• Insomnia is a Common Problem: Insomnia is widespread, though increased awareness makes it seem like a modern issue. It's often triggered by stressful life events (e.g., divorce, job loss) [00:03:39], [00:21:03].
• The Danger of Counter-Intuitive Habits:
  • Do not try to "delete thoughts" when you can't sleep, as this is counterproductive [00:00:07], [00:28:34].
  • Do not mistake light sleep (N1) for being awake; people often underestimate their total sleep time [00:16:19].
  • Attempting to "catch up" on sleep (going to bed early, sleeping in) destroys the crucial sleep pressure (ciśnienie na sen) [00:22:39].
• Core Principles of Sleep Therapy (CBT-I):
  • Fixed Wake-up Time is Key: The most important rule is to maintain a consistent wake-up time, varying it by no more than an hour, even on weekends [00:25:55].
  • Sleep Restriction: If you spend 8.5 hours in bed but only sleep 6, the initial goal is to restrict your time in bed to 6 hours to build up sleep pressure [00:24:12], [00:26:15].
  • Stimulus Control: If you cannot fall asleep after 20 minutes (or wake up at 3 AM), get out of bed and engage in a calming, non-stressful activity (like watching a show or reading) until you feel intensely sleepy, then return to bed [00:29:09].
• Consequences of Sleep Deprivation:
  • Relationships: Lack of sleep increases the risk of divorce, reduces empathy, and makes couples argue worse [00:09:44], [00:10:14].
  • Health and Cognition: It weakens the immune system (doubling the risk of catching a cold) [00:11:37], drops testosterone levels (by 10-15%) [00:12:07], impairs strong willpower, leads to worse decision-making, and increases the craving for junk food [00:14:30], [00:31:32].
  • The "3 AM Brain" operates with low positive and high negative affect; do not make major life decisions or ruminate during this time [00:30:12], [00:30:48].
• Medication and Chronotypes:
  • Zolpidem (Z-drugs) is generally not recommended for primary insomnia, as its side effects (e.g., amnesia, accidents, increased depression/suicidal thoughts) can be more severe than the insomnia itself [00:36:49].
  • Chronotypes (larks vs. owls) are genetically determined; waking up at 5 AM is a development guru myth that can be harmful for "owls" [00:55:12], [00:56:44]. Owls and adolescents benefit from later school/work start times [00:59:21], [01:00:13].
• Managing Shift Work:
  • Shift work increases health and mental health risks [00:43:15].
  • Strategies: Nap for 1-1.5 hours before the night shift, use caffeine only in the first half of the night, eat well during the shift, and get a small nap (20 minutes) if possible [00:48:26], [00:49:55], [00:51:00].
  • Day sleep is always worse than night sleep; it's recommended to accept a shorter day sleep to get daylight exposure and physical activity later, which helps regulate the circadian rhythm [00:52:02], [00:52:48].
• Dreams: Dreams help the psyche process daily events and emotions [01:07:05]. If you have recurring nightmares, use Imagery Rehearsal Therapy (IRT): change the end of the nightmare, write down the positive new ending, and visualize it daily for 10-15 minutes [01:08:42].

• Eating timing matters: Stop eating at least 3 hours (ideally 10) before bed to boost HRV; late eating harms recovery.
• Diet quality: Higher HRV is associated with diets high in fish, vegetables, and fruit, and avoiding processed foods, seed oils, and high sodium.
• Consistency over specific diet types is key; less processed food and fewer calories help HRV (unless you're a performance athlete).
• Aerobic, endurance, and high-intensity interval training all increase HRV, with aerobic exercise having the most effect.
• Endurance training improves baroreceptor control and vagal tone; 1-2 sessions weekly recommended.
• High-intensity intervals (above 90% max HR) boost parasympathetic activity and HR recovery; occasional sessions are best.
• Weightlifting contributes less to HRV, but mixing it with more aerobic and interval work is optimal.
• Sleep greatly impacts HRV: Consistent bedtime, getting morning sunlight, daytime exercise, and avoiding late meals all help.
• Wind down 30 minutes before sleep; use breathing techniques like "box breathing" to relax and fall asleep quicker.
• Optimize sleep environment: Cool room (67°F), blackout curtains, calming music, mouth tape for nasal breathing.
• Sauna use increases plasma volume and can help HRV, as does cold exposure (cold showers/plunges) by providing hormetic stress.
• Devices (e.g., Petto for vagus nerve stimulation) may help but some like Sensate may be placebo.
• Reducing stress is crucial—doing meaningful work, fulfilling relationships, and low chronic stress (example: Warren Buffett).
• Combining diet, exercise, great sleep, minimal stress, and some environmental exposures (sauna/cold) is the best strategy for sustainably higher HRV.

