Do you think it is possible to apply hormesis towards sleeping better?
I like your idea of trying to become better at sleeping.....However, I'm not sure if hormesis can really work for this. Hormesis is basically adaptation to moderate stress. I know from my personal experience that being stressed in any way is the worst way to try to sleep.
I have two alternative proposals for you. First, I know that I sleep best when I am either really tired or sleep deprived. However, that does not seem sustainable in the long term and definably also not something that traditional societies did.
This topic really interests me, Thomas and Shadowfoot. Besides your raising it here, I've heard the same question from several others.
I've heard two suggestions from others that make a lot of sense. They both relate to your suggestion, Shadowfoot of the stressors of being either really tired or sleep deprived. But I think they utilize these "stressors" in a very specific and focused way that I think may be quite sustainable.
The first suggestion comes from Seth Roberts' experiments with standing. He first found that the more time he spent standing, the better he slept. But he found it impractical to stand for the length of time needed to be effective, so he developed a modified protocol of "standing on one leg". At first, this sounds hilariously odd, but Seth found that only 8 minutes of standing on one is enough to improve his sleep!
http://quantifiedself.com/2011/03/effect-of-one-legged-standing-on-sleep/The second suggestion comes from Derek Haswell and Ben Rubin. Ben started a company named
Zeo, that makes a cool sleep monitor that I've been using for about a month. Derek works with Zeo as well. I share with Ben and Derek an interest in hormesis and self-monitoring. I met with both of them this week and Derek brought up what I thought was an ingenious application of hormesis to overcoming insomnia. It's a technique called sleep restriction therapy:
http://www.sleepdex.org/restriction.htmhttp://geronj.oxfordjournals.org/content/46/1/P1.shorthttp://www.smrv-journal.com/article/S1087-0792(01)90246-1/abstractThe therapy consists of initially restricting the hours of sleep to a very defined, late window of time. So if your bedtime is normally, say 10 p.m. and you wake at 6 am. (after sleeping poorly, i.e. with delayed onset of sleep or frequent waking), you delay your bedtime a few hours, say until midnight, but still set your alarm and wake at 6 a.m. If that doesn't do the trick, you keep delaying your bedtime gradually and shortening your sleep until you finally get a good sleep. If you are tired or drowsy during the day, you just cope with that. But once you are able to sleep through the night, you gradually start going to bed again earlier until your sleep normalizes and you are also well rested during the day.
Studies suggest that sleep restriction therapy is quite effective. And it is an almost perfect example of hormesis -- applying a stress or stimulus that is opposite in direction to the ultimate outcome you are seeking. The body responds with an adaptation to the stimulus -- in this case normalized sleep. And as with any good application of hormesis, drugs and artificial remedies are avoided, while the organism itself adapts to become more functional.
I also recommend the Zeo sleep monitor. You wear a comfortable headband with a monitor that transmits your brainwaves to an "alarm clock" that records your sleep state (waking, light sleep, REM or deep sleep). You can analyze your sleep patterns on a PC or iPhone and compare your sleep behavior over time or with norms for your age and gender. Just like blood glucose monitoring, it is a great ajunct to self-experimentation. I may blog about what I'm finding in the future once my thinking congeals a bit.
So trying standing on one leg or going to bed later!
Todd
