of those comments.
We're just hypothesizing why at the population level abstinence from alcohol might not actually cause cognitive decline as (somewhat) implied by the data. Don't take it personally.
You mean why abstinence isn't causing better cognitive performance, right, RIGHT?
Obviously the study result is BS. Because if the the same people, drinkers with higher than their abstinent peers cognitive scores, didn't drink, their performance would be THE SAME.
But it's impossible to find out. They should totally continue to study all that, tho. Maybe at some point in the future we can cut people open alive and look properly inside, fuck around & find out, and then close them up and send them back to work again.
> Obviously the study result is BS. Because if the the same people, drinkers with higher than their abstinent peers cognitive scores, didn't drink, their performance would be THE SAME.
That liquor consumption part of the study result.
> Why is it so hard...?
Stupid (cognitively easy) stereotypes, backed by "everybody's gotta drink!" machismo/insecurity/conformist culture, backed by "all the people I know" (who aren't silenced by stereotypes and peer pressure) experience, backed by decade after decade of massive advertising by the alcohol industry (and adjacent industries).
You are fortunate. There are many alcoholics who would trade anything to switch places with you. Probably a lot of the responses are from people who have seen how destructive alcohol can be when used in excess.
I grew up in a blue-collar rural area where alcoholism wasn't just common, it was flat-out normal. Anyone who could get away with nursing a beer or 12 the whole day long and not get fired, usually did. My dad drank a lot and it caused a ton of problems with his marriage (leading to divorce) but at least he wasn't abusive.
I am also somewhat lucky in that I never could acquire a taste for beer. Based on my family history and upbringing, I could have very easily slid into alcoholism otherwise. I'll never know for sure, but to keep even the possibility at bay, I have two hard rules: no drinking during the day and no drinking the night before work or having to be somewhere the next day.
>Why is it so hard for some people to understand that alcohol isn't appealing to everyone?
Because it does appear to appeal to 90% of the population
I assume because technical people would think something like:
- there are tens of thousand drinks on the planet,
- all with their different nuances in how they alter mood and thinking patterns.
Not appealing just can't be true except if you 'score' low in novelty seeking/curiosity ... except if you were only exposed to bad drunks and pathetic alcoholics ...
Something like that. But it might also be because marketers see people like you as a challenge, a trophy to collect, and the non-marketing types just want to 'seduce' you.
They do the same to babies and minors all the time. "Say this or that, do this or that." And BAM, some brain cells practically useless forever.
"all with their different nuances in how they alter mood and thinking patterns"
This is honestly not true unless you are including absinthe. Ethanol is the only active ingredient and it has one of the most well understood dose-response curves and one of the most heavily studied effects. The rest is all in your head.
There just isn't that much to the alcohol, it's very one note, moreso than any psychedelic, moreso than even smoking (where dose control significantly varies the effects) or even cannabis which is also relatively one note.
> This is honestly not true unless
I am quite certain that if you talked to a variety of people who like to drink, they will tell you that tequila hits different than a single barrel rye whiskey or champagne, for example. And it's more than just the amount of sugar. There are amounts of hints of various aromas in different liquor and these small differences do quite a bit in the brain, which you did propose yourself when you said
> The rest is all in your head.
Brains are incredible. The "sensitivity and specificity" of receptors goes way beyond what we understand for now, both hardware and software-wise, and that is true on the level of synapses as well as within any metabolism anywhere in their chains in the body and in how they work together to achieve their own objectives, as well as the ones they share.
Take any approach within the range of broken - buggy - normal - amplified and apply it to any sphere of single and networked mechanism. Wear and tear and age change all this even further and never forget that we are still evolving, over very long time spans in very small changes.
It's an insane ride from bio-chemistry to character in different states of mind and body/brain and that ride morphs quite a bit based on anything we consume via active and passive channels.
And that's just part of the story as it evolves in my head.
There is a genetic component on how you react to alcohol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction
Hops in beer have a mildly sedative effect. Sugar, caffeine, taurin in mix drinks cause more alertness and euphoria. There really is more to drinks than just the amount of ethanol.
I've always found weird how people draw conclusions from small correlations, specially when other studies show the opposite result. They call it hypothesis, but weirdly enough these conclusions often coincide with their world view. Look at that, now I'm the one drawing conclusions, must be human nature to try to make sense of things. But what I've found is that often reality is counter intuitive, and that's more fun.
> Interestingly, our study did not identify a significant relationship between sleep quality—that is, sleeplessness/insomnia and cognitive performance— contrary to some previous findings
> The regression highlighted a positive association between normal sleep duration (7–9 hours) and cognitive scores... while extended sleep duration negatively impacted scores across both cohorts
> intermediate and evening types, were linked to superior cognitive function
propaganda by big insomnia ;)
More like propaganda by Big Alcohol, given the following
> Individuals who abstained from alcohol showed lower cognitive scores than those who consumed alcohol, conflicting with previous research that has connected moderate drinking with cognitive impairment. Weekly and monthly alcohol consumption, as opposed to daily drinking, was found to somewhat correlate with lower cognitive scores.
