Category: sleep
Sleep and the Immune System
When I started to sleep better (due to standing and morning light), my health improved: I stopped getting colds. There was plenty of pre-existing evidence linking better sleep and better immune function; a new study connects the two even more strongly.
Sitting is Bad, New Research Suggests
From a new study:
We prospectively examined sitting time and mortality in a representative sample of 17,013 Canadians 18-90 yr of age. [They were divided into five groups based on] daily amount of sitting time (almost none of the time, one fourth of the time, half of the time, three fourths of the time, almost all of the time . . . Participants were followed prospectively for an average of 12.0 yr for the ascertainment of mortality status. RESULTS:: There were 1832 deaths (759 of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and 547 of cancer) during 204,732 person-yr of follow-up. After adjustment for potential confounders, there was a progressively higher risk of mortality across higher levels of sitting time from all causes (hazard ratios (HR): 1.00, 1.00, 1.11, 1.36, 1.54; P for trend <0.0001) and CVD (HR:1.00, 1.01, 1.22, 1.47, 1.54; P for trend <0.0001) but not cancer.
I am pleased to see no problem with sitting one-fourth of the time. The CVD/cancer difference suggests the two diseases have different causes — which is consistent with cancer being due to environmental chemicals (e.g., cigarette smoke) and age (cancer risk goes up as the fourth power of age).
Related research from the same lab. My self-experimentation about standing. My one-legged standing (which I still do and am still studying).
Thanks to Dave Lull.
Polyphasic Sleep
I heard about polyphasic sleep — such as sleeping 20 minutes every 3 hours — many years ago. But now I can learn about it in much more detail — and with much more suspense. For example:
[Before starting] Having always been a night-owl, and never having a sleep pattern that fits with others, I feel drawn to try it. I foresee a problem in that I have always felt that I need 8 hours of sleep per day, but on the other hand I can stay up until 5 am without a problem when I am mentally engaged, so it has seemed to me for quite some time that a 28 or 29 hour day is what my system is tuned for. . . . I can feel it energizing me already. [Day 15] Yesterady was a disaster. Sleep is a funny thing – sleep deprivation had been accumulating and I wasn’t really noticing it. I was just happy to be awake and productive so many hours in a day that I ignored the weird feeling in my head, just going with it, thinking I would adjust and it would be all ok. Well yesterday morning I blew up at my SO for a ridiculous reason. . . . What went wrong? I was following all the sleep patterns pretty much to the letter.
More examples listed here.
Chinese Medicine and Sleep
An American friend told me about one of his experiences with Chinese medicine — what is called in America “Traditional Chinese Medicine.” He had some sort of infection that caused skin near his stomach to be damp. He tried many solutions. None worked. Then he went to a Chinese medicine doctor who prescribed certain herbs to be ingested. In a week he was better.
My take on this is that the herbs increased the sensitivity of his immune system, which then detected and got rid of the infection. Such infections are rare, of course, so rare I don’t know their name. The existence of such an infection was a sign his immune system was working very poorly. I asked my friend about his sleep. His sleep was terrible. Highly irregular. It is telling that the Chinese doctor didn’t tell him to improve his sleep, which would have vastly improved his health and reduced his future visits to the doctor.
It was a new idea to me that Chinese herbs — at least some of them — work by boosting the immune system. It makes sense: detection of some invaders should make you more sensitive to other invaders. One implication of this view is that it hardly matters which herb you take so long as it is new. My friend told another story in which his Chinese doctor changed the herbs every week or so, supporting this idea.
It was a new idea to my friend that bad sleep was causing his immune system to work poorly. My experience with colds, as mentioned last post (when my sleep improved they disappeared), means that the fact that colds are “common” implies we are a nation of poor sleepers. And, indeed, sleep problems are very common. A few years ago, I learned about a course about epidemics taught at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. I knew the professor. I asked him if the course would cover environmental factors that cause the immune system to work better or worse. No, he said. Half the subject, ignored. Just as economists rarely study innovation and statisticians rarely study how data generates ideas.
More Supporting the idea that ingesting strange but harmless substances can improve immune functioning, I found this in the latest issue of the Journal of Nutrition:
Caseins and whey proteins are the 2 major protein fractions of cow milk. Whey proteins are separated from casein curds during the cheese-making process. The major proteins present in bovine whey come from the mammary gland that secretes β-lactoglobulin (β-LG),7 {alpha}-lactalbumin ({alpha}-LA), and glycomacropeptide (GMP), and from serum, like IgG1 and IgG2, IgA, IgE, and IgM and albumin. Besides their use in functional foods, whey protein products, and more specifically whey protein-derived products, have been shown to be efficient in certain pathologies. For instance, whey proteins inhibited gastric ulcerative lesions induced by ethanol or indomethacin, inhibited chemical-induced malignancy in mice, improved bone loss of ovariectomized rats, and reduced hyperglycemia in type 2 diabetic patients (1—5). Moreover, in vitro and in vivo studies have demonstrated modulation of immune functions by several whey protein-derived products (6,7). As examples, β-LG, the most abundant protein in whey (55—65% of total whey proteins), stimulates the proliferation of murine spleen cells and lamina propia lymphocytes (8,9). It is also useful to stress that researchers have shown that probiotics expressing β-LG can be used to manage food allergy (10). The 2nd most abundant whey protein, {alpha}-LA (15—25% of total whey proteins), modulates macrophage and B- and T-lymphocyte functions (11). Moreover, the {alpha}-LA—derived peptide f51—53 directly affects neutrophils (12). The 3rd most abundant whey peptidic component, GMP, can affect immunity and attenuate inflammatory colitis in rats (6,13,14). At optimal concentrations, the other bioactive whey-derived proteins like Ig and lactoferrin present in whey protein extract (WPE) can also exert immune modulatory functions (6,7).
