sleep

We’ve been sold melatonin as the ultimate harmless sleep supplement. Science does not think the same

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By taking a walk through any pharmacy, supermarket or online store, it is easy to find melatonin as the definitive solution to sleep problems and with the great claim of being something totally natural that our body secretes. Pills, drops, infusions or even gummies are some of the presentations in which we find a product that for many should not be available to everyone and that, in their opinion, It should be regulated like any other medicine. The alarm voice. The scientific community and regulatory bodies They are starting to sound the alarm and the central idea is clear: melatonin is not as harmless as it is often promoted and, according to experts, it should be treated with the same rigor as a medication, and not as a simple vitamin supplement. The labels. One of the biggest problems with melatonin, especially in countries like the United States where it is regulated as a dietary supplement, is the lack of strict control over its production. Here a study published in 2017 put a worrying fact on the table when seeing that there are a great variability between what the labels say and what the bottle actually contains. And when analyzing multiple brands, researchers found products that contained from 83% less melatonin than declared, to an alarming 478% more. And if that were not enough, the study detected the presence of serotonin in several of these supplements, which is a neurotransmitter that is regulated. It’s not something magical. Marketing has positioned melatonin as a universal solution for sleep that can be consumed without almost any type of control or limit. But here the different reviews conclude that its benefits are modest, without having a powerful hypnotic effect, but rather that its real usefulness lies in adjusting specific circadian rhythm disorders such as jet lag, so use should be selective and not routine. Furthermore, it is not without risks. One of the most striking is the incompatibility that taking melatonin may have. with anticoagulant medicationswhich requires medical supervision. This is something that a priori is not known to patients as they do not go to the doctor for a prescription and have melatonin available on a supermarket shelf. The silent danger. The rise of melatonin in gummy form has brought with it very serious collateral damage, since children may see it as a candy, which has led to an increase in visits to the emergency room in the United States due to excessive consumption of melatonin. In Spain, The approach taken is more strict, since drug regulatory agencies evaluate the safety of this substance in the key of medicinealthough you can buy it almost without any type of control when going to any supermarket. The positive part here is that the highest concentrations of melatonin can only be prescribed by a doctor in consultation so that the pharmacy can make a master preparation, considering it as just another medication, which is what is requested internationally. Images | James Yarema Slaapwijsheid.nl In Xataka | Someone has said that melatonin damages the heart. The reality, according to science, is that we can be calm

Science has measured how dinner affects sleep and the result explains why you wake up craving sugar

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Almost everyone has experienced an annoying night tossing and turning in bed after a heavy dinner or fat. Under this pretext, science has gone one step further to demonstrate that the relationship between what we eat and how we rest is completely bidirectional, making what we eat determine whether we are going to rest better or worse. And the most surprising thing is that sleeping poorly can cause us to need to consume more sugar the next morning. A Granada studio. In February 2026 the magazine European Journal of Nutrition public a revealing investigation led by the University of Granada, where researchers monitored the habits of 146 adults with obesity. To do this, they used special watches to analyze accelerometry over a period of 14 days, to later cross-reference the activity data with dietary surveys of what had been consumed throughout the day. Prohibited items. One of the most interesting conclusions reached was undoubtedly the relationship between certain foods and poor rest. And to be clear, the elements that should be prohibited at our dinner are the following: Saturated fats. Eating excess protein and, more specifically, eating red meat for dinner. French fries, or fried foods in general, reduce the quality of sleep. Alcohol is one of the classics on this topic, since, although it generates a feeling of sleep, it destabilizes its quality. Large meals cause slow digestion and cause nighttime awakenings, preventing you from entering into a deep and restful sleep. Highly recommended foods. On the contrary, the passport to restful sleep seems to lie in another type of nutritional profile. Interestingly, carbohydrates, often demonized at night, were associated with better rest in this study. Although we are not talking about sugar directly from the sugar bowl, but rather complex carbohydrates, such as brown rice or potatoes, because help transport tryptophan to the brain. But in addition, the consumption of oily fish such as salmon or sardines is also recommended, since they are rich in omega-3 and especially tryptophan. The reasons. As we see, tryptophan is key in the diet to induce quality sleep, and it is no wonder. Biochemistry tells us that the tryptophan that we ingest through the diet is converted into serotonin and, subsequently, that serotonin is transformed into melatonin, the well-known sleep hormone. And for this chain to work we need very important factors such as vitamin B6, magnesium or zinc. But this also adds to a much less difficult digestion when talking about foods that are barely fatty and that do not require a lot of work on the part of our body and that do not invite reflux symptoms to appear that can be really annoying at night. Specific foods. With scientific support behind it We find the kiwi, since here a trial pointed out that eating two kiwis, one before going to sleep, reduces the time to fall asleep by 35%. But it also increases sleep duration by 13% due to its contribution of antioxidants and natural serotonin. Additionally, green leafy vegetables such as spinach, chard or lettuce provide magnesium and tryptophan. And if vegetables are not for you, we also have eggs, either boiled or in an omelet, which provides tryptophan and vitamin B6, along with the classic grilled chicken breast, which is also an excellent source of tryptophan. The rebound effect. However, the true clinical contribution of the research is to show that this problem is, in reality, a cycle that feeds on itself in a dangerous way. Here the researchers found that when participants experienced a poor night’s sleep, breakfast was marked by a higher consumption of sugars and a lower intake of fiber. Images | Slaapwijsheid.nl Debbie Tea In Xataka | We have accepted that “deep sleep” is the standard for sleep quality: science points in another direction

