I cannot stand those long form articles. The headline picked my interest, the lead text is intriguing but the first paragraph that starts to describe a bright, warm morning or the attire or the facial features of a "lead character" immediately takes the wind out of my sails. How can anyone place so little value on their time as to be able afford to consume material that is so sparse in information?
Indeed. I do not want to know about the "cold morning when the researcher walked into the lab..." Like Linus Torvalds say "Just show me the damn code!", these magazine articles love to beat around the bush than lay out the key story points right away.
So I skipped directly to the figures and section of the story that talks about changes in ROS levels in gut.
What? You don't want to see the author literarily jerk themselves off?
This is how writers write when they're writing to show of their craft. Of course us uncultured laymen are not going to appreciate it the same way that someone who just wants to build a shelf to put their crap on is not going to appreciate a 45min YouTube video where somebody looking to show off fine woodworking spends an entire weekend building a shelf and someone who wants to just make an omelette is not going to enjoy a video where a master chef freezes frame every 10sec to narrate about the technique needed to wiggle it just right in order to make butter to brown the image of the Mona Lisa into the thing.
Whether "performing one's craft in a manner that showcases the capabilities of one's craft" is appropriate for the context is a matter of opinion.
At least there is value in the other examples, and you can quickly tell how the video's going to play out. I sometimes need to pre-skim the whole text just to feel the signal to noise ratio.
When will journos dawn on that we don't care about their morning bagels?
Something like that could work like existing models that generate abstracts for research papers. I don't know if these techniques have gone mainstream yet, but my understanding is that they are under active development. If you can generate one or two paragraphs that summarize the findings of a paper, it's not much of a stretch to imagine an application that generates pop-sci articles of the desired length.
Indeed it's a really common trope. More hook to the core subject is needed before waffle can be tolerated. I imagine some popular course on writing had much to answer for.
I suspect this works better in print when you sit down with a cup of tea and a copy of the New Yorker
Luckily there was a link to the Cell paper early on. I skipped directly there [0] and there was a wonderful short abstract with key points as well as a graphical abstract that succinctly summarized the findings.
The paper the article is about [0] has a 3 sentence 32 word introduction. Those 32 words tell describe the mechanism they found, and give you a feeling for how likely it is to apply to humans. 3000 words is a big jump. The first paragraph is 94 words long.
The article has more than that of course - it's a leisurely introduction to the people behind the discovery and the effort they put it. Nothing wrong with that, it's a worthy story in its own right. But when you click on the headline "Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient?" so discover the 32 words answer to the question in the headline is buried in a 3000 word human interest story, you may feel a little cheated.
There's one paragraph of that. Then a paragraph talking about the lab being in an apartment building, so that there are bedrooms nearby. Then a paragraph grad students describing their work as "thrilling" to the point of not wanting to graduate. (As an ex-grad student, I have to say "Really?")
Yes, that would be me.
I like long form articles, I don’t consider them as part of any pressure or deliverable. I have managed my life by living in a humane environment so as to enjoy rather than be frustrated in small everyday time consuming activities. Of course I would understand if someone would prefer if I simply said “Yes” and I would consider a time waste to fuss about it.
This complaint pops up over and over again on HN. A lot of people like writing that "paints a picture", or like fancy GUIs, or want a website with a bunch of bells and whistles, or small talk without much real information. HN, in general, skews against all of these things (and so do I) but it's not a representative sample of what people in general want.
Look it's a magazine with long form read intended for people who like such things. You can always skip it and read the abstract of the paper it references :-)
I came here to express the same sentiment, expecting to be an outlier. The overwhelming response is my perspective. I'm glad it's not just me who wonders "who writes this sh*t".
"in their own tubes live other sleepless flies, animated with the calm persistence of those consigned to eternal day." - This hurts my head. This author does not understand communication.
I found tremendous amount of valuable information when I do intensive reading on a long form article, such as historical context, locations of cities and places, and other info that's only loosely related to the topic at home.
Like I now know that spaced repetition systems that people uses for studying was a product of Soviet era research by a Polish academic.
Though whether it's a warm morning or not is kinda useless to me.
most content writers and journalist i know get paid for the amount of content they write. that fluff paragraph that you hate so much added almost 100 word and over 500 characters to article. if you are required to write an article with a minimum length of 2000 words, you just knocked off 5% of your requirement.
