I thought the ketamine therapy was especially interesting in that it had good effect with relatively low doses. In the Isoflurane study they would put patients completely under (asleep? What is the technical term for being unconscious under anesthesia?) for about 15 minutes. Makes me wonder about the relation between sleep problems and depression.
> Makes me wonder about the relation between sleep problems and depression.
There is fairly strong evidence that sleep deprivation can trigger or exasperate depression [1].
As someone who has had chronic cyclical insomnia since my teens (17 years) in my case it has a massive effect.
When I'm coming out of an insomnia phase the first couple of days where I get a proper nights sleep I feel like I'm on drugs, it's a feeling of well-being and euphoria that is hard to describe, I have limitless energy and I'm enthusiastic about all the things I love to do.
When I'm in the middle of the no-sleep cycle, I struggle to do even basic tasks and anything requiring complete focus is basically ruled out, the world is a grey dreary place, summoning the energy to do anything is a major challenge.
I manage my insomnia without drugs (the problem with sleeping pills in my experience is that while they do make you sleep it's not a high quality sleep and that combined with the lag from the pills means I don't feel any better with them than without) by impeccable sleep hygiene, diet and exercise and the knowledge that eventually the cycle will end.
Interestingly, and although all my anecdotal evidence disagrees with this, on the short term sleep deprivation supposedly does the opposite [0].
I have trouble with insomnia as well, and my experience is basically the same as yours. If I don't get at least eight hours, the brain fog is so thick I just can't function. It doesn't make sense to me however, because many people I know can function perfectly with little to no sleep.
I've been looking into supplements to improve the quality of sleep. The most promising so far is glycine, which has at least some science demonstrating its efficacy (in both sleep quality and consequent daytime performance) [1]. Some anecdotal experience from reddit also makes it seem promising [2]. Also on my list to try are ZMA and low-dose melatonin.
I've tried different supplements before though not glycine and melatonin is not something that is easy to get in the UK.
It's hard to say in the singular case whether they work as I can't rule out the placebo effect what I've found for me though is that a good diet (lots of fish and fresh vegetables mostly) has as much or more of an impact.
I'll certainly look into glycine though, thanks.
EDIT: I took a look at the studies (well the overviews anyway) on Glycine, fascinating reading, I've ordered some from Amazon and will see, again, many thanks :)
I've had insomnia my whole life (I don't say 'suffer', because sometimes I enjoy it, though pay the price the next day).
I don't recommend melatonin, unless you've messed up your body clock and are trying to 'reset' when you go to sleep.
ZMA is just Zing/Magnesium/B6 (I don't know why it isn't called ZMB, maybe that's too similar to zombie?). I haven't taken ZMA specifically, but I have taken all of those supplements together at the same time bumping up the levels of a multi. I wouldn't say I noticed a huge difference in sleep performance.
> There is fairly strong evidence that sleep deprivation can trigger or exasperate [sic] depression ...
This is one I'm seeing more and more often. The word you were after is "exacerbate". It's my hope that exasperate and exacerbate won't suffer the same fate as literally and figuratively, which now mean the same thing:
Here on Hacker News there are a lot of people who use English as a second language. And there are a lot of hackers here who speak English as a native language who neglected their writing courses in high school or college in favor of more programming courses. So I am not surprised by spelling mistakes here, and only point them out when they are especially jarring and likely to lead to further misunderstanding.
Your pointing out a trivial error that didn't significantly impact the intelligibility of my comment adds absolutely nothing to the conversation except demonstrating that you have superior English skills to mine (which I suspect was entirely the point).
In addition if we are going to be rigourously accurate I will point out that merriam-webster also has exasperate down as "to make more grievous" as an obsolete meaning and since you seem to be concerned about changing the meaning of words over time we should perhaps allow the obsolete usage here.
> Your pointing out a trivial error that didn't significantly impact the intelligibility of my comment adds absolutely nothing to the conversation except demonstrating that you have superior English skills to mine (which I suspect was entirely the point).
If you had posted a flawed math equation, or a defective computer program snippet, would you make the same objection to a correction? Would a mathematical correction offered in good faith merit this criticism, or would it be welcomed as a useful contribution?
The answer is obvious -- spoken and written language is to a human what computer programming language is to a computer. Both should be open to correction. And for some reason I cannot fathom, one of them is welcomed and the other criticized, as though biological processors should be treated differently than silicon processors.
> In addition if we are going to be rigourously accurate I will point out that merriam-webster ...
Dictionaries don't prescribe, they describe. No matter how bizarre a word usage, if it appears in publications, it finds its way into the dictionary. So it's not a substantive argument to point out that a word meaning appears in a dictionary -- all of them end up there.
I don't think it's unreasonable to interpret "literally" as still meaning literally but the "strongest metaphoric sense" use an example of hyperbole. "Literally" is never used to mean "further from literal than you were thinking".
It happens all the time. Take "decimate" as just one example of hundreds that come to mind. It once meant to reduce by one-tenth. But through common usage it has come to mean:
What's my incentive to do this? I post an interesting and relevant fact, and get downvoted. The more interesting and relevant to the topic of discussion, the more downvotes in proportion. I prefer the company of adults.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...
I thought the ketamine therapy was especially interesting in that it had good effect with relatively low doses. In the Isoflurane study they would put patients completely under (asleep? What is the technical term for being unconscious under anesthesia?) for about 15 minutes. Makes me wonder about the relation between sleep problems and depression.