#1

The best article I’ve been able to find on sleep and longevity is one from 2014. If anyone here has more current information please share. Sleep obviously seems to be a vital pillar for health and longevity so I’m curious where all of you rank it in importance compared to other lifestyle measures like fitness, diet, body composition etc. I’ve got everything pretty dialed in but I’m about to go back to work and will be on-call all night for 50% of the year. I’m trying to gauge how much sleep disruption I should tolerate! Thanks for any input. Your thoughts and opinions matter to me. :blush:

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#2

Forget diet and exercise - the key is “all night on call.” Disruption of circadian rythyms is a major health issue, especially if it is 50% of the time and you are trying to live a normal life on the other 50%. I once worked an 11 pm to 7 am shift for the better part of a year. At 3 am your body slows down like when you are asleep - its why there are so many accidents among night workers. You an use a bright light to try and trick your body but its hit and miss.

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#3

Thanks Uppereast69, I did 12 hour nights off and on for 20 years and couldn’t agree more with what you said. My husband lost his job so I just took the first one I could find. :blush:
I’m guessing you rank sleep as #1? I’ll be working normal 8 hour days and sharing after hours calls with one other person. I did the job for 4 months in 2022 and never had to go out -just answer my phone. That was honestly bad enough.

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#4

I’ve suggested it elsewhere in the forum, still I highly recommend Mathew Walker’s “Why We Sleep - Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams”.

It will terrify you.

Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, and longevity. Until very recently, science had no answer to the question of why we sleep, or what good it served, or why we suffer such devastating health consequences when we don’t sleep. Compared to the other basic drives in life—eating, drinking, and reproducing—the purpose of sleep remained elusive.

An explosion of scientific discoveries in the last twenty years has shed new light on this fundamental aspect of our lives. Now, preeminent neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker gives us a new understanding of the vital importance of sleep and dreaming. Within the brain, sleep enriches our ability to learn, memorize, and make logical decisions. It recalibrates our emotions, restocks our immune system, fine-tunes our metabolism, and regulates our appetite. Dreaming mollifies painful memories and creates a virtual reality space in which the brain melds past and present knowledge to inspire creativity.

Walker answers important questions about sleep: how do caffeine and alcohol affect sleep? What really happens during REM sleep? Why do our sleep patterns change across a lifetime? How do common sleep aids affect us and can they do long-term damage? Charting cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs, and synthesizing decades of research and clinical practice, Walker explains how we can harness sleep to improve learning, mood, and energy levels; regulate hormones; prevent cancer, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes; slow the effects of aging; increase longevity; enhance the education and lifespan of our children, and boost the efficiency, success, and productivity of our businesses. Clear-eyed, fascinating, and accessible, Why We Sleep is a crucial and illuminating book.

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#5

Sorry about your husband losing his job. I’m sure that is very stressful.

Obviously, not having enough income coming in would bring a different kind of unhealthy stress, so you do what you have to do. I’d suggest to keep looking for other alternatives while you are working there in the hopes that it won’t be a long term situation.

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#6

Interesting post. Thanks for sharing your situation.
One can sleep 7 to 9 hours, uninterrupted sleep, and wake up fatigued & depressed due to various health issues.
Other’s can sleep 5 to 6 hours and wake up feeling great & refreshed.
Is there a minimal time of sleep? I don’t know.
I’ve heard some high level people mention 3-4 hours of sleep a night, but I don’t know if they do this for long term or not. Or what type of medications they are using lol.

Certain longevity meds (or other meds) might tighten up circadian cycle (IMO) = less sleep needed, while maintaining good health.

For what one can tolerate might be based on things like:
Tracking sleep quality with a wearable device, blood tests, logging how you feel in the day (energy, mood, strength etc), imaging tests, or anything else that might be a good health measurement.

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#7

Thanks @Alpha I will read the book and plan on the job being short term or possibly transferring into a role that doesn’t require on call.
Thanks for your kind words @Beth. We were doing fine on one income and I’ve been exploring a change in career paths so I’ll continue to do so with sleep as my main motivator!
@Ambient, I’ve read about people who get by seemingly fine on very little sleep like the current US president for example. I believe someone on this site mentioned that it’s genetic. I do personally prefer 7 hours uninterrupted.

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#8

I am reading this book now! Its excellent (I think better than his first book). I also downloaded an 80 page PDF on the glymphatic system so working through that.

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#9

Not for most not really at least if you’re getting 7 hours of ok sleep a night. Doesn’t mean someone shouldn’t target more if they need or better quality sleep. But it’s not enough.

I can list about a dozen things that’s more important to get right and towards optimal with expected age related decline over time in mind (having a health buffer like enough strength and muscle mass to reduce risk of sarcopenia).

ApoB levels for heart disease risk over time. :arrow_double_down:
Cystatin C for kidney function over time, and everything downstream. :arrow_down_small:
Blood pressure for heart disease, kidney function, and everything downstream. :arrow_down_small:
Normal BMI and body fat.
Liver function.
Muscle mass over time for sarcopenia prevention. :arrow_up_small:
VO2 Max over time for activities. :arrow_up_small:
hsCRP for general health :arrow_down_small:
Diet quality :arrow_up_small:

Whatever is most suboptimal outside of this list should be prioritized, of course. Things outside a list like this in the lower or upper end of the reference range can be a sign to prioritize those other health markers as well as long as they don’t detract from these ones, depending how important they are on e.g mortality or prevalent disease specific risks or what is unique to oneself and genes.