I want one to sleep in

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There are more and more technological gadgets for dogs and cats. We have talked about self-cleaning litter boxes, automatic feeders and waterers, GPS collars and even ‘Mi Band’ activity collars for cats. The Dreame company already has several products for pets to which it has just added the Dreame Moduloo Clima, a bed with air conditioning so that your dog or cat is neither cold nor hot. Not only does it have temperature control, the bed also has extra functions, such as a scale that allows you to see the weight of the animal in real time and also a sensor that adjusts the temperature depending on the environment. With how hot it is starting to get as soon as I see it, I thought: I need one in human size. Cool pets in summer and warm in winter The first thing that catches your attention is the “convertible” design. There are pets, especially cats, that prefer shelter-type covered beds, but in this case it also has one objective: it conserves heat better. The cover can be removed to convert it into an open bed that also takes up less space when stored. It supports up to 20 kilos, although its 54 centimeters in diameter may be a little short for medium dogs, so it is more recommended for cats or smaller dogs. Regarding its functions, the bed offers a temperature range that goes from 20 to 32 degrees centigrade and, according to Dreame, it adjusts the temperature in just 10 minutes after connecting it. As we said, it has a function that modifies the heat depending on the ambient temperature, to maintain a similar sensation throughout the day. On the front of the bed there is an LED screen where you can see the temperature and also the weight of the animalbecause yes, the bed incorporates a scale. One thing it lacks is app control; It would be very interesting if the evolution of each pet’s weight was stored to detect significant changes that could lead to possible health problems. Regarding safety, the bed connects to the currentso you will have to be careful and hide the cable in case your pet is one of those who tends to bite them. Dreame highlights that it uses an integrated semiconductor system that offers a uniform temperature without the risk of direct contact. At the moment we do not know when it will go on sale in Spain, but they have announced that it will cost 199 euros. In Xataka | Humans aren’t the only ones obsessed with screens. Cats also enjoy them and even have their own ‘Catflix’