I didn’t know this–that ingesting milk products had good effects on immune function. That probiotics can be used to manage food allergies isn’t explained by the idea that foreign substances make the immune system more sensitive.
Better Sleep, Fewer Colds
In my long self-experimentation paper I described how I stopped getting colds when my sleep improved due to more standing and morning light. It was easy to notice: Everyone around me was getting sick and I wasn’t. In Beijing this winter the same thing happened: Lots of people around me got colds — a friend of mine was even hospitalized — but I didn’t. This winter I continued to get lots of morning light — I cared enormously that my apartment was on the sunny side of the building — but in place of standing for 8 hours or more every day I stood on one leg four times (left leg twice, right leg twice) until exhaustion.
Plenty of other evidence links better sleep with better immune function. The latest comes from the Archives of Internal Medicine. In a survey-like experiment, researchers measured the sleep of subjects with a questionnaire for two weeks and then brought them to an isolation unit, exposed them to a cold virus, and waited to see if they developed a cold. Subjects who slept better were less likely to get a cold. It was a big effect: “Participants with less than 7 hours of sleep [per night] were 2.9 times more likely to develop a cold than those with 8 hours or more of sleep [per night].” I rarely sleep 7 hours but wake up feeling plenty rested, which suggests that my sleep is deeper than average.
Overall, I’m happy for the support of my findings. Better sleep has a three-fold benefit: you feel more rested (short term), you get colds less often (medium term), and your risk of heart disease goes down (long term). The morning sunlight I get corresponds to sitting outside in the shade for about two hours; the standing takes a total of about 40 minutes/day (with your leg bent most of the time). I usually watch a movie or TV at the same time and always look forward to it.
Thanks to David Cramer.
Another Link Between Better Sleep and Better Health
Much of my self-experimentation has been about improving my sleep — in particular, not waking up too early. I found that avoiding breakfast and standing a lot made a big difference. Currently I am studying the effect of stressing the leg muscles in other ways and will soon have more to say about this.
Now comes more evidence this matters: People who slept too little had a higher risk of coronary artery calcification.
Science in Action: Why Did I Sleep So Well? (part 17)
The story so far. Standing on one foot till exhaustion twice during the day vastly improved my sleep that night. I slept longer and, especially, woke up much more rested.
Theory. I have a theory about what’s going on. When muscles are stressed — used until some of the muscle fibers break — two things happen: 1. More muscle fibers grow (= you become stronger). Everyone knows this. 2. A chemical is released by the muscle that travels to the brain and increases depth of sleep. This is a new idea. The big picture is that sleep is controlled by many things; this is one of them. Morning light is also important but that is pretty obvious, at least to sleep researchers. Morning light appears to control both the timing and depth of sleep. These muscle-produced hormones appear to mainly affect depth of sleep; I don’t notice any change in when I sleep. The evolutionary rationale is plain: We grow muscles better when we’re asleep. If we need to grow muscles more than usual, we need more sleep than usual.
New data. I want to understand what the effect depends on. What makes it weaker or stronger — especially stronger? As my legs grew stronger, the effect became slightly weaker, presumably because it was harder to produce new muscle growth in a practical amount of time. My main measure of the effect is how rested I feel when I awake. I assess that on a 0-100 scale where 0 = just as tired as when I fell asleep and 100 = completely free from tiredness. I reached scores of 100 years ago when I was on my feet for 9 or 10 hours during the day and once or twice on camping trips. Standing that much is impractical so 100 appeared impossible to reach regularly. In Berkeley, during the months before I discovered this effect, this score averaged about 95. After discovery of this effect, it was usually 99 — a big easy-to-notice improvement.
But 99 was impossible to maintain because as my legs got stronger it started to take a really long time to exhaust them. I shifted to standing on one bent leg. This obviously reduced how long I needed to stand to produce exhaustion but it was less effective (presumably because fewer muscles were involved). When I shifted from standing one-legged however I wanted (two bouts/day) to standing with the leg bent most or all of the time (four bouts/day), the scores went down to 98 or 97. After a week or so of bent-leg standing I started using the cycle 50 seconds bent, 10 seconds straight; I repeated this as long as I could.