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#10

You know there’s always gotta be a dissenting voice… you could nominate a saint and someone won’t like 'em. So it is here. I think the guy is mostly a self promoter, not as bad as Huberman, but not great. In my opinion he makes many exaggerated claims about sleep that are not in fact solidly backed by science. Any time a guy makes strong definitive statements about an area that’s as poorly understood today as sleep is, that 's a red flag. But hey, people like to hear strong opinions, so whatever floats one’s boat. If someone enjoys what this guy pushes, that’s fine. But I’d just say, keep in the back of your mind a little skeptical voice, no matter whom you read. YMMV.

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#11

@CronosTempi I think I’ve heard you say, you have sleeping issues such as waking up 2-4 hours after you go sleep and not being able to sleep after. I’ve had that same exact problem for last couple years (don’t know why it started, I used to sleep 8 hours nonstop before that).

Don’t know if it is a coincidence but I switched taking 5mg of Cialis from mornings which i usually do to taking it 1/2 before bed for last three nights. All these three nights in the row I went to bed around 10PM and woke up at around 5:30. It’s been a long time since I’ve had 7.5H of uninterrupted sleep. I know I might be jumping a bit ahead here since it is only three nights but let’s hope this fixes our issue. The reason I suspect its Cialis is because that was the only change I did.

I don’t know if you already do the Cialis thing before bed (and hasn’t made a difference) but if not, you (and whoever else has sleep issues) may want to give it a try. BTW my issue wasn’t the urge to go to bathroom, often times i wouldn’t even need to go at all and still would wake up after 3-4 hours of sleep.

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#12

I have not taken cialis, so I guess that’s always a possibility. I want to try a few other things first, because they seem more obviously connected to sleep (such as different dose and timing of melatonin), but I’m willing to experiment within reason. However it’ll be a while before I get around to it, as currently I’m trying out drugs one by one and in combinations to control cholesterol and blood sugar. I don’t want to throw something like cialis into the middle of this because I want to isolate the effects of specific drugs.

For basic interventions, I have started with simply consistent time of going to bed and lights out, and consistent time of getting up. I have also stopped drinking coffee past 6pm. It’s a small beginning, but you got to start somewhere.

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#13

Never tried any drugs (specific for sleep) but been doing melatonin in all various doses up to over 100mgs. my experience with melatonin is this:

  • taken before bed at any dose, including slow release had zero effect (I’d still wake up after 3-4 hours of sleep). Mind you my issue was not difficulty falling asleep, rather I just would wake up at around 2AM every night and not being able to sleep after.
    -taken the moment I woke up various doses up to 60mg (usually 2am) I was able to fall asleep after about 3 hours at around 5-5:30AM and usually wake up around 7AM. Sleep quality was not good.

While melatonin did not fix my sleeping issue completely, what I did notice was the fact that when I did high doses of melatonin, the following day I wasn’t sleepy or tired at all, even though I only slept about five hours the night before.

Anyway, good luck, and keep us posted if you come along something that works

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#14

That’s two ultradian cycles. You can cut it to 1 ultradian cycle by taking melatonin about an hour after you wake up. You will then resleep about 3.30 rather than 5.

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#15

Interesting, thanks for the suggestion @John_Hemming

#16

The other thing you can do is try to calm down the autonomous nervous system by using breathing exercises such as box breathing.

Depending on the type of melatonin you have you can try taking 10mg after 1 hour then 10mg every 10 mins for two doses then stop.

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#17

Thanks. Funny - my problem is quite similar. I fall asleep very fast, no problem with that (my rule is to not go to bed later than midnight), but wake up 2 am and then am unable to fall asleep until morning 5-6-7 am, but my rule is to get up no later than 9 am. A few years ago I tried melatonin from Life Extension 0.3mg, before bed or after waking up at night, immediate and delayed release - did nothing. So I gave up on it. I’ll try again with higher doses and different timings later this year.

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#18

What I think happens is that if the level of melatonin in serum is going down at the end of an ultradian cycle then the Cortisol Awakening Response kicks in. Because these things are rougly 90 minutes long you need to try to ensure a relatively static or increasing serum level as you get to the end of the cycle.

Its an odd thing, but there are switches in the body that respond to changes and directions of change.

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#19

Thank you, John. I will definitely consult with you when the time comes, because it’s a problem I feel I must solve. I just want to complete my other drug experiments first and don’t want to change up too many things at once.

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#20

I love melatonin, have taken it regularly for many years and plan to continue. The higher doses didn’t really do anything additional for my sleep but I feel it has other body wide benefits for me personally. Due to working I couldn’t continue dealing with middle of the night wake ups that could last for a couple of hours so I caved and went on a sleep med someone here recommended. I’m pleased with how things are going with my sleep right now and I’m just hoping it continues when I have to keep my phone on at night. The death clock app said my number one most likely way to die would be sleep related conditions fwiw so there’s that in the back of my mind. :slight_smile:

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