Hypothesis: The better you understand the world, the more likely you are to need an occasional drink.
addition to hypothesis:
and that need grows exponentially with your understanding of the world until a certain point.
That need can be reduced to a healthy "Mom said everything is fine in moderate amounts" once you choose to not live by conflicting standards, or rather: when you choose to not support implicitly AND explicitly conflicting causes ( many on the left, finboys & fingirls, law enforcement, ... but unemployed who don't work on themselves or their environment as well )
Not really, you need a coping mechanism with all the crap and stupidity across society, and how powerless truth and correct moral behavior can be.
Alcohol is one of the worst ones, you just blunt yourself while still realizing all failures, just temporarily a bit downtuned, next morning back to misery. No solution or even improvement is happening, just basically giving up (or a bit of complaining which is just group psychological therapy).
Sports, meditation, maybe even occasional psychedelics steered in right direction, active vacations, good food, good sleep. Life is much easier in such mode.
So you are saying “psychedelics good coping mechanism, alcohol bad”?
That is California sobriety at a level I’ve never seen before.
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Those who abstain entirely are disproportionately likely to be former alcoholics - which explains eg the apparent protective effect of moderate drinking
Maybe in the US where the whole AA thing is popular and widespread. I'd be surprised if that's a factor at all elsewhere. Where I'm from I've never met anyone who would label themselves as 'former alcoholics'.
I'm more inclined to think intelligence often times comes with a good dose of social anxiety and alcohol helps with managing it.
You might have zero contacts with lower working class then. I live very far from the US in a very different society and know many former alcoholics who abstain entirely, or at least try to. Because it's hard enough for an alcoholic to avoid drinking, it's even harder to have just one drink and not slide into a full-blown, months-long binge.
Aaaaaaaaw yeah, baby. I 'member those times.
Back then I knew the problem was the *quality* of the alcohol/drinks.
Now, some years later. "My homie Jamal's" liquor costs 5-10 times that much and he puts effort into the mixtures, trying recipes, playing around with accent ingredients and modifiers and stuff. If we drink--we still drink quite a bit. But there's no month long binges no more and the immediate negative side effects on cognition are *GONE*.
Most AA alumni don't call themselves former alcoholics. They see themselves as addicts who are glad they didn't have a drink yesterday and are doing their best to extend that streak through today.
It’s easy to imagine lots of things
I don’t see how that’s the most likely reason to abstain. A lot of religious people have never consumed an alcoholic drink; at least that is the case for South Asians: Muslims in particular, but also many Hindus and Sikhs.
This type of led to statistical issues that skewed our understanding of the health effects of alcohol consumption. Unless abstainers who previously abused alcohol are excluded or controlled for statistically, their health effects can skew results [0]. Here’s a blurb from a recent NYT article:
> Fillmore was concerned about possible misleading variables in the studies: To start, they included ex-drinkers in the category of “abstainers,” which meant they were failing to account for the possibility that some people had stopped drinking specifically because of illness. The moderate drinkers looked healthy by comparison, creating the illusion that a moderate amount of alcohol was beneficial.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/magazine/alcohol-health-r...
And it's fairly difficult to make it an apples-to-apples comparison, suitable for causal analysis, by excluding the lifelong teetotalers who would have become alcoholics if they had ever partaken.
The Presbyterian church my parents took me to used actual wine (with an option for grape juice) at communion. I think most people participating in the ceremony didn't consider that having a drink any more than if their prescription medicine contained alcohol.
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Another factor is that people who have serious health problems are less likely to consume alcohol. These health problems may have an (indirect) effect on cognitive performance.
I haven't read the whole study so maybe it's not the right meaning, but I tend to agree with you if "to abstain" has been chosen for its actual meaning.
Personally I don't drink alcohol, but I would never say that I am abstaining from drinking alcohol. I just don't do it. Same as eating green olives.
Meanwhile, as you're pointing it out, people who say that they are abstaining from alcohol are likely to be former alcoholics.
And say, people who's faith forbid them from drinking alcohol would probably fit in both : some just don't do it, others have to make a conscious effort to not do it.
Probably in some areas, surely not in the abstract general. Some people just do not take intoxicants.
What about entire dry cultures
Every study I have ever read emphasized importance of sleep. Many show grey matter reduction long term the less you sleep. Sleep studies literally use a little alcohol to disrupt sleep. All the research out there indicates alcohol also directly shrinks your grey matter. These findings are hard to believe for sure.
Grey matter correlates with cognition and ethanol consumption, but that doesn't necessarily mean it makes every cohort (age, amount, duration, etc) worse at every cognitive battery.
