And for general mental health! I have epilepsy from a brain tumour extraction and the symptoms produced by my anti-epileptics are severe if I’ve lost even a few hours of sleep, and I have an increased risk of seizing, but with a well maintained sleep routine I basically have no symptoms.
Wow, that's really interesting. I have a history of Traumatic Brain Injuries. Unfortunately that affects my sleep. I've also spent much of my life in sleep deprivation b/c of being in survival mode, and the schedule it required (grad and law school where I slept 2-3 hours night/2-3 nights/week)...
....but.....and I actually wrote a grad school thesis on this topic.....exercise is the number one thing that helps mitigate the Traumatic Brain Injury Symptoms. I describe it as mental lubrication where before working out I'm foggy/hazy, emotionally sluggish/weepy/depressed, less sharp/lucid....
....and after the workout I'm exponentially better. I describe the experience as being similar to a water soluble lubricant....where prior to working out it my mind is like a dehydrated, gummed up, sticky tacky water soluble lubricant....
....but after working out it's like rehydrating the lubricant...it's slick.....and my mind/emotions are quick/sharp/lucid, etc.
I’ve noticed the same, purely anecdotal, of course. Did your grad school thesis get any traction? Though I’d love to go to grad school, it didn’t seem to be in the cards for me at the time, so I’m unfamiliar with how a thesis written at