Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- A nap is the same as sleep, but we don't do this. Any correlation to our southern american friends and their siestas?
- I tried to imitate japanese people in the public transport when i was there, meaning I managed to kinda sleep/nap with eyes closed for 10-15minutes between rides and it was astonishing.
while I understand might be a more known thing, it was surprising to try it and feel very rested after that. I'm still surprised and I wonder why not the whole world does it.
of course without the music at the stops would not be possible :P
by giov4 - The article title is "Where human sleep went wrong" but then the entire article is about how we sleep the best we ever have, we have the most high quality sleep, and all the fearmongering about sleep is basically wrong.by tempfile
- > Sleep is critical to human functioning, and yet, we sleep fewer total hours than any other ape, and are still arguably the most evolutionarily successful of the primates
> humans are weird outliers—we’re the shortest sleeping primates, yet we pack in the most REM sleep relative to this short duration
Isn't that sort of the point? Sleep is a detrimental necessity and the more efficient an organism is in needing less of it, the more effective it can be because it simply has more time to get ahead of the others?
It's still very odd that no species has ended up evolving a continuous maintenance system that can run while conscious, the benefits when hunting other animals that need sleep would be enormous, so there has to be significant evolutionary push for it. I suppose the single hemisphere sleep some marine mammals do is part of the way there, but it is at most a lazy workaround. Practically all other organs have evolved to run 24/7 for up to a century without a single break, what makes brains so universally different?
by moffkalast - > It's still very odd that no species has ended up evolving a continuous maintenance system that can run while conscious, the benefits when hunting other animals that need sleep would be enormous, so there has to be significant evolutionary push for it.
I disagree. Endurance hunters walk an animal down throughout a single day. Sleep isn't the bottleneck. Efficient bipedalism and sweat are enough.
by aqme28 - > It's still very odd that no species has ended up evolving a continuous maintenance system that can run while conscious, the benefits when hunting other animals that need sleep would be enormous, so there has to be significant evolutionary push for it.
This is actually quite a conundrum.
Animals as simple as flies have been observed sleeping (diminished brain activity while resting). It is highly conserved, so it must be incredibly important.
by IAmBroom
Great point. Afaik, our bodies do preserve energy when we sleep/rest. A few questions that needs to answered first:> It's still very odd that no species has ended up evolving a continuous maintenance system that can run while conscious- will gains of 24/7 hunting/foraging offset the extra energy costs? Lions sleep 16-20 hours a day, according to the internet.
- do continuous maintenance systems imply duplicate systems? If so, I have a hunch that even a mere 40% increase in energy expenditure would quickly undo the gains in waking hours.
by exceptione- There's a similar mechanism called USWS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sleep (Half of the brain remains awake while the other sleeps, not an expert so please correct if wrong)
- The fact they electrically signal via chemical analogs fuelled by immersion in nutrient bearing fluid that also accretes waste products, yet is kept separate from the primary loop of the cardiovascular system by the blood-brain barrier?by salawat
- More fragmented sleep, with people talking in the night, etc. I guess that's different from the low, unnatural, rumbles of cars and aeroplanes the majority of people have to put up with.
- I actually find it easier to sleep with the sound of people talking around me, it's very comforting.by Pearse
- 737s are fine its dog barking that gets me.by abigdog
- I could only wish for low unnatural rumbles of cars. In 3rd world countries it's non stop horns and noisy motorbikesby yard2010
- "we’re the shortest sleeping primates, yet we pack in the most REM sleep relative to this short duration."
Nothing surprising here. We sleep in cozy comfortable beds in a locked and secure location. Of course we'd can get int REM sleep. Compare to other primates who sleep outside with the critters and predators, deep sleep could mean the end of them.
by fhn - Probably the only primates where a significant portion spent tens of thousands of years isolated up in the Arctic during prehistoric times.
Where the sun doesn't go down every single day anyhow, and you may need to trudge across the tundra routinely for more than 24 hours at a stretch to get almost anywhere, without ever worrying about it at all.