The reason that the article is written this way is that most human beings enjoy stories about people and events. I assume the reason you don't understand that is you are in this way different from most human beings but are not clearly aware of it.
I’ve let my New Yorker subscription lapse. The writing is great and sometimes, perhaps on a long leisurely train ride across Canada, it might be nice to read these “long form” articles. I was finally just subscribing for the cartoons.
This article was particularly frustrating, because it inspires but never answers an incredibly obvious question: does antioxidant treatment help prevent the effects of sleep deprivation in rats, or only in fruit flies? Surely that would have been the next thing on the researchers' list of things to try.
They may have addressed this, and I just missed it. But in general I agree that this isn't the best format for describing this type of research to nonspecialist readers. I don't mind a slight dose of human-interest fluff, but the facts should come first.
(I take it from the patented HN instant downvote that the article did, in fact, answer my question, and I just missed it.)
Can someone explain how the downvote system works? I guess every user is not allowed to downvote but some users can? Thanks for your insights in advance.
You have to earn 500 (or maybe 501) karma before you can downvote, and you're not allowed to downvote replies to you. The idea is, a person has to become a member of the community before they can just come in and downvote whatever they don't like, and you can't downvote someone for disagreeing with your point.
As far as I know, those are the main hard rules of downvoting.
It’s been a while since I was a new member here, but AFAIR, you need to accumulate a bit of karma so you can downvote. This prevents fresh accounts from downvoting.
It's greater than 500 karma. I made it to 500, no down arrow. Got up to 502, and the 'down' arrow appeared. Then a comment of mine was downvoted, bringing my karma down to 499, and the button went away again. Got it back a day or two later.
The other thing is that you don't seem to be able to downvote comments which are a direct reply to your own comment (although you can up-vote them). You can downvote replies-of-replies though.
Or it just incentivizes them to click on your profile, click through to comments and down-vote everything not in direct reply.
Arguably that's a higher bar of caring but once that bar is exceeded it's far more damaging to civil discourse because then you've got factually correct technical comments down-voted into oblivion because that person happened to also commit WrongThink(TM) in the comments on an unrelated contentious subject.
You could also argue that it's an incentive to wait a day before taking a minority opinion on a divisive subject but I'm not sure that's something we want to be incentivizing.
I don’t think it incentives the behavior you’re describing. People that get this offended about a post on HN will try so, even if they can downvote the direct response. Not being able to downvote a direct response stops the first impulse, which is sufficient to deter many, if not all people.
> Not being able to downvote a direct response stops the first impulse, which is sufficient to deter many, if not all people.
I think probably the most important thing is that it clearly communicates what the expected behavior is. I don't think it's immediately obvious that downvoting a response to you is would be considered impolite. (After all, people down-vote things because they happen to disagree all the time; what's the difference if it's in response to something you wrote or in response to something someone else wrote?) But if it's clear that's the social norm, I think most people would just go along with it.
Adding an extra few seconds to retaliation probably does have an effect, but only on people who would consider breaking the social norm anyway.
I try to save downvotes for posts that are actively abusive or hurt the discussion (by being abusive). Not just for stuff I don't like or I find 'low effort' (although I understand why others might have different standards). I also try to be generous with upvotes for everyone who participates with me in good faith.
I have a feeling my comment is being downvoted by people who didn't read the article. In retrospect, I can see where someone might think I'm advocating a quack antioxidant treatment for sleep disorders, or "just asking questions here," or something else besides asking a specific, valid question about the studies.
I tend to lurk and enjoy reading things here. I've been here almost 5 years and have less than 200 karma. That being said, I give out upvotes like candy.
After finishing this article, I immediately started googling for any anecdotal signs of antioxidant usage effects on sleep. Coincidentally, I found out that melatonin has strong antioxidant properties itself. Could supplementing with melatonin reduce the need for sleep?
Please research in-depth before experimenting too much. Some common antioxidants are surprisingly linked to modestly increased all-cause mortality; the most famous is the set of vitamin E studies, but there are others.
So the interesting question here would be (and I'm not a biologist so may have misunderstood parts of the study), does increasing the amount of anti-oxidants you consume reduce the need for sleep and/or improve wakefulness?
One should always be cautious to not assume that studies conducted in lab animals translate to humans by default. The media is quick to do that but we can be better than that.
In this study they showed that exposure to anti-oxidants restores sleep and normal lifespan. But be cautious that is only in comparison to sleep-deprived animals. There is no claim that lifespan went beyond "normal".
