I wish Americans as a whole took sleep more seriously.

We stay up late, brag about how little of it we need, and ignore the downsides. When I sleep less I find myself more irritable.

To see studies like this is refreshing.

This is America, where we ask strangers, "So, what do you do for a living?" as an opening question because income generation is the most important thing about a person in the USA.

Or, more charitably, because we're interested in what it it they actually do, as opposed to the income itself. There is an issue with conflating work and what's the most important defining characteristic of a person, but I don't think it has to do with income in general.

We don't ask that question though. That could be covered by "So, what are you interested in?" and if it happens to overlap employment, you find out just the same.

We ask what people do because everybody does something, while only a fraction of people have hobbies. (Hobbies include people whose work is their hobby, and exclude people who happen to care deeply about more private, or at least bigger-than-smalltalk things.)

Strange that more people have jobs than hobbies...

Why is it strange? What do you draw from that? Why do you think that is? Please add something more substantial than an open-ended possibly deep question with trailing ellipses.

I can't think of anyone I know who doesn't have some sort of hobby. You seem to be excluding a lot of things with those qualifiers.

Well, if you don't spend the most hours of your day at work, you spend them sleeping. And it would be pretty dull to ask someone "how do you spend most of your time?" and they said "sleeping". In fact, it would sound rude and dismissive.

What else? Oh, I'm married. Cool. I live in a house. Yeah. Exciting.

"How do you spend your time" is a better question.

Just say you freelance.

We also make small talk about the weather, even though nobody really gives a shit what anyone else thinks about the weather. And we ask how people are doing, even if we don't care.

I don't think "how people talk to strangers" is a representation of what people in the culture care about.

That's not at all why we do that.. It's just to find out things about a person if you have no information, so you can find something to talk about.

You miss the point. The fact that you start by asking that question first, instead of say "what do you love doing" or "where do you live" says a lot about culture.

Those other questions are too intimate for a conversation starter.

"Too intimate" as defined by our culture.

Northern European here:

I'd also find it a bit weird (edit: or awkward) if someone started by asking what I love to do:

Is this a salesman or a recruiter?

Maybe a teacher?

And what should I answer that wouldn't be weird? "Volunteering for Troll patrol at Internet forums"?, "Writing Java"?, "Sleeping"?

> And what should I answer that wouldn't be weird? "Volunteering for Troll patrol at Internet forums"?, "Writing Java"?, "Sleeping"?

Honestly the weirder the better. Its a great icebreaker.

No, I don't miss the point. It would very weird in all the cultures I'm part of to ask those questions first, not because anyone cares about money, but because those are too specific and would weird the other person out.

“Where do you live” seems like an even less interesting question.

If you're an adult more often than not, you'll be trading your time for income. Therefore this is a safe comparatively in offensive question to start a conversation. Given a working person spends around half their waking hours working, many will opt to choose something interesting to them. Whether it's the culture, the vision or the nature of the work it can lead onto more interesting topics of conversation.

It's a lazy one, but so is remarking about the weather or mentioning something about current affairs.

Why not go straight to it? "So, how do you sell your labor?"

I always ask that because I find it correlates with their personality

There are sleeping pills, everything from benadryl to xanax to ambien. It's just that there are a lot of side effects to any of these approaches.

"Sleep in a pill", to me, would be something that gives you the effects of having slept without sleeping, not something that makes you sleep.

That might be modafinil, but again it comes with side effects and probably doesn't address the core issue

Maybe I'm still not being clear. I don't think people mean "the effects of having slept" in a symptomatic sense, either (alertness, etc.)

Rather, what people want is "the effects of having slept" in a physiological sense: a pill that rapidly sweeps the same toxins out of your body that sleep does gradually. Taking such a pill would have all the same long-term benefits that a healthy sleep schedule would have.

Of course, a "pill" that did this properly would likely have to contain something like complex organic-waste-molecule-chellating molecules, or perhaps even biofilm-scrubbing nanomachines. :)

A negentropy pill; the holy grail, the philosopher's stone

DARPA used to work on something like that for the US Army.