This is how going to bed with a full stomach affects sleep

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Closing the computer late, shuffling home and sitting down to dinner at ten at night. For us it is a picture of customs; For the rest of Europe, an incomprehensible eccentricity. However, the shock is not only cultural but also biological. Although our social “normality” dictates that dinner is served after dark, our body tells a very different story. Evolutionarily, our body is not designed to digest large amounts of food when the sun has set. It’s not just about counting the calories we put on the plate; The real problem, the one that acts as a real time bomb for our health, is what the clock ticks when we put the fork in our mouth. Eating dinner late is altering our metabolism, sabotaging our quality of sleep and, silently, increasing our cardiovascular risk. Your pancreas doesn’t know that in Spain they have late dinners. To understand this phenomenon, we must look to the chrononutritionan emerging field of study investigating the close relationship between food intake and circadian rhythms. Our body works like an orchestra perfectly synchronized by light and darkness. By eating dinner at odd hours we are desynchronizing “peripheral watches” of vital cells located in the pancreas or liver. Meal timing acts as a critical signal for these peripheral biological clocks, which can modulate the quality of our sleep by regulating the rhythm of our central clock. The immediate consequence is a drastic worsening of glucose tolerance and insulin secretion. When we really should be sleeping. Here the body comes into conflict. On the one hand, there is a large release of cortisol (the well-known stress hormone) and, on the other, the release of melatonin is delayed, which is the master key to falling asleep. In fact, large-scale data support this: comprehensive analyzes of chrononutrition patterns reveal that later meal times—including the first meal, middle meal, and last meal of the day—as well as greater number of meals, are directly associated with higher scores on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), which translates into a worse rest. Added to this is a problem purely mechanical: A reduced time gap between the last meal and bedtime can lead to a prolonged sleep latency period, that is, we toss and turn more before falling asleep. And digesting while lying down is the perfect recipe for the appearance of gastric reflux, a discomfort that can ruin anyone’s night. You eat the same as your early-rising neighbor and you gain more weight. According to the study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolismadults who eat dinner at 10:00 p.m. burn 10% less fat and suffer a 20% higher blood sugar spike than those who eat dinner at 6:00 p.m., even if both groups eat exactly the same and go to bed at the same time. Alexis Supan, dietician at the Cleveland Clinic, summed it up perfectly: “When you eat late at night you are going against your body’s circadian rhythm.” The natural limit should be marked by the beginning of melatonin secretion. The researcher Marta Garaulet, a world reference in chrononutrition, has already demonstrated that people who eat later at midday lose less weight than those who eat early, even when they consume the same calories, expend the same energy and sleep the same. The time alone makes the difference. The consequences of ignoring this limit go far beyond the scale. A study led by the institute ISGlobalbased on cohort NutriNet-Santé with more than 100,000 participants, concluded that dining after 9:00 p.m. It is associated with increased cardiovascular risk, especially impacting the risk of cerebrovascular disease in women. On an emotional level, a recent meta-analysis from 2025 details that eating late worsens the rhythms of key neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine, increasing the risk of depression. On top of that we hit the same clock twice. But there is a modern factor that makes this scenario worse: screens. Not only do we eat dinner late, but we do so under the beam of our cell phones. Light of any kind suppresses melatonin, but as you warn harvardthe blue night light does it in a much more powerful way, blocking it for twice as long as other lights and moving our circadian rhythms out of phase by up to three hours. Recent clinical studies have demonstrated that exposure to blue LED light significantly suppresses melatonin secretion after two hours of exposure and maintains this suppression over time. We have a late dinner and then look at our phones in bed: a combination that our biological clock simply cannot accommodate. Our children are headed towards the same error. The problem worsens when we look at the new generations. The magazine The Lancet has warned that Spain could be the fourth country in the world with the highest childhood obesity in 2050. The VALORNUT project of the Complutense University has shed light on this: Late dinners and very long “eating windows” in children translate into more improvised diets, with lower nutritional value and worse cholesterol profiles. Furthermore, 60% of these children sleep fewer hours. The experts’ recommendation it’s clear: concentrate all meals in a period of less than 12 hours. The solution is to adjust the clock. So when should we have dinner? The golden rule agreed upon by experts is to allow between three and four hours to pass between the last meal and the time of going to sleep. If we take the Spanish average of going to bed around 00:30, we should be finishing dinner, at the latest, at 21:00. Here it is important to qualify the context. We have been cushioning this metabolic blow in part for decades thanks to a cultural pillar: the Spanish Mediterranean diet tends to make dinner a much lighter meal than the midday meal, leaving the energy weight of the day in earlier hours. A late, heavy, ultra-processed dinner followed by a trip straight to bed is not the same as a light dinner with some physical activity before going to sleep. … Read more

Actigraph, the Brazilian bracelet that traveled to the Moon to monitor the sleep of NASA astronauts and that you can also use