There are studies that show alcohol consumption is associated with greater novelty seeking, learning capacity, etc.
I generally think the direction is being smarter/curious first and alcohol comes along. Chemically, I don’t see how alcohol can make you have better cognition in the long run. In some narrow ways, I can see it. Long term is more interesting to me than a peak healthy person that also uses alcohol.
The study appears to say alcohol consumption has protective effect on cognition. Those who drank had less cognitive decline compared to those who abstained completely. If this is correct, this directly contradicts the other studies that says alcohol has zero benefits?
A lot of studies that don't control for confounding factors like the fact that many people who 100% abstain from alcohol are former alcoholics show benefits to small amounts of alcohol consumption compared to no alcohol consumption.
However, the studies that make more of an effort to control for those confounding factors have generally found that there are no health benefits, so right now the evidence seems to favor the idea that there are no health benefits to alcohol and in the studies that show otherwise it is due to confounding factors.
This study doesn't seem to have particularly attempted to control for these factors (it just controlled for specific cardiovascular diseases, etc.) so it's not surprising that the results match older studies that showed positive effects from small amounts of alcohol.
So the Ballmer Peak is real!
https://xkcd.com/323/
From a few months ago:
The Ballmer Peak: An Empirical Search – https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.10002 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40062892)
Some might just be avoiding falling asleep or being even less capable.
This is a situation of correlation ≠ causation, because — as all Rick & Morty fans know — some geniuses are drinking copiously just to slow down their turbo-charged intellects. :-)
You have to put 2 spaces at the head of each line to get code formatting, otherwise your artistic endeavors are fed to the HN paragraph enforcement daemons.
Thanks! For some reason it actually looked correct on my phone when I posted it. I’ve removed ASCII Rick just to be safe.
Yes, let's go with that as the reason I drink.
Good lord
My pet theory is that extended sleep correlates with hide-away, hunger and depression modes - which signal to our body that energy must be conserved. And cognition without the ability to act is the definition of energy waste.
Long sleep duration often presents with poor sleep quality, which negatively impacts cognition.
"Long total sleep time may suggest prior sleep deprivation, medical conditions, or effects of medications."[1]
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4246141/
I've been taking creatine for a while and it has interesting effects. On one hand, it seems making my sleep worse, i.e. sleeping less and kind of lightly? On the other hand, it helps me with cognitive performance, I get way less mentally exhausted during the day than I used to.
> normal sleep duration (7–9 hours)
Show me one employed person with a life that manages to get 8 hours sleep on average. Most commuters would have to go to bed at 2100 to get a breakfast and enough time to get to work. I only get 8 hours when I know I am sleep deprived and go to bed at 2100. However, this is not "normal", and I bet it isn't normal for most. So why do we call it normal, then?
Most days I'm in bed (and asleep withing 5 minutes) at 22:00 and awake at 05:30. I'm over 60, 7.5 hours sleep is just right for me. I have a one-hour commute each way and usually leave home at 06:45 and arrive back around 18:00.
It doesn't matter what time I go to bed, my eyes pop open at 05:30 and I have to get up (a) to micturate (did I mention I'm over 60?) and (2) feed the cats. The latter have trained me using medieval methods. When I was younger I would sleep as late as I could: my record was sleeping in until 16:00, and boys oh boys did that cause me to feel wretched.
In the EU it's quite normal for the average person to get the 8 hours of sleep. Of course, it depends on the work sector you are in, but for most jobs you don't have to wake up at 6 AM. Also, most people live close to their work, within 30 minutes of biking/driving/public transport.
You must live in a different EU than I do. Two hour commutes are normal around here (Dublin).
One way? That's anything but normal. Even if it's two-way it's nowhere near the norm.
The EU records this for pretty much all member states, and Ireland shows an average of 28 minutes.[0]
> In 2019, more than half (61.3%) of employed people in the EU traveled less than 30 minutes from home to work.
You are correct that Ireland is part of the group of countries which has a larger subset of people with long commutes, but hovering around 10% is not what I'd call "normal".
> The largest shares of the longest commuting times were observed in Latvia (13.5%), Ireland (11.2%), Belgium (10.7%) and Hungary (10.6%), where more than 10% of employed people had to travel from home to work for 60 minutes or more.
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d...
Yes in the "EU" (500 millions people) everyone lives in a quaint old city centre where people cycle to the greengrocer and everyone has stellar labour rights and sleeps soundly at night.
Meanwhile in the real world...
No, exactly that's the point. It's a lot of smaller countries and cities, and usually people live/relocate where they work.
People travelling daily longest for work are usually living in the (poorer) rural side, where yes, they have to get up early and take the (limited) public transport available, sometimes having only 2 buses per day.