Why sleep tracking may not make any sense

• for health - sleep apnea - silent acid reflux connection

• health - sleep apnea - silent reflux connection

  • if you have sleep apnea and you are experiencing post nasal drip, coughing, clearing throat etc, that is the acid coming up from your stomach and obstructing breathing

• for: health - sleep apnea, sleep apnea - acid reflux - laryngopharyngeal reflux, sleep apnea - slient reflux connection

• comment

  • symptoms
    • sleep apnea, silent reflux, post nasal drip, coughing,

Page with many resources on - Learning - Creativity - Intelligence - Sleep - Education - Memory - Health - Productivity - Myths - SuperMemo - Older texts

Schreiber, M. (2022, February 18). Covid infection increases risk of mental health disorders, study finds. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/18/covid-infection-increases-risk-mental-health-disorder-study

this is a great question - reminder to self to do more research on this

While this is interesting analysis, I wonder if it's close to the best data we have on this.

Personally as a bipolar person, I can say this definitely correlates with my experience! You could maybe add my experience to the data: + Severe mania - 0-3 hours avg (often in involuntary naps) + Hypomania - 1-5 hours avg (w/ all-nighters) + Elevated/sub-hypomania - 5 hours avg + Stable - 6-8 hours avg + Depressive - 8-10 hours avg + Severe depression - 10-16 hours avg

while this is a good list and a valuable thought experiment, it also misses the features that made sleep 10,000 years ago easier and more effective: + Far better diets on average than Western person + No blue light / constant digital stimulation + Extremely active lifestyles with lots of exercise, makes sleep easier + Natural attunement to circadian rhythms that comes with waking up & sleeping w/ dusk & dawn + Lower stress and lower levels of psychopathology on average? Better resilience to stress? + Other things

This may explain why we "need" the hyper-comfortable modern sleep, more than we used to need it

This sounds a bit hyperbolic, unlikely a scientific paper would use this language. Also unclear what it means for brains to be "overwhelmed with pleasure," or what objective scientific criteria for what shows something is a "superstimulus" are.

Nursing professionals are facing with severe sleep problems during the covid 19 pandemic time. Nurses were asked to work in an environment that had a more increased level of risk than ever before. Depression and anxiety from the workplace could affect the confidence of healthcare workers in themselves as well as general trust in the healthcare system. This will lead to their turnover intention which may undermine the efforts of the governments to control the COVID-19 pandemic. The rising concern may change the working schedules of healthcare workers, offering more occupational healthcare support.

Muth, A., Vermeer, A. L., Terenzi, D., & Park, S. Q. (2021). The impact of diet and lifestyle on wellbeing during COVID-19-lockdown. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/erta5

Short afternoon naps at the workplace lead to significant increases in productivity, psychological well-being and cognition. In contrast, an extra 30 minutes sleep at night shows no similar improvements. [Pedro Bessone]

Franceschini, C., Musetti, A., Zenesini, C., Palagini, L., Pelosi, A., Quattropani, M. C., Lenzo, V., Freda, M. F., Lemmo, D., Vegni, E., Borghi, L., Saita, E., Cattivelli, R., De Gennaro, L., Plazzi, G., Riemann, D., & Castelnuovo, G. (2020). Poor quality of sleep and its consequences on mental health during COVID-19 lockdown in Italy [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ah6j3

Hisler, G., & Twenge, J. (2020). Sleep health in U.S. adults before and during the COVID-19 pandemic [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/bzqhd

Kiltie, J., Satchell, L., M. (929493), C., Daniels, M., Gould, C. S., Sparrowe, K., Hudson, C. A., & Husted, M. (2021). The effect of change in routine on student mental wellbeing during a nationwide lockdown. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/suwnp

Becker, S. P., Dvorsky, M., Breaux, R., Cusick, C., Taylor, K., & Langberg, J. (2021). Prospective Examination of Adolescent Sleep Patterns and Behaviors Before and During COVID-19. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/yzd4m

https://www.albany.edu/~drewa/health/practices.html

• Neuroscientists achieve the unthinkable - talking to someone who’s asleep, and they’ve already done it with several people.
• Cross-national research team demonstrated two-way communication with lucid dreamers in the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep phase.
• Eye movements generate current, which is recorded by electrodes placed around the eyes, and the signals are translated to dialogue.
• Studying the mind during sleep used to be limited to people telling stories about their dreams after waking up, so this is a big gamechanger.
• Psychology experiments with sleeping people are now possible, and it could greatly enhance our understanding of consciousness and the mind’s abilities.