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Rodrigo Trevisan Okamoto, the Brazilian engineer and founding partner of the company Condor Instruments, knew that it was very important for the Artemis scientists to monitor the sleep of their astronauts. He also knew that NASA had acquired several activity bracelets marketed by his company years ago, whose objective is precisely to analyze users’ sleep patterns in an exhaustive way. Still, the news he received on April 1 was a shock and a surprise. Shortly after the Artemis mission took off successfully towards the Moon, received an email stating that some of its astronauts were wearing one of its bracelets. A bracelet to monitor your sleep. Nowadays there are many watches and bracelets that analyze users’ sleep. However, that of Condor Instrumentscalled Actigraph, has a key difference, since it is capable of detecting different wavelengths of light and establishing patterns with sleep. Not all colors of light influence our sleep the same way.. Blue light is the one that inhibits our melatonin levels the most and therefore prevents us from sleeping. On the other hand, in the absence of ideal darkness, warm light is a better option when we go to sleep. That’s what this bracelet that the Artemis II crew worked with throughout the mission does. More information. The bracelet has 10 sensors in total to detect light at different wavelengths. As for sleep and rest patterns, they are analyzed using sensors that detect movement in the arms. Stillness is interpreted as rest and movement as wakefulness. However, we will all agree that this alone is not a good parameter. We can be very still, but awake. However, it also measures other parameters, such as body temperature, which does tend to drop when we are asleep. Everything is analyzed together. Both in heaven and on Earth. The Actigraph is useful for any type of person. You don’t have to be an astronaut to use an activity bracelet. However, this particular one is especially useful for astronauts because their light-dark cycles are not the same as here on Earth. For example, a night on the Moon lasts around two weeks. On the International Space Station, however, there are several sunrises and sunsets in a single day. For this reason, it is especially interesting to confront sleep patterns with light patterns. A history with NASA. It is well known that space is not the best place to fall asleep. Not only because of the light issue. Also because it is a very stressful situation and because, in general, there is not much room for intimacy. In addition, it appears that microgravity also affects sleep, although the exact causes have not yet been determined. For all this, in 2023 NASA decided to buy several Actigraph. The Artemis missions were just beginning and they wanted to start looking for ways to analyze astronauts’ sleep for when the first manned voyage took place. They even met with Okamoto several times. However, at no time was it confirmed that his watches were going to be used. There was a possibility, but he only received confirmation immediately after takeoff. It must have been a high almost as high as the one the astronauts experienced. Okay, maybe I’ve gone too far with the comparison, but surely news like this will feel good to anyone. Image | NASA/Condor Instruments In Xataka | The far side of the Moon hid an icy secret. We finally know why it is so different from what we see

Human beings evolved to breed in tribes and sleep in sections. We have tried to do exactly the opposite and it is costing us our health.