I go to sleep at 9:30 and wake up at 5:30 every day. Sometimes I go crazy and stay up till 10, but that's rare. My bus leaves at 7 AM (40 minute commute), so that's plenty of time for coffee & breakfast & a shower before I have to head out the door. I get home from work at about 4:30 PM, plenty of time to cook dinner or do home stuff or go see friends or whatever before going to bed at 9.
My bus also leaves at 7 AM, with 40 minute commute, but unfortunately I have a very bad case of internet / youtube addiction, plus I'm basically a night person.
So I go to sleep around 12:30 AM each night (sometimes even after 1 AM), and I wake up at 5:50 AM.
That's not enough sleep at all. I do sleep till very late during the weekend.
I've been doing this for 20 years now, and some day it's probably going to catch up on me.
My breakfast is a cup of coffee and toast usually but since I live a 25 min bike ride from my work (in New England USA) I can usually leave around 800, which means I can sleep at 2300 for 8 hours easily.
Now, does my body do that?... no, usually it wakes me up after 6-7, but whatever.
I ran a consulting business for a long time. Sleeping that much is no problem if you prioritize it. Kids, wife, etc. You just have to organize your life around your priorities. It does mean little time for extraneous entertainment during the week, but that’s ok.
I do sleep 8+ hours each night (Netherlands): Up at 7.30, leave at 8.15, 30m commute. Leave work at 5.15, get to sleep around 10.45.
Interestingly everybody replying to this is saying they spend ~8 hours in bed, which most certainly means they aren't getting 8 hours of sleep :)
agree.
This "8 hours of sleep" is just a made up number.
Most adults (with responsibilities) don't sleep for 8 hours daily. They sleep far less.
And sleeping less than that is enough to live a very healthy life. If you feel your body/mind didn't rest well because you didn't get your 8 hour sleep, it's likely because you've been exposed to, and came to believe all these articles saying you do need 8 hrs min sleep. It's simply not the case. You can function very well on 6.5/7 hrs of sleep. I'm nearing 40 and I do.
2 worthy links:
https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/ - debunks the popular "why we sleep" book
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqlzQMB1fN8 - this guy is a S&C coach who's 30 and strong. He too believes sleep is overstated.
I work a full time tech job, I am out with friends or on a “date night” with my partner three or four times a week every week, and I have a few hobbies like music production and combat robotics.
I get at least 8 hours every night. My “must be home and in bed” time on a weeknight is by 12:30AM, and I sleep in until 8:45AM. I am normally woken by my alarm.
Weekends I simply set an alarm for 9 hours after I get in bed, which sometimes means sleeping until 2PM.
I don’t eat breakfast, and I basically never commute in the morning, but if I do, my office is about 15 minutes away.
Yeah not having to commute helps.
More than lack of time, I'm usually too tired after a full day of work (8 or 9 till 6 or 6:30) to do anything else.
"Normal" in the context of the body's actual sleep needs, not "normal" in the sense that everyone has the time or life management skills to achieve those needs.
("Normal" also depends on age: babies sleep a lot more than 8 hours a day, teenagers also typically need more sleep than they actually get.)
idk it's normal for me but then again i live in Denmark and i dont have any children
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This is one of those funny studies that looks at so much but then falls short to realize one thing: How well a person can breathe through their nose and the side effects of not being able to do that on nervous system, beginning with facial muscles, neck muscles and so on ... there's also a direct relationship of all that on the prefrontal cortex.
I admit tho, that I never checked if there are studies like that. If only I could travel backwards in time .......
I pretty definitely can't breath through my nose as well as I should be able to (deviated septum), and have been wondering for a while how much this actually impacts me. What was your experience like?
Have you had a sleep study done? You may have low oxygen saturation when you sleep. I had literally no symptoms of sleep apnea, no major risk factors, but my body was struggling to breathe when I slept due to my anatomy. I have started CPAP treatment and am excited to see if my cognition improves despite not really feeling bad.
Oh wow this is the first time I've read about this. Did you wake up frequently during the night or were there any other signs?
I have somewhat of a deviated septum, and even had surgery done half a year ago, but it didn't really change much unfortunately. I always need >=9 hours of sleep to feel good. I've slept on average 7 hours the past 2 weeks & I feel horrible (completely different reason for the reduced sleep). I did a sleep study a few years ago because I suspected sleep apnea, but because of anxiety or sleeping in a new place, I only ended up sleeping 1-2 hours that night. They didn't find anything, but I wonder if I should try again.
I don’t have memories of waking up frequently, but you tend to forget shorter wakeful periods. No other signs. No snoring, nothing that would indicate sleep issues.
I have headaches but they are related to other sinus issues, though the doctor seems to think the CPAP should help. I’m not so sure but open to the possibility!
So far I haven't, nope, though it might be worthwhile to look into, given that I basically need 8+ hours of sleep to function well.
