Comments on: Science in Action: Why Did I Sleep So Well? (part 13)

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Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:59:00 +0000

[…] Science in Action: Why Did I Sleep So Well? (part 13) […]

by: MJS

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:26:53 +0000

I’ve never posted here before, but I wanted to mention that I’ve been doing these exercises - standing on one leg - and it’s helped my sleep immensely. About a year ago, I went through a pretty traumatic experience that disrupted my sleep patterns. The end result was that I couldn’t sleep for longer than 3 or 4 hours at night without waking up. For several months, the lack of sleep was like living in a nightmare, and prescription drugs just made the problem worse. I finally decided to go off medication all together and change my attitude, which worked wonders - I could get back to sleep after I woke up - but I’d still only sleep in 4 hour chunks.

About a month ago, I began doing these exercises, and now I’m sleeping 6 to 7 hours at a time. It’s amazing; and on the days I don’t do them, I don’t sleep well at all.

It’s amazing how easy they are to do - if I find myself standing in line, meeting friends for a happy hour, or even watching tv, I’ll do them.

Last night I told a friend to do them while he was at a happy hour, and this morning, he said he slept “like a log.”

So, thanks so much for the suggestion and helping me regain my life/sleep back.

by: cato

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:48:04 +0000

you might also want to try one legged squats. you stand on a sturdy chair or bench and do a squat on one leg. you don’t need the extra weight of a normal squat.

maybe the extra intensity will have interesting effects…

by: Tod L.

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 02:39:17 +0000

have you tried introducing the variable of crossing your meridian during the stretch? Right hand stretching left leg while standing on right leg while crossing left hand to right shoulder? then visa versa.

by: Chris B.

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:45:47 +0000

I’ve tried the one-legged standing twice with disappointing results. It took me about 20 minutes to tire out leg, probably because I cycle for exercise, and I didn’t notice any improvement in my sleep. In fact, last night I slept ununsually poorly, waking briefly at 12:30, and waking up for good at 5 am. I will give it another try, but it may be one of those things that doesn’t work for everyone.

Assuming that the effect, for you, has to do with stimulating muscle growth, perhaps I’d be better off exercising some less-developed muscle group. I’ve been planning to start some upper-body weight training. If/when I do, I’ll try to keep records on the connection with sleep patterns.

by: MT

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:13:52 +0000

Sounds reasonable — so the balance element is not relevant with that explanation, it is simply the continuity of the load to exhaustion which matters. That should be testable fairly easily, as bending your legs into a crouch with your upper body as upright as possible (known as as a chair sit - had to do them for ice hockey) is quite exhausting (the lower you sit, the harder — you can just crouch a bit for a good effect), and produces a continual load on your legs, like one-legged standing. To shorten the time to exhaustion of one-legged standing you could bend the leg a bit more as well. When doing CROUCHES or SQUATS — you want to KEEP YOUR KNEE BEHIND YOUR TOES, and in a straight line above them — can put too much pressure on the knee otherwise.

Such variations could test whether balance is relevant, though I imagine you are interested in training your balance as well. There are inexpensive wobble boards that can add challenge to your balance exercises. There is some evidence that improving balance and coordination can help with aspects of cognition. Perhaps your results from the reaction-time test you devised would improve if you challenge balance and coordination simultaneously for a few weeks.

by: siegfried

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:26:05 +0000

Hi- balancing on one leg is a common posture in Yoga as well as Tai Chi. Practitioners have long held that it helps with better sleeping. there are other potential connections: Standing on one leg (with a stick to lean on) is a common rest position among aborigines, Massai, etc. Any alternate stimulation on the brain (cf: EMDR) has shown anti-stress potential.
S.

by: seth

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:39:17 +0000

MT, thanks for explaining that. Why does this form of exercise produce the effect more clearly than other forms? My guess is that the answer is: It produces the most muscle growth per unit time (spent exercising). In other forms of exercise, the stress is spread out over several systems (e.g., we become out of breath before our muscles get tired) and is more intermittent, so that there is more recovery. One-legged standing is especially efficient because the muscle-growing system is “isolated” and stressed without any recovery period.

by: MT

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 10:17:46 +0000

Seth, you wrote: “I think the evolutionary reason that one-legged standing improves sleep is pretty obvious,” but provided an explanation why exercise would improve sleep — those are different, which my comment was addressing.

You quoted my use of “fluke” out of context — I was not referring to sleep and muscle recovery, where the benefits are obvious, I was referring to one-legged standing triggering the better sleep mechanism more efficiently than alternative activities which would confer more evolutionary advantages — like hunting and gathering.

So I agree that the details matter — what I’m wondering is whether there is some aspect of the details which can explain why THIS behaviour seems to create the BEST sleep response. A unique connection between balance and savanna behaviour, for instance.

I agree that it is likely many or most people would have a similar response, and that it is likely that it is the combination of balance and strain that creates the response.

by: seth

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:52:57 +0000

“Other people exercise their legs strenuously without profound changes in sleep.” I think the details matter. I did one particular type of “exercise”. I think what I did is a particular efficient way of generating the necessary signal. You can “strenuously exercise” your legs in a hundred different ways and I’d guess that almost all of them less efficiently produce the necessary signal. I think the evolutionary story (better to grow muscles while they are still so they are grown during sleep; thus more growth –> more sleep) is so plausible that the effect could hardly be a “fluke” and is very likely to happen to everyone.