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It’s three in the morning, the light of a state-of-the-art baby monitor flickers in the darkness and an exhausted mother tries by all means to get her son to fall asleep again to finally achieve those long-awaited eight hours of sleep in one go. The room is full of amenities, but she feels a knot in her stomach. She is surrounded by technology, but feels more alone than ever. If you ask in your group of friends or on any internet forum how exhausting parenting is today, the answer is unanimous: “It is extremely exhausting and constant.” However, science and history tell us that our ancestors probably did not suffer from this level of sleep deprivation, much less this suffocating loneliness. And here comes the great paradox of our era. We might think that the problem is a lack of male involvement, but the data show a different picture. As we recently explained in Xatakaparents millennials Today they spend approximately four times more time caring for their children than parents of the generation of the baby boom. In countries like Spain, policies have taken a historic leap by equating paternity and maternity leave to 19 weeks. The father, culturally and legally, is at home. So why are parents still on the brink of collapse? The answer lies not in a lack of will, but in our biology: we are fighting a losing battle against millions of years of evolution. Human beings evolved to breed in tribes and sleep in sections. Our modern society demands exactly the opposite from us, and it is costing us our health. The end of the tribe and the ancestral dream To understand what has happened to us, we must look to the past. As he explains to the BBC evolutionary anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, the human species would never have survived if mothers had not had “alloparents”—grandmothers, uncles, older brothers, and other members of the community—to care for babies who were born extremely immature. Studies in traditional populations they confirm it: In hunter-gatherer groups such as those in the Congo Basin, babies spend much of the day in arms, with alternative caregivers to the mother providing up to 43% of the baby’s direct care. But not only the tribe has vanished; We have also altered our natural way of resting. In fact, the idea that we should have an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep It is a “modern invention”since before the Industrial Revolution and the arrival of artificial light, the biological pattern of humanity was the biphasic sleep or segmented: people slept for the first part at dusk, woke up in the early morning for a couple of hours (which they took advantage of to chat, pray or take care of the fire), and went back to sleep until dawn. In today’s industrial societies, waking up at three in the morning is diagnosed as insomnia and generates deep anxiety. However, when researchers examine current hunter-gatherer tribes — whose sleep patterns last between 5.7 and 7.1 hours and are full of microawakenings — discover something fascinating: They don’t consider it a problem. The loneliness epidemic and mental burden This break with our evolutionary past is having devastating consequences. In different investigations they talk that we are facing a true epidemic of isolation: today, 65% of parents feel lonelys, a figure that shoots up to 77% in the case of single-parent families. This “clinical loneliness” is not just a passing sadness. It is triggering Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (known in English as PMADs), which according to medical research affect up to 17.7% of mothers worldwide. Lack of support and isolation increase the risk of depression and cardiovascular problems. In its most extreme cases, psychiatric causes (including suicides and overdoses) have become one of the main causes of maternal mortality. A slab that disproportionately crushes single-parent families, racialized people or those at risk of exclusion and with financial stress, who lack the economic resources to outsource this care. And behind closed doors, the mirage of equality in the couple continues to take its toll. Although the modern father “helps” more than ever, the “mental load”—the planning, conception, and anticipation of family needs— continues to fall overwhelmingly on women. Researcher Eve Rodsky defines it perfectly: today’s mothers act as “project managers” where their partners are often “kind subordinates” waiting for instructions. The result is a burnout (professional burnout syndrome) applied to parenting. Curiously, this parental hyperpresence, born of anxiety, is also harming the little ones. The so-called “helicopter parents”, who fly over their children’s every movement to avoid frustration, are impeding the neurological development of their prefrontal cortex (in charge of solving problems). As studies warnthis has caused psychiatric admissions of adolescents for anxiety and depression disorders to skyrocket at an alarming rate. The verdict of science If we look for culprits for this epidemic of fatigue, science gives us a key clue. In modern societies, between 10% and 30% of people live with chronic insomnia. But if we look at current hunter-gatherer communities (such as the Hadza, the San or the Tsimane), this problem is practically a myth: it barely touches 2%. University of California (UCLA) researcher Jerome Siegel summed it up very well in the pages of Scientific American: The problem is that we have erased the natural regulators of sleep from the map. By living locked up, we no longer let our body feel the nighttime drop in temperature, an essential biological brake for rest. For his part, David Samson, evolutionary anthropologist interviewed by the BBCargues that it is our rigid expectation of perfect sleep that fatigues us. Samson lived with the Hadza tribe in Tanzania and found that its members consider their sleep “good” despite waking up frequently. Instead of getting up, turning on lights, and looking at the clock, they simply accept waking up as natural. This vision links with the proposal of James McKenna and Lee Gettler, anthropologists at the University of Notre Dame. As they explain in their own studyhave … Read more

The problem with eating chocolate at 11 at night is not the calories, it is what it does to your sleep

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There are people who follow authentic rituals before going to sleep, such as a good shower to release all the tension of the day, but also take a little black chocolate so you can sweeten your mouth before going to sleep. A practice that for many is something that is an aberration, but to know if it is really a bad idea to do it, we have to turn to science and the studies that exist about chocolate. A principle against. For the detractors of nighttime chocolate, the enemy is not sugar as such, but the chocolate itself and how rich it is in the methylxanthineswhich are alkaloids that stimulate the central nervous system. And here are two that stand out above others, such as the caffeinewhich is quite well known, and theobromine, which is the main stimulant in dark chocolate. Here the scientific reviews they point that these substances act by blocking the receptors where adenosine binds to act. And it is no wonder, because adenosine is the molecule that it accumulates in our brain throughout the day to generate “sleep pressure.” But if methylxanthines block the point where they have to bind to act, the brain does not receive the signal that it is tired. Your problem. Although it is true that theobromine is “milder” than caffeine, its half-life in the body is long. This means that that 11pm chocolate could still be blocking your desire to sleep at 2am, increasing sleep latency and causing more nighttime awakenings. The importance of time. Science has now stopped looking only at calories to focus on chrononutrition, since it is suggested that chocolate influences circadian rhythms depending on the time at which it is taken. Here the studies they point Because chocolate can be a great ally to resynchronize the biological clock if it is consumed during the active phase in the morning, but taking it outside of this phase, when the body is preparing for rest, makes it difficult to synchronize our peripheral clocks. In short, we are sending contradictory signals to the body. Not everything is negative. In science there are not only extremes, but we can find a great spectrum of grays in the middle. This is because there is also evidence that qualifies the message that chocolate causes insomnia, because in animal models cocoa can improve certain sleep disorders induced by chronic stress. This suggests that, in high-stress contexts, the antioxidant and neuroprotective components of cocoa could help adjust the sleep-wake rhythm. However, researchers warn that this benefit is observed when cocoa is part of the general diet, not necessarily when it is consumed as a “bomb” of sugar and stimulants just before turning off the light. It is not universal. The effect of chocolate does not occur in everyone in the same way, meaning that each person can experience it differently, depending on the amount of chocolate consumed and also on sensitization. We must keep in mind that each person metabolizes at a different rate, so there will be people who can eat a lot of chocolate and these molecules will not affect them at all. Images | freepik In Xataka | Something strange is happening with the chocolate crisis in Spain: households consume less, but business improves