I do have a fitness watch though that can (supposedly) measure SpO2, and while that showed the occasional dip, it seemed more like a measurement error, and generally the values were in the normal range.
I've a FitBit Sense 2 and as I understand it that measures variations in SpO2. I'm not convinced how accurate nor how quickly it responds, it derives an estimate rather than directly measuring. I think it's also sensitive to any movements of the watch on your wrist.
I also have had a finger pulse oximeter which logs and exports to an app via USB. If I sleep with that on it seems to be very reliable at recording the levels, the data certainly looks good and feels much more reliable than the Sense.
My Apple Watch showed no major desaturations. The desats only last a few seconds.
Deviated septum as well, but it's not the only reason for drying mucous membranes, which I never got around to getting checked. In part, it results from nutritional habits, sometimes (still), a bit too much coffee but the amount that causes it varies so it must be something else in one of the underlying metabolisms.
A few weeks ago, I tried Nasal Strips again, and for some reason, they are helping now and the difference is like day and night. I can only assume that it's because I got older and my life style changed, including nutrition, which was really bad when I was young. So dry mucous had too much effect for me to notice the benefits of the nasal strips or it's really just the bigger size of my nose :P
But the biggest change, compared to my young years, is that I am much more resilient to unhealthy stress and not continuously stressed as I was back then, when I was also regularly exposed to stress amplifications without time to recover.
And being able to breathe properly through my nose now amplifies everything for the much much better: mood, psychological resilience, performance --both cognitive and athletic-- time to fall asleep, sleep, with the latter two coming with their own boosts for the next day.
Most notable was the effect on my facial muscles. With the loss of those specific tensions came a direct effect on focus and concentration and self-control, which is all, to a great extent, mediated by the prefrontal cortex.
I sleep with Breathe Right strips. It's changed my life. Whoop band and 8Sleep confirm.
Just read Breath by James Nestor. You can thank me later. Fellow ran experiments on himself (and monkeys too) on exactly that, mousebreathing vs. nosebreathing. The difference is drastic. Catasthropically drastic.
Am I reading this correctly from table 2 that the highest magnitude correlation is never drinking alcohol, which is a negative correlation.
I wonder if they tried to correct for 'exercise intensity' for that, because (fun fact), exercising regularly is negatively correlated with regularly taking all kinds of drugs -- except for alcohol, where the correlation is apparently positive [1].
[1]: https://www.outsideonline.com/health/exercise-alcohol-resear...
Furthermore, drinking weekly seems better than monthly.
But frequency doesn't mean much unless we know amounts. For example, small amounts weekly could be benefiting social relations and regulating things like anxiety. Binging monthly might not give these benefits.
Weirdly, BMI seems to have almost zero effect.
> Furthermore, drinking weekly seems better than monthly.
Would seem to potentially imply more routine social activity / community.
> "BMI seems to have almost zero effect."
Seeing how chubby Jon von Neumann was, this should be trivial. ;)
I bet this is not because alcohol is good for you in any way, but because being intelligent is related to being eager to try new things.
I knew that smoking crack meant I was smart
A hunch would be that alcohol abstinence is strongly correlated with religious fundamentalism which is correlated with lower income and cognition.
Before we rush to conclusions and make up just-so stories, note this passage from the research:
"The relationship between cognitive function and lifestyle factors such as alcohol consumption and smoking proved complex. Individuals who abstained from alcohol showed lower cognitive scores than those who consumed alcohol, conflicting with previous research[1] that has connected moderate drinking with cognitive impairment"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story
[1] Topiwala A, Allan CL, Valkanova V, et al. Moderate alcohol consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive decline: longitudinal cohort study. BMJ 2017;357:j2353.
Yes, the parent comment incorporated and was consistent with that. I.e., there's something confounding these results. It then hypothesized the confounder.
First Reaction: These days, less-clever folks are mostly in situations where they're lucky if they can afford food and rent. Alcohol just another out-of-reach luxury.
Really? Poor people don’t drink?
I guess where you live there are no homeless people.
Re-read the "Methods" section, on page 2 of the PDF. I'm not too familiar with the UK Biobank database, but the researchers broadly exclude anyone whose record (in the DB) did not include completion of multiple cognitive tests. And prioritized people whose data include rather comprehensive sleep & related data.
Again I don't know this dataset well...but I'd really suspect that few of the UK's homeless would have passed this study's selection criteria.
its an interesting idea, but its very complex because of varying attitudes to alcohol within and between religions.
It is interesting that fundamentalists tend to be anti-alcohol across religions with different attitudes in mainstream believers (say Christianity that commonly uses alcohol in religious rites and hose founder's first miracle was to give people alcohol, Buddhism, and Islam which is clearly anti-alcohol).
I think that means you are onto something in that there is an important correlation there. Not sure it is as simple as lower income (there are lots of rich fundamentalists of all religions) or cognition. Personality traits or associated cultural factors more likely?