• Whether you perform best in the morning or evening depends on your chronotype - ‘larks’ work early, ‘night owls’ work late.
• Because night owls go to sleep later but have to get up early with everyone else, they incur sleep debt and need catch-up sleep on non-work days, which is bad for health.
• To explore this, researchers used data from a 1966 Finland birth cohort study, initially consisting of 12,058 children.
• At age 46, 2672 men and 3159 women from the study were questioned about their chronotypes in 2012, and monitored for 4 years afterwards.
• Compared to larks, owls had worse ratings for variables related to sleep and health, and were twice more likely to underperform at work.

Gupta, Ravi, Sandeep Grover, Aniruddha Basu, Vijay Krishnan, Adarsh Tripathi, Alka Subramanyam, Anil Nischal, et al. “Changes in Sleep Pattern and Sleep Quality during COVID-19 Lockdown.” Indian Journal of Psychiatry 62, no. 4 (2020): 370–78. https://doi.org/10.4103/psychiatry.IndianJPsychiatry_523_20.

Wright, Kenneth P., Sabrina K. Linton, Dana Withrow, Leandro Casiraghi, Shannon M. Lanza, Horacio de la Iglesia, Celine Vetter, and Christopher M. Depner. “Sleep in University Students Prior to and during COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders.” Current Biology 30, no. 14 (July 20, 2020): R797–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.06.022.

Rogers, Andrew H., Lorra Garey, and Michael J. Zvolensky. “COVID-19 Psychological Factors Associated with Pain Status, Pain Intensity, and Pain-Related Interference.” Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, February 10, 2021, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/16506073.2021.1874504.

Finding it hard to sleep might be either because of the blue light or the psychological effect of screens on us

Marmet, S., Wicki, M., Gmel, G., Gachoud, C., Daeppen, J.-B., Bertholet, N., & Studer, J. (2020). The psychological impact of the COVID-19 crisis on young Swiss men participating in a cohort study. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/kwxhd

Summary of the article:

• We spend nearly half of each day daydreaming, and usually think that it’s a bad thing, but it turns out that highly demanding tasks make us daydream more.
• It allows us to turn off our surroundings, and can be a way of imagining solutions to the problem at hand.
• To find this out, researchers did two studies of employees and managers in South America, including mainly surveys about daydreaming.
• Daydreaming turned out to happen more when the tasks required a lot of focus - it can boost creative problem-solving as long as we’re personally invested in our work.
• However, for people who don’t identify with their work, daydreaming was linked to worse performance.

COVID-19 and the Labor Market. (n.d.). IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. Retrieved October 10, 2020, from https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13569/

IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. ‘COVID-19 and the Labor Market’. Accessed 6 October 2020. https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13715/.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Is Changing Our Dreams—Scientific American. (n.d.). Retrieved September 29, 2020, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-covid-19-pandemic-is-changing-our-dreams/

Maintaining health and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic | Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience | King’s College London. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/maintaining-health-and-wellbeing-during-the-covid-19-pandemic

Lebel, C., MacKinnon, A., Bagshawe, M., Tomfohr-Madsen, L., & Giesbrecht, G. (2020, April 23). Elevated depression and anxiety among pregnant individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gdhkt

Cellini, N., Canale, N., Mioni, G., & Costa, S. (2020, April 11). Changes in sleep pattern, sense of time, and digital media use during COVID-19 lockdown in Italy. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/284mr

Rosen, Z., Weinberger-Litman, S. L., Rosenzweig, C., Rosmarin, D. H., Muennig, P., Carmody, E. R., … Litman, L. (2020, April 14). Anxiety and distress among the first community quarantined in the U.S due to COVID-19: Psychological implications for the unfolding crisis. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/7eq8c

This is super helpful. Bold

This is super helpful.