IDK about any results yet.

you still get psychosis after not sleeping for a few days, just like with amphetamine IIRC.

the brain needs sleep, we aren't sure why, but stimulant psychosis does a pretty good job of proving that you start to break down after depriving yourself of sleep. paranoia, hallucinations, etc are all very common with this kind of stimulant abuse where you're keeping your body awake for days at a time.

generally speaking, if you use stimulants (or "wakefulness promoting agents" like modafinil) regularly you should be dosing first thing in the morning after feeding yourself, not re-dosing, eating what you can when you can and sleeping each night as much as possible.

And they only help you get or stay asleep. The actual quality of your sleep can still be horrible. Like not breathing 40x a night like I just found out I do.

How did you get that diagnosed/discovered? If you don't mind me asking.

Sounds like sleep apnea[1], which is usually discovered by a sleep partner, would be diagnosed with a sleep study, and can often be treated with a CPAP[2] machine, it keeps your airways open while you sleep, which helps you breathe.

[1] https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/sleepa... [2] continuous positive airway pressure

I'm late to this one, but the most common symptom is extreme sleepiness during the afternoons, even to the point of narcolepsy. It'll cause all kinds of havoc with your sleep routines.

I got suspicious after falling asleep at work a few times, just an unbearable sleepiness, like I had just taken Benadryl and some vodka. Turns out I had sleep apnea to the tune of 61 events/HOUR.

Pretty much what these two posters said. Extremely tired all the time no matter the amount of sleep, went in for a sleep study and discovered I never fully entered deep REM so my brain was never fully rested. Got the Rx for the CPAP but haven't received it yet.

Thats a lot.

Melatonin is at least natural, don't know if there are many studies on it though.

I tried Melatonin during a heavy travel stressful period doing interviews.

Getting back off it and falling asleep naturally was not easy for me.

I think conventional dosages may be a bit extreme at 3-5 milligrams.

I agree on the dosages sold being too high. I'm a terrible sleeper that wakes up all through the night. I've found taking a fraction, between an eighth and quarter, of the 3mg pills is enough for me to sleep and wake up refreshed.

Also I've found sleeping at least 7-8 hours is necessary while taking it. Any less and I feel groggy all morning.

Studies tend to say that any more than 3mg of melatonin, your body will just evacuate it. Also, taking it more than 5 days is most likely pointless.

I can tell you with personal experience that this is not true. I have taken 30-40mg before bed, and there is a definite difference in my experience from taking 1-5mg. The sleepiness I felt 30-45 minutes after dosing was the most extreme sleepiness I've ever experienced in my life, the dreams are mind-blowing, and I feel tired the next day far beyond what I feel after taking a smaller dose.

Thanks for your personal experience but I was talking about scientific studies [1].

- [1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12076414

- [2] (a narrow google search that i'm sure i could find more) - https://www.google.com/#q=melatonin+dosage+site:.gov+OR+site...

I don't see anything in that study about excess melatonin being evacuated. The paper only talks about effectiveness as a sleep aid.

Under the main results section "Daily doses of melatonin between 0.5 and 5mg are similarly effective, except that people fall asleep faster and sleep better after 5mg than 0.5mg. Doses above 5mg appear to be no more effective." [1, from parent comment]

Upon further research with the link I provided. It seems that for older people dosage levels should be introduced small and then increased, this study talks about the effectiveness of 50mg in older patients [1]

[1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24802882

I don't see anything in your comment about excess melatonin being evacuated.

Could it be a placebo effect? If you were to randomly take either 5 mg or 40 mg would you notice the difference?

I did not do a double-blinded experiment, so I suppose I can't conclusively rule out a placebo effect. All I can say is that the effect is extremely unsubtle. 40mg of melatonin is a lot. It was a bad time in my life when I chose to do that, and I have no intention to repeat the experiment.

Co-Q-10 in the a.m. -- either by itself or paired with melatonin at night -- is probably a better solution.

I think his comment was more about the idealism of the idea rather than the practicality.

Melatonin is naturally occurring and works wonderfully for me. After popping 3mg, I'm out after an hour.

Worth a shot, if anything.

Supplementing with Melatonin can cause your body to down regulate natural Melatonin production, so coming off of it can be troublesome or cause insomnia in some people. Another way to shift your circadian rhythm without the rebound effect is to use SAD lamps or gadgets like the humancharger which work with photoreceptors in your ear.

Exercise and quality of sleep are related. Timing exercise to the right time in afternoon can improve your sleep considerably

That's tough, given a lot of people work 9-5. Easier to time your exercise before or after that.