Then they later came down and intermixed with (not) everyone else, so you never know who is going to be less tired than "normal" when they work a 36-hour day.
by fuzzfactor - My understanding is that REM isn't particularly deep. Quick web searches aren't actually defining it as more like light or deep sleep, but many of our systems are more active than other stages[1][2]. Still I don't think it's super surprising that we spend more time in REM since our brains are uniquely complex and we spend a lot of energy on perception and interpretation, which REM seems to help with [1][3]. And I would be willing to be safety and comfort also play a decent role in it as well!
1: https://www.healthline.com/health/how-much-deep-sleep-do-you... 2: https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging-and-longevity/r... 3: https://www.sleepfoundation.org/stages-of-sleep/rem-sleep
by samtheDamned - > Most importantly, when we measured their circadian function directly, small-scale communities had much higher amplitude circadian rhythms than global north populations, which I think is why they report being happy with their sleep even though it’s more fragmented.
This could explain why I feel more rested when I wake up if I take glycine before going to bed, even though I don't sleep more.
- > Some emerging research suggests Earth’s magnetism matters, as well. Being barefoot on the ground versus 30 stories high in a downtown skyscraper puts you in a completely different magnetic environment.
Really? My instinctive reaction to this statement is that it's quackery. Would be very interested to see headlines appear about this if it's true.
by Flashtoo - There might be precedent for being able to detect changes in magnetic field
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/dogs-poop-in-alignment-...
but then again maybe not
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15587...
by krackers - And Earth's magnetic field is extremely weakby ymolodtsov
- I would not jump to such conclusions, I would assume is not fully known and needs to be further understood.
on the other side, do you know we have polarized and non-polarized cells? do you know they can be affected by electromagnetism?
this two things already establish the existence of a relationship and effects between them. If we then consider that cells mechanism work based on differential of electrical or chemical potentials, and that they continuously use that for their functions, reactions or environmental compensations well...
I just think they are related and we need to understand better.
by giov4 - People already live in different altitudes, ie with vastly different amounts of rock between themselves and the bits of the earth that produce her magnetic field.
So colour me skeptical of this claim as well.
And while I like going barefoot for other reasons, I don't think it makes much of a difference to the magnetic fields.
by eru - More evidence this may have been written by a pigeon...by unprovable
- This is called "grounding" or "earthing" and Wikipedia doesn't pull punches in dismissing it [0]. You can buy grounding wires for your mattress or copper rivets for your shoes.
From my tissue engineering class in undergrad my 2 cents is this is maybe 95% supplements quackery and 5% genuine mystery. You can find papers that claim EM fields have cellular interactions [1]. I don't think serious scientists will touch conventional earthing, though.
by randusername - You can write pretty much anything you want after “Some emerging research suggests”
- It's definitely quackery. There's way more "natural" magnetic variation between two different cities than between a ground floor apartment and a 30th floor apartment (see magnetic declination maps), and that's even before you get into the way-more-powerful magnetic fields generated or present in a home.by alex43578
- This interview feels weird to me, maybe because there's lots of places where I'm thinking there's an obvious idea that isn't raised.
Like, it seems obvious to me that sleep has a higher opportunity cost in humans than most other animals. So naturally there's more evolutionary pressure in humans to sleep more efficiently.
Is this actually true? Dunno! But it was really weird that it doesn't get brought up.
by syllogism - >the Hadza uniformly reported high satisfaction with their sleep.
And why wouldn't they? This is (presumably) the only kind of sleep they know.
by hlynurd - True. But the article mentions that the amplitude of their circadian rhythm is higher (which tells you how much a relevant measure like the amount of melatonin or body temperature varies in a 24 hour cycle), so that is an indication of better sleep. A low amplitude means less difference between sleeping and being awake.
- Also, they may not want to complain to strangers.
Also, we humans can get used to a lot of things and just be okay with it. For an extreme example, look at domestic abuse victims...