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Comment by DaveZale | Hacker News Reader

yes, poor sleep quality leads to bad days, bad days lead to more bad sleep, it is a downward spiral and may impact many of us in our prime years, too.

All the best on your research and funding. Quality sleep has been undervalued, especially among work cultures that value overachieving at the expense of personal health.

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Thanks. A researcher we work with has postulated that build-up of metabolic waste (amyloid and tau, among others) directly impairs the glymphatic system, leading to more build-up. A viscous cycle.

I don't think she's the first to postulate this, but I believe she is researching this relationship now.

Though work culture is an important one, we're somewhat more focused on the less self-imposed sleep challenges related to maternity and perimenopause/menopause.

that's a cute Freudian slip (or deliberate joke) - viscous cycle - sure, amyloid and tau are probably very viscous when you poke at them with the laboratory utensil of your choice. And accumulation of them is like a viscious cycle of plaque accumulation and even worse clearance. It seems exponetial

Came here to say this. Also lol:

> And accumulation of them is like a viscious cycle

I don’t know what this slip meant though ;-)

LOL :)

Unintentional, but I like it!

I have narcolepsy and it's hard to describe what an absolute fog I was in for years before diagnosis. The current best treatment is a powerful depressant taken at bed time and again middle of the night to induce deep sleep.

Is that gabapentin? Or is there something else that is the go to these days?

There was a comment on reddit a few days ago from someone with narcolepsy who was looking for a sleep tracker.

Sadly, our technology does not "induce" deep sleep.

It is suspected that the reason the Alzheimer's study showed such an increase in deep sleep was due to decreased cortisol as a result of stimulation, but that is just a theory at this point.

Studies do show a decrease in night-time cortisol (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02170-3) early in the night during stimulation.

Sodium oxybate. And yeah most commercial sleep trackers are not going to work for someone with such disordered sleep. There have been retail EEGs available but they never catch on.

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