TLDR: Sleep deprivation in flies and mice leads to increased ROS (Reactive oxygen species) molecules in the gut. This is show to be highly correalted to be the cause of lethality. To show the causality, the over-expression of anti-oxiodants restores normal lifespan in the animals.
TLDR Feeding fruit flies antioxidants (suitable for flies) lessen the damage from sleep deprivation to the point it's no longer lethal or life shortening. Damage from sleep deprivation seems to be very strongly correlated with oxidants build up in the gut of fruit flies. Similar oxidants show up in guts of sleep deprived rats as in fruit flies, so it's quite interesting.
By reading the actual paper I learned that apparently melatonin and lipoic acid fared best at extending survival without giving any additional sleep. Another interesting observation from the paper is that anti-oxidants didn't affect lifespan of non-sleepdeprived fruit flies.
> Yet scientists have found it oddly hard to say exactly why sleep loss is lethal.
Barf. This kind of straw-manning is all too common in science journalism. IANAS but I know that normal metabolism generates free radicals (electron-greedy molecules), which then steal electrons from anything they touch, causing damage. If that damage isn't repaired regularly, then our basic metabolic pathways breakdown, and we die.
I'm sure there are mysteries to unpack beneath this, but why treat the reader to a moronic underrepresentation of the state of the art?
If I find I can't open a door, it cllouls be because there is a lock. If I remove the lock does that mean the door can be opened? No, there might be another lock, or rusty hinges, or nails to the frame.
Just because we might be able to remediate this one mechanism in the gut doesn't mean we can solve sleep. What about memory formation? Or immune system effects of sleep?
I think you misunderstood? I meant: we understand one way in which sleep loss can kill sufficiently well that we don't need to describe its lethality as "oddly hard to explain". That doesn't mean there isn't more to learn about sleep, or other things about sleep that are, indeed, oddly hard to explain.
Take forum advice with a grain of salt, but you asked for it, so here it goes.
Exercise daily, starting today.
Ditch or at least dim all screens a few hours before going to bed. Hard ban on screens when unwillingly awake in the middle of the night. Paper books are okay.
Look into techniques to fall asleep, this article helped me: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/fall-asleep-fast/. The article and the research it cites are male-oriented, women may try it more speculatively. Intuitively it seems to me that gender differences should not be relevant.
Septum surgery helped my sleep enormously by making breathing easier, see if it's for you.
Hard ban on stimulants, including sugar and coffee, a few hours before going to bed. Hard ban on stimulants when unwillingly awake in the middle of the night. For a severe case such as yours, consider a hard ban after midday, or even a complete permanent ban.
Thanks for the reply. Sorry I didn't give more details. Unfortunately, I've been following most of the "best practices" for sleep for a while, as it's been almost a year since my sleep turned to a mess.
Currently, I try to take a walk at least 30 minute everyday in the morning and then I do the 7-minute-workout in the afternoon, even when I have no energy. My sleep's improved for the past couple of months since I started this workout routine. I can't tell if it's because of that or my sleep just improves on its own but I'll keep doing it since exercising is better than doing nothing. I also started 18:6 intermittent fasting. That might also have helped.
Still, my improved sleep means about 5 to 5.5 hours (sometimes less) a night with at least 2 awakenings in between. My normal sleep was about 8 hours with 1 awakening, and I'd still nap in the afternoon if given the opportunity. Now, I can't nap and there's no rebound sleep (i.e. I don't sleep more the next day because I sleep very little the day before). It's a pretty messed up situation and doctors haven't found anything abnormal from medical tests, including MRI and EEG. Sleep study indicated 50% sleep efficiency, reduced REM and deep sleep, but no sleep apnea or any common cause.
I tried the 2-min fall asleep method when my condition first started but it didn't really help. And yes, I only drink green tea and have some chocolates before lunch time in terms of stimulants.
I've also read Why We Sleep before my sleep got this bad. In fact, knowing too much about how sleep work and the negative impact on health with lack of sleep makes it much worse for me. So now I tend to avoid reading articles like this and learning more details.
I guess what I'm asking is if there's anything more I can do, like something to supplement or eat/do to make up for the stuff lost due to insufficient sleep. It's a long shot asking in a tech forum, but I'm willing to give anything a chance to help improve my sleep. Let's hope there's more research into sleep as insomnia is one of the worst form of suffering.