> A hunch would be that alcohol abstinence is strongly correlated with religious fundamentalism which is correlated with lower income and cognition.
It seems you are pointing to second largest religion in the world - islam. It covers over 2 billions of people. They largely don't drink not because they are fundamentalists, they just follow basic premises of their religion. And my various travels to various countries with them being either majority or minority its extremely common, even when they resettle ie to Europe. There are also completely dry countries in North africa for example, they are not full of religious fundamentalists.
Please educate yourself about the world a bit before making such harsh and discriminating statements, they have no place on this forum.
And not just Islam.
The alcohol taboo is equally strong in mainstream Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, and Buddhism (depending on region).
Also, in a lot of the developing world, prohibitionism is a fairly mainstream Feminist opinion, due to the sadly very common issue of domestic abuse.
All this shows is that there are various confounding variables in this study, and that more studies are needed.
So the main findings are superior cognitive performance being found in:
• people who sleep normal amounts (7–9 hours)
• night owls
night owls are people who are sensitive to light/noise/environment and therefore more productive in the night - when they can focus and be productive for prolonged periods of time without million of distractions.
when you don't have people calling, texting, slacking, zooming you, environmental noises (car, neighbours, other people, dogs), when you don't have personal life distractions (wife, kids, personal email, social media etc) - you can be in a flow state for prolonged time and be quite productive.
even such a small thing as lunch break, and other snack breaks - divides your day into two killing the flow.
Nah. As a night owl myself it’s simply that I have trouble falling asleep due to an overactive mind. Add two hours or more of rolling around and instead of getting up at 7 I’m getting up at 9.
And before someone chimes in with sleep advice, please don’t. I’ve tried it all. Some rings help a bit but at the end of the day nothing makes enough of a difference. I just need those two hours my feet to the point when I can sleep.
Also no, going to bed before everyone else is not an option. I’m not giving up having a social life.
A night owl who feels pressured to wake at 7 or even 9am is a genuine tragedy.
I am extremely fortunate to have a career where I can sleep my natural hours of somewhere around 4:30 AM until after noon. But I had to fight for it, and set boundaries. I would encourage everyone with a late chronotype to seriously consider spending some time finding such work, as finally getting good sleep will be a major unlock for your life and happiness.
>A night owl who feels pressured to wake at 7 or even 9am is a genuine tragedy.
I'm very much a night owl. My whole childhood, I've been told by people that I can't choose to get out of bed late once I start working. Their message was clear: "Quit this lazy and childish behavior."
Nowadays, I sleep at 0:00-1:00 and get up at 7.30. I hate it. The world lacks empathy for us.
An anecdote, but I used to be a night owl. Like you, I had trouble falling asleep in the evening and then getting up in the morning.
Now in my thirties, it turned around. I fall dead asleep at 9-10 PM and wake up at 4-5 AM, not being able to sleep further. The change coincides with me getting kids, but I don't think it alone can explain this.
It can definitely change over time.
In my 30s I went from wanting to stay up until 2am or later, and getting up at 9-10am, to wanting to be asleep by 10pm and getting up before 6am, every day of the week, including weekends - staying out late socialising is now weirdly hard work, and I'm basically done with work by 4:30-5pm and ready to start winding down.
I don't have kids, something just flipped over the course of a year or two.
I'm flipping regularly, every month or two. All you need is lack of constant schedule and ADHD; suddenly days start to be longer than 24h and you can't just go to bed earlier (well, you can, but you'll just lay there awake for hours). For a while I had one meeting each week at work and free rein otherwise - so sometimes I was waking up early for it, and sometimes went to bed late because of it.
I've noticed that when I'm flipped to be awake in early morning, I get tired really fast. It's like a cutoff hour - I have missed some concerts just because they started at 7-8 PM which was around bed time for me at the time. When I'm in the evening/night mode, I can be much more flexible.
It seems much harder to flip out of morning mode than to flip into it, even though I really don't like how I'm feeling across the day. It requires conscious effort to beat the cutoff, while flipping out of evening mode just happens on its own eventually if I'm not careful enough.
I was never a morning person whenever I had to follow a schedule.
I think structuring days can help. I often am up at 6am with nothing to do for hours on end (it's a Sunday, my partner is not getting up until 10am, so I guess it's reading time or going for a walk time...?), but what I've found helps is marking blocks out in my calendar and then getting a reminder what its time to do.
Some weekdays at a certain time, it's time to go for a run. Saturday afternoons are side projects or spending time doing something with friends and family. Weekday evenings have a broad pattern to them (you won't see me in a cinema on a Friday night, or in the pub on a Monday...)