Drink water right before going to sleep? Science has finally clarified whether it is a good idea or a terrible enemy of sleep

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Before going to sleep, some people may have an almost standardized ritual in which they should drink one or two glasses of water, and also have a backup on the bedside table in case they get thirsty in the middle of the night. But there are also many questions about whether it is positive to drink water before sleeping for eight hours or if it is counterproductive by forcing us to get up in the middle of the night. And here science has something to say. It has benefits. What is clearly known is that during the night our body does not go into a total pause, but rather continues with an active metabolism even though it is attenuated. That is why we lose approximately half a liter of water simply due to evaporation when breathing and sweating, and to compensate for this, hydration can be the best ally. It is investigated. A Japanese studio published this same year analyzed a group of middle-aged men to conclude that drinking 280 ml of water just before going to bed significantly reduces morning depressive mood and improves well-being upon waking up. But it is not the only one, because a 2025 crossover trial with 15 healthy adults found a relationship between drinking fluids before sleeping and the duration and quality of sleep. REM phasewhich is what makes us truly rest. And it makes sense, because adequate hydration favors the release of vasopressin, a key hormone for regulating the biological clock and preventing tissue dehydration during deep sleep. And it is essential, because it can translate into less fatigue and headaches in the morning. He has problems. It will not always be beneficial to have this habit, since the main enemy of drinking water at night is nocturiawhich is the need to wake up to urinate during the night. And although the total time we spend awake is not drastically altered, because it is only a few minutes, there is an interruption in sleep. It depends on the quantity. Logically, drinking a glass of water is not the same as drinking a whole bottle before going to sleep. That is why when you go over half a liter of water there is a possibility that some pre-existing problems such as chronic insomnia will worsen or even increase the risk of falls when getting up in the dark. How to do it. There are a series of tips that we can follow to stay hydrated during sleep and they are summarized in the following points: You should limit yourself to drinking around a quarter of a liter of water in the final part of the day to avoid overfilling your bladder. The last glass of water should be drunk two hours before going to sleep. Maintain good hydration throughout the day to avoid reaching the end of the day with a major hydration problem. Images | krakenimages.com on Freepik In Xataka | There are people obsessed with magnesium as a supplement when the best way is to put it directly into your diet

The developers who get the most out of AI are also the ones who sleep the least: it’s called "AI psychosis"

