One of the things that I am really worried about is Alzheimer’s. Even a slight risk of Alzheimer’s would be enough to convince me to sleep more. Alzheimer’s is significantly caused by UPDATE: correlated with the buildup of plaques in the brain, and the process of cleaning that away seems to be tied to sleep or at least the circadian rhythm—which I guess can be disrupted in many ways.
Alzheimer’s is significantly caused by the buildup of plaques in the brain
Alzheimer’s is correlated with a buildup of plaques in the brain, but there’s no evidence that it’s caused by that.
The FDA did approve Aduhelm based on that thesis, but that decision is widely ridiculed and got multiple people from their scientific advisory panel to step down.
Have you done an explicit calculation of your perceived increased risk in Alzheimer’s and compared it to QALY (potentially) gained by decreasing amount of sleep?
I’m sleeping less than many people, and I usually feel powerful enough at 6.5h per day (including actually falling asleep). Though it is a fragile balance that can be tipped to headache easily, and then it isn’t net-positive anymore. But again, I’m most worried about my brain not getting enough time to cleanup stuff and this over time adding up without me noticing and then losing a lot of QUALYs later. So I want to be sure to be sufficiently far away from the point where stuff builds up.
One of the things that I am really worried about is Alzheimer’s. Even a slight risk of Alzheimer’s would be enough to convince me to sleep more. Alzheimer’s
is significantly caused byUPDATE: correlated with the buildup of plaques in the brain, and the process of cleaning that away seems to be tied to sleep or at least the circadian rhythm—which I guess can be disrupted in many ways.Recent study:
https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1009994
Alzheimer’s is correlated with a buildup of plaques in the brain, but there’s no evidence that it’s caused by that.
The FDA did approve Aduhelm based on that thesis, but that decision is widely ridiculed and got multiple people from their scientific advisory panel to step down.
Fair. Still, I wouldn’t want to mess with whatever causes either.
Have you done an explicit calculation of your perceived increased risk in Alzheimer’s and compared it to QALY (potentially) gained by decreasing amount of sleep?
I’m sleeping less than many people, and I usually feel powerful enough at 6.5h per day (including actually falling asleep). Though it is a fragile balance that can be tipped to headache easily, and then it isn’t net-positive anymore. But again, I’m most worried about my brain not getting enough time to cleanup stuff and this over time adding up without me noticing and then losing a lot of QUALYs later. So I want to be sure to be sufficiently far away from the point where stuff builds up.