This structure seems to help regulate a ton of stuff, including eating, sleeping and so on. Some people "don't like routine", which I get, but you can basically block out sleep (plus an hour either side), and then riff in the middle, the key is try and get your head down around the same time, 7 nights a week, and try and learn the military sleep method [1] to get some consistency if you need it.
Good luck with settling it down, if that's what you want/need!
[1] https://www.dreams.co.uk/sleep-matters-club/what-is-the-mili...
Kids actually helped me, too. Strangest thing.
But only (any one of) three things have proven to reliably get me all the way to being able to sleep like a normal person every day (while sustained):
1) Being totally exhausted by my day. This requires a lot of physical activity. Basically impossible on a work day or if I have significant amounts of anything not-very-active to do. I rarely achieve this one on except on vacation.
2) Zero electronics, including electric lights, after sundown (or at least for a full two or more hours before I want to be asleep).
3) 5mg of weed gummy
Only the third one is compatible with normal modern life with an office job.
Oh yeah, I've improved over time for sure. Right now I need those extra two hours, when I was younger I'd roll around for 4-5h at times. In high school I routinely slept through my morning classes (in class), and in university I just stopped taking classes before noon.
Now I can almost do a 9-5 if I get up at 9 to be at work for 10. It's a vast improvement!
No sleep advice. Do you talked with a psychiatrist about ADHD? I had a similar experience before my diagnosis.
Even when controlling for what’s noted, I’ve always been more productive of an evening and have been since a child. It’s not limited to me and there seems to be some genetic component. My mother, grandmother, aunts etc. All night owls, and all of us averaging 6-7 hours of sleep at best.
Regardless of what’s occurred before hand, my brain seems to kick into some higher gear at around 9-10pm. Like there is a noticeable change in my energy/cognitive capabilities.
Ironically, the only time this has ever deviated was two months I spent in Russia where for the first time in my life, I adapted almost instantly to what one might call a “normal” sleep schedule. As soon as I returned to my own time zone, it reverted back to me being a night owl again.
I’ve given up attempting to work around it and simply moved to a role that can accomodate it. It’s been huge for my physical and mental health to end the 30 odd years I’ve spent fighting what seems to be a natural schedule for me.
I have found that I'm most creative and productive right after waking, but it doesn't last long. My energy levels crash some hours after waking, then slowly rise as the day turns into evening hours. At that point, I'm not as energetic as I am right after waking, but that state can last well into the night until I can't stay awake any longer. Even as I'm getting tired at night, it seems different than the crash at midday. So, I think it's true you can have a higher level of productivity in the morning for a short period, but also get more done in the evening because of the extended period of "good enough" energy. Morning people and evening people are both correct. Circumstances generally determine which of those two ends are most easily exploitable. Because I work from home, I can take advantage of both.
I'm the same way. I wonder if it has to do with food or even the expectation of food. Maybe eating (or even drinking water) sends the body on a rollercoaster that mostly settles down by evening time.
Food intake makes blood go to stomach, temporarily reducing its amounts in the other parts of the body. It may cause some fatigue.
I personally find daylight itself to be "distracting" -- like that basic sensory input alone consumes some non-trivial amount of cognitive energy. I much prefer to think in a dark space. I've never met anyone IRL who relates to this though.
For what it’s worth I’ve loved wfh because I get to work in a dark cave with blacked out windows.
I feel the same, but I've never actually talked to anybody about it since it felt like such a strange thing to say. Thanks for letting me know I'm not alone!
Yeah, there’s something about the day itself that’s distracting. Maybe it’s the light + some latent emotion I have from residual expectations about what I “should” be doing. Not sure.
At my worst I procrastinate my whole day away at home and not enter deep work until late at night where I become feverishly productive.
Disagree. I'm a night owl, and I work best with bustle around. Silence is eerie and distracting. I would keep the tv on when studying late into the night and I worked best in groups.
I found that a basement is a good substitute during the day. Reduced noise, distraction and no sunlight which often changes intensity every time a cloud rolls by.
Owls could have the same amount of productive focus time in the early morning before everyone else starts to distract them - the reason they chose not to do that is mostly due to chronobiology, which is determined by genes, not social constructs like "lunch time".
As Douglas Adams said
“Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.”
That’s me! But instead of going to bed late, I also try to get up very early to have the silent environment you describe.
So seeing the other comments disagreeing maybe what you’re describing is a different kind of night owl…
What if you're a night owl who sleeps in. Does that make you just an offset normie?
I would argue no because, while you’re doing stuff that matters to you, everyone else is done with their day and partying. You’d just be asleep while everyone else is pretending to do their work.
What does partying have to do with this? If anything, strong party goers are more likely to be night owls who sleep in?
Aren’t we all just offset normies?
Great study - I find that anecdotally 7 hours of sleep generally outperforms 8 hours in terms of cognitive function early in the day, but suffers later in the day - likely favored by "morning" people that tend to do more in the beginning of their day.