Here is a graph showing how long I stood.
The interesting point is that the strength increase finally levelled off at a bearable amount of time, yet the effect has persisted. If I spend about 8 minutes 4 times a day watching TV or a movie (and standing on one bent leg at the same time) I can substantially improve my sleep. This is practical. It’s the easiest exercise I’ve ever done. No special equipment. Watch TV at the same time. Big benefit. I’ve tried other muscle-building exercises, including push-ups done two different ways, jump-roping, and something vaguely resembling a biceps curl done with a thick rubber band. None has had a detectable effect. For example, after a day with jump-roping and two bouts of one-legged standing, I sleep about as well as after a day with just two bouts of one-legged standing.
Can I say again how wonderful it is to wake up totally rested? It seems almost within my grasp.
Science in Action: Why Did I Sleep So Well? (part 16)
A few days ago I spoke on the phone to someone who’d written me that one-legged standing improved his sleep. I mentioned this replication earlier but the new details are interesting.
He is a 35-year-old man with an office job. He now works in the Washington, D.C. area. Until about a year ago, his sleep was fine. He would sleep 7-7.5 hours no matter when he went to bed.
About a year ago he went through a tough time with a lot of stress and anxiety. After that he started waking up after only 6 hours of sleep. He’d wake up early in the morning, 3 or 4 am, still tired but unable to fall back asleep. This is exactly the problem I had when I started to self-experiment to try to sleep better.
He went to a doctor for help. (I considered seeing a doctor.)Â The doctor prescribed:
1. Ambien. It worked for 1 or 2 nights.
2. Lunesta. Like Ambien, it worked for only the first few nights.
After using these two drugs, the problem got worse. Now he awoke after only 4 hours of sleep. He tried non-prescription drugs:
3. Melatonin. It made him foggy during the day.
4. Tylenol PM. It worked okay, but he would still wake up after 6 hours.
Then he decided he didn’t want to take pills of any sort — even if they worked, he’d have to take them for the rest of his life. (This is why I didn’t go to a doctor and never tried pills.) He tried conventional alternative treatments:
5. Changed his attitude about the problem. Although he was waking up very early, he wasn’t tired during the day. He had four extra hours. After this change in attitude, he began to fall back asleep a few hours after waking up. Gradually the amount of time he was awake in the middle of the night got shorter.
6. He has cold feet. He can’t fall asleep when his feet are cold. He read somewhere that if you imagine your feet are warm, they will warm up. This gave him an idea. What if he imagined going into an MRI-like machine that induces sleep? He started doing this. When he’d wake up at 2 a.m., he’d imagine himself going into this machine. This enabled him to fall back asleep with a short latency.
In August he read my posts about this and started one-legged standing, often while watching TV. He does it without stretching the other foot: puts one foot on top of the other or behind the other. He might or might not balance. Usually stands on a pillow. He does it until it hurts, twice for each leg. In the beginning it took only 5-10 minutes but now it has gotten much longer and he has started doing other things, such as wearing a backpack with books, to shorten the time.
From my point of view the main points are these: 1. He had tried several other treatments. Some were awful, some were okay, but none sustainably solved the problem. Not only did one-legged standing help, it apparently helped more than six other plausible treatments, including two powerful and expensive drugs. 2. What he did differed from what I did — verbal descriptions are always inexact and omit a lot — but still worked well right away.
Science in Action: Why Did I Sleep So Well? (part 15)
Yesterday I went to San Francisco early in the morning. Because of my discovery about standing and sleep, I had slept very well. In Berkeley, it looked like morning: empty streets, angle of light. I felt jet-lagged: I should have been tired but I wasn’t. On BART, the same mismatch: Everyone looked tired but I was wide awake.
It is taking longer and longer to get enough one-legged standing to generate great sleep. Here’s a graph of how long I’ve been standing:
Each point is a different bout of one-legged standing. Most of the points are from bouts where the standing leg was straight or bent (usually straight) but a few of them (“bent leg”) are from bouts where the standing leg was bent the whole time. Most days have two bouts: 1. On the left leg until I get tired. 2. On the right leg until i get tired. I’m pretty sure there’s no effect until it becomes difficult — until the muscles are so stressed that they send out a grow signal. The whole thing is pleasant because I watch TV or a movie at the same time but, as the graph shows, it has become seriously time-consuming.
So I have tested keeping the standing leg always bent. I get tired much sooner (2 minutes versus 20 minutes) but the effect is not quite as strong. Probably because fewer muscles are involved — you use more muscles when you stand on one leg in any possible way than if you stand on one leg in only one way.
I assume there’s a steady-state solution. The more muscle you have the more you lose each day. (Just as the theory behind the Shangri-La Diet assumes that the higher your set point, the fast it falls.) Eventually I should have enough muscle and will lose enough in one day so the exercise needed to merely replenish it will be enough to produce great sleep.