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Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI and who coined the term vibe codinghas been in what he describes as a state of “AI psychosis” since December. He works 16 hours a day directing swarms of code agents. And he admits that he feels “extremely nervous” when he has left tokens without consuming at the end of the month. This has been admitted in an interview with Sarah Guo. It is not an isolated case but rather the pattern that is beginning to repeat itself among the developers who get the most out of this type of agents. Why is it important. The dominant narrative about AI has been that of unlimited productivity and the famous “10x“What is beginning to be documented is its dark side: the most intensive users are also those who show the most worrying signs of behavioral deterioration. And they are not anecdotal profiles. Garry Tan, CEO of an entire Y Combinator, has called his own experience “cyber psychosis“. A CTO picked up by Axios says he needs prescription medication to sleep. If the most productive tools in history generate the same patterns in their most intensive users as games of chance, the debate about the impact of AI at work enters another dimension. In Xataka Having an AI on my phone that works without an Internet connection is more useful than I thought: this way you can start it Between the lines. Karpathy’s nervousness at the tokens Being left unused is the behavioral signature of someone who has internalized scarcity as a threat, exactly the same mechanism that keeps a gambler hooked on a slot machine. Developer Armin Ronacher talked about this in January: “Many of us fell into code addiction with agents. We barely slept, we built incredible things.” The context. Agents like Claude Code either Codex from OpenAI do not work like a chatbot that is asked a question. They operate autonomously for hours, writing, testing, and deploying code while the developer monitors, fixes, and re-delegates. The promise is enormous and so is the cognitive cost: the human brain is not designed to supervise processes that advance at machine speed during 16-hour days. {“videoId”:”x9f93vm”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”Claude Code Presentation”, “tag”:””, “duration”:”234″} Yes, but. Programmers have always had a reputation for working in marathons of concentration. Sleepless nights before a launch are part of industry folklore. What distinguishes this phenomenon is its compulsive nature and its continuity: it is not the specific pressure of a deadlinebut an activation that does not turn off when the job ends, because with an agent that can keep running, the job never completely ends. In Xataka |I have lived the “miracle” of vibe coding: this is how I programmed an Android TV app without having any idea about programming Featured image | Anthropic (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news The developers who get the most out of AI are also the ones who sleep the least: it’s called “AI psychosis” was originally published in Xataka by Javier Lacort .

We have been obsessed with measuring deep sleep with a watch for years. Science says what matters is dreaming vividly

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The reality is that waking up feeling like you’ve fallen asleep like a dormouse is one of the greatest pleasures in life, since it makes you start the day in a very different way. Until now, sleep science has told us that to achieve that feeling of rest we had to maximize deep sleepbut now the rarity and the intensity of dreams They are also gaining a starring role here. A new study. A recent published research in the prestigious magazine PLOS Biology by an Italian team has revealed that vivid and immersive dreams are directly related to a greater subjective sense of deep sleep. And most fascinating: this occurs even when the brain’s electrical activity tells us that we are in a phase of light sleep. How they have done it. To reach this conclusion, the researchers did not settle for morning surveys, but rather They took 44 adults healthy people to a sleep laboratory for four consecutive nights. Here they simply had to be connected to a high-density electroencephalogram to monitor their brain activity in real time. The methodology used was quite methodical, since all of them were awakened repeatedly, reaching the figure of 1,900 awakenings in total throughout the entire study. But they were not waking them up at any time, but rather sleep phase N2 which is what belongs to non-REM sleep and is what is considered relatively light sleep, where the biological need to sleep usually decreases as the night progresses. But the important thing is that, after each awakening, the participants had to describe their previous mental experiences and rate, from 1 to 10, how deep they felt their sleep had been just before opening their eyes. The result. By crossing the data from the dream stories with the EEG activity and the subjective perception of the participants, the scientists found a pattern that indicated that when the participants reported vivid, strange dreams, with high emotional intensity or very visually rich, they reported having been immersed in a very deep sleep. In contrast, if the mental activity before waking up was abstract, vague, or the participants had “meta-awareness,” which is thinking about real problems or being aware that they were sleeping, they felt that their sleep had been very superficial. A change. In this way, this sensation of dreamlike depth challenged the electroencephalograms themselves. And the fact is that, although the EEG showed that the participant’s brain activity was dangerously close to wakefulness, if he was immersed in an intense dream plot, his brain interpreted that he was resting peacefully. Memory doesn’t matter. One of the most interesting details of the study points to a situation that can be frustrating: waking up knowing that you had an incredible dream, but unable to remember the entire plot. Here the scientific study demonstrates that narrative memory is not necessary for rest, since the participants continued to rate their sleep as deep and restorative despite not remembering it. In this way, the simple fact that the brain has been “disconnected” from the physical environment and immersed in its own virtual world seems to be enough to preserve the subjective perception of rest. What does it mean? This discovery opens the door to new treatments for sleep disorders, since, in the case of insomnia, the problem could not only be in the clinical architecture of sleep, but in an alteration of dream activity or a lack of mental disconnection from the environment. And this is precisely where science has to begin to investigate. Images | iam_os In Xataka | Waking up at 3 in the morning is totally normal: sleeping straight through is a modern invention, not an evolution

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