Not sure about the study. But I've watched some fitness you tubers, I mean the real deal ones, that train for a specific sport. And they obsess with their sleep as much if not more than their training. Using bands and watches to track the quality of their sleep. Very important for recovery and training, at elite levels.
One theory is that sleep, is a time when the brain cleans itself. If the theory is correct, maybe missing one cleaning is not detrimental. But continued, it will lead to performance decreases. Not just sports. But mental ability.
The relationship between sleep quality and recovery is pretty well known in exercise circles. A lot of "amateur" elites, like very competitive marathon runners that take it quite serious around a day job, have to work in long low intensity cardio workouts around their schedules, so you start thinking very hard about recovery. When you think about recovery that hard you also start prioritizing sleep a lot, especially if you're up at 4am for a 2 hour run, for example.
Missing a lot of sleep for successive days is almost guaranteed to lead to injury when you're training very hard. The effect on your cardio performance (even just average BPM) can be stark. I don't know how some resident doctors, for example, can also be very good marathon runners. Just managing that sleep schedule must be crazy.
So some studies show a positive correlation on cognitive performance and some negative correlation for "morningness" and "eveningness".
The obvious conclusion to me is that there is no strong effect. Or that at some portions of the year, or parts of the globe, certain chronotypes have advantages, this certainly matches my anecdotal experience.
Even if there was a strong correlation, it doesn't follow that you can improve your cognitive performance by fighting against your natural chronotype.
To the contrary. It's possible that the correlation is caused solely by a culture that raises owls as larks, "dumbing down" the latter with individuals maladapted to the lark life style. The effect could be increased by smarter owls being able to resist the conversion therapy a little better than less smarter owls – resulting in a selection bias.
People in UK should definitely consume alcohol.
Irony apart, my idea (borrowed somewhere I can't remember) is that body functions are too intertwined to just isolate a single variable, or determine a single cause.
People, consume what you want, sleep how you want, and assess what it is that you "want" individually. It's not hard too see if alcohol, sleep deprivation, etc. causes you harm or not.
As for long-range damage or good: look at people who lived long (and healthy).
So the study shows that night owls and people with flexible sleep patterns might have a slight advantage in terms of cognitive performance implying that it’s not just how much sleep you get, but also when you prefer to sleep that matters for keeping your brain sharp.
i found one thing helpful. if you drink coffee and then sleep immediately , i got a better sleep. it acted as good as melatonin gummies. anyone like me out there? is it normal? or am i addicted?
Do you have ADHD? I read once that for normal people caffiene pushes dopamine levels too high, and stops them from sleeping, but for people with ADHD caffeine can push dopamine levels from too low to normal, calming them and helping with sleep.
I dont really have ADHD, but one time on nat geo channel i saw this video where they test two people , they were supposed to not sleep. after 12 hours they both were given coffee, one was allowed to sleep 30 mins, other was not . the one who had a nap recovered really well but the others conditioned worsened and he went to sleep even tho he didnt wanted to, his body gave up.
I do, nicotine works this way for me.
> if you drink coffee and then sleep immediately
Alas, being of a certain age means that any kind of liquid before bed will result in an early-hours wakeup to relieve the bladder - negating any potential sleep benefits :(
That’s called a power nap. But you have to be a good sleeper in the first place. If you are not able to fall asleep before the caffeine kicks in, you’ll have a pretty different night/nap.
I have heard of people who say creatine helps them sleep. Creatine is technically not a stimulant, but in most people it causes a state of mental activation that would make it hard to sleep. I suspect you and the people who sleep better on creatine may have something in common.
This is funny. I started mixing ~3g of creatine into my morning coffee a couple of weeks ago. I never thought of it being stimulating or activating, but it's certainly possible: I usually don't stick long enough to things like this to form a habit, but my brain seems to nudge me into keeping up with it...
I don't find it dissolves or stays in suspension - at the end of the coffee most of the creatine is at the bottom of the mug. Which is a pity as otherwise it would be very efficient, tip it in while the machine makes the cup. Are you stirring it lots or similar?
The creatine I use is finely powdered and it immediately dissolves in very little boiling water. I add it to the second coffee of the day: first one is from the espresso machine for pleasure while waking up, second one is using instant coffee to maintain stable blood caffeine levels. The crema-faking bubbles from the instant espresso powder probably help getting the stuff to dissolve. Then drink it hot and quickly :)
Surely must be another method that doesn't ruin a perfectly good cup of coffee
That's why I use it with instant coffee ;) not much to ruin when your expectations are already low! Also, you need boiling water to properly dissolve the stuff. But to be honest: the coffee feels thicker, but there's no distinct change in taste due to creatine.
How much caffeine you consume on average? Some might get withdrawal symptoms asleep if the intake is very high.
Any TL;DR? It's a long pdf :D
Read the Conclusion section of the paper.
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