I have a recurring insomnia too. Nothing to recommend tbh, as I am
still not alright, but my anecdotes are: 1. sleep pills do “power off”, but not a real “sleep”. You wake up in the same state at the moment a pill metabolizes. 2. A neck/collar massage seems to help to some degree. 3. A strong routine may help – before things went downhill, I could feel these two “want to sleep” hours which turn you off instantly and which are easy to skip and be awake for more time. Now I don’t feel them, but they’re still there. You may try to go to sleep before your insomnia kicks in; maybe your body is just missing this period by ignoring it completely. 4. Another cause may be purely psychological – long-standing anxiety and stress, which you do not count as real problems (everyone has problems!) and do not report to a doctor, but they are. 5. Have someone to “sleep with”, in a bed-sharing sense. 6. Ensure that your nutrient levels and inner organs are fine. In retrospect, all of the above did change my average state for better or worse over a period of around ten years (or it was a coincidence, idk). I know that experiments can bring even more suffering in your current state, so please discuss them with your health care first.
>insomnia is one of the worst form of suffering
I once had a “day” that lasted four days or so. The last one was pretty hell on earth. Idk how people stay awake for weeks in stories out there. For a reader who never experienced that: it is not “I don’t wanna sleep and it’s probably bad”. No, you are tired as hell, your brain is almost failing, you want to sleep, but you just can not.
Agree with your points and I might give massaging a try. I've let go of so many things and pursuits since my condition started so I doubt it's anxiety and stress. It's been more than half a year since I need to work (fortunate to be on company's disability benefit for now). Right now I simply wish to stay alive/healthy and enjoy simple things in life. Hopefully my sleep keeps recovering to a point that I can work full time again. For several months, it was super scary that it was only going down hill.
> you are tired as hell, your brain is almost failing, you want to sleep, but you just can not.
I know exactly what you mean. I was like that for the whole winter. Fortunately this scenario's not happened for quite some time. I'm at least getting some amount of sleep everyday.
Have you tried sleep headphones and/or noise generation? Also does listening to guided meditation/relaxation recordings (as opposed to just following a practice you read) do anything to knock you out?
Right now falling asleep is usually not a problem. Waking up early and then again and again is the problem; plus not sleeping more than 5.5 hours. This is an example from my sleep diary: bedtime 11:39, and the subsequent wake up times are 1:50, 3:16, 4:42, 6:01, 6:35. I wrote a simple app to track them without having to look at a clock. I only know the result when I'm out of bed.
Again: take forum advice with a grain of salt. And apologies if you have already pursued this avenue.
It's possible that something is keeping you awake--a fear, an anxiety, a repressed emotion, loneliness, etc. If your mind perceives that resting would be risky for some reason, it won't--whether or not the risk is physically real, or imminent. There is a lot to be worried about in life, from immediate personal issues to global social and environmental concerns.
A therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist may be able to help. I don't mean sleep therapy specifically, but general emotional and mental health.
The drug seroquel works wonders and doesn't have negative long-term cognitive side-effects like benzos or Z-drugs do. Also, it's a lot more powerful: I guarantee you, 100%, that you will fall asleep within an hour if you take it.
Actually, I've started 16:8 IF 2 to 3 months ago. I don't know if there's any correlation, but my sleep did improve following that habit (more details in my other reply).
Not sure if you will see this at this point, but I have a bunch of sleep issues and the things that I have found that help me stay asleep are: exercise or some sustatined physical activity (you are already doing this), magnesium (500mg any form, however if makes me sleepy the next day even though I slept more), baclofen, and phenibut.
Baclofen and phenibut are similar GABA-B receptor agonists (phenibut also has a weak gabapentin effect), phenibut is more effective at usual doses (600-900 mg phenibut vs. 10mg baclofen), however the side effects are potentially worse in some ways (some people find it quite addictive and heavy use over a long period of time might cause retinal taurine depletion leading to permanant vision loss). However, baclofen has an increased chance of causing seizures, although I think the chance of this is low at 10mg (but phenibut can be started in higher doses while baclofen would need to be stepped up and down). Both have a chance of causing central apnea (as do a number of other medications). Some people don't find one or both helpful (I seem to have a fairly slow drug metabolism that might increase the effectiveness) and even if they do help they become much less effective if taken every day. I've tried various schedules and with baclofen 10mg every other day or possibly two days on and one day off seems to work the best. I've also done 10mg baclofen, 600mg phenibut, and a day off, although due to the issues with phenibut I would recommend just using baclofen. Balofen is prescription only and not commonly used for sleep (even sleep doctors might not know it can help), however there are a few studies using a daily higher dose that found it helped and that was enough for my doctor. I haven't seen any studies using the 10mg every other day. I did try 10mg every day for a month once and it still seemed to do something but it seemed quite a bit less effective. Overall, while not a great option in a lot of ways it has been helpful for me.
I'd recommend against seroquel, valproate, benzos or similar GABA-A receptor agonists, or any of the other more powerful antidepressants or antipsychotics. Some people find them helpful, but others have bad reactions that cause lasting damage. First-generation antihistamines might be better as a "get to sleep soon" drug, either diphenhydramine or, I've heard but haven't tried yet, ultra low dose doxepin (.5 to 4mg liquid form, works just as an antihistamine at that dose but has a longer half-life). Or a few other first-generation antihistamines that are harder to find these days that I haven't tried. However I don't think antihistamines are all that good for sleep maintenance issues.
Some people find delayed release melatonin helpful, however any form of melatonin just causes me to wake up early (this is not all that common so worth trying first if you haven't).
Ok, one other thing: I take 150mg sublingual uridine monophosphate mostly for circadian reasons but it does seem to make it a bit easier to cope with less sleep. The two possible side effects that I've heard of with uridine are digestive issues or there is concern that it might increase the chance or growth of cancer, although I think that seems unlikely to be the case at that dose and hasn't been reported in humans at any dose. I take at least a couple of days off every month or it looses effectiveness.
Actually a few more (that you might be doing already): keep the room as dark as possible when you sleep, ideally block all light. I also found an air purfier to be helpful due to the noise of the fan blocking irregular sounds. To limit circadian issues, try to get out of bed at the same time every day if possible (eventually it isn't if you don't get enough sleep).
I also have the "no rebound sleep" thing most of the time, although it has at least partly come back at times for a little while. I wonder if the loss of rebound sleep correlates with worse outcomes (I am also unable to work).
This is the kind of article that causes harm to insomniacs. We stay up late, worried about our sleep deprivation, causing sleep deprivation.
Really when I talk to a sleep doctor, they say don't stress about a single night or two of bad sleep. It happens. Even a weeklong stretch. If you can't sleep, don't try. And its ok if you get 5 or 6 hours. They'll often care about quality over quantity.
I am sorry for your struggle with insomnia. I just don't see why this research does harm to you? The whole goal of research in this field is to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms that are responsible for sleep disorders or related to them. In the lonf run, a better understanding of these mechanisms will help the research community to develop methods to treat these disorders in humans.
It is unfortunate that this research has to be done with animals and the scientific community is thankful to the society for understanding the crucial need for it and their support with research grants from their taxes.
Until I'm free/can work on my own time I'm usually often sleep deprived especially on Mondays and it goes throughout the week until I get back to normal by Friday... crappy cycle. Still I find when I get too much sleep(sleep as long as I want) I feel bored with my life. So slightly sleep deprived seems to keep me in the grind.
First: I find this kind of research valuable, I think mankind will benefit from it.
But now, the discussion question: What would people say if this experimentation were being done on puppies, or rabbits, or baby seals? Why are fruit flies different?
> What would people say if this experimentation were being done on puppies, or rabbits, or baby seals? Why are fruit flies different?
Because we as a society explicitly assign different levels of moral worth to different animals. Fruit flies have greater worth than bacteria or yeast but lesser worth than mammals, which in turn have lesser worth than primates or humans (as subcategories of mammals).
That's an inherent problem to in vivo studies: we're fine with experiments on bacteria or yeast but we'd all be horrified at unconsenting experiment on humans. There's a line, and we must draw it somewhere.
You're being down-voted, but I think it's a valid point. Just because fruit flies are simpler organisms, doesn't mean we should be sleep depriving them until they die. Sounds very cruel. I look forward to the day when scientific progress in biological sciences doesn't necessitate having to harm any living creatures at all.
I really wish we had a human analogue to test these things on. If we push the boundaries of ethics, moral and technology can we create a decephalized “human” currently?
There are artificial grown tissues from human Stem cells called "organoids" [0] that are used in labs to conduct experiments. But of course these experiments are very limited as it remains to be seen how far can organoids resemble the human brain (or other organs). Behaviour experiments are of course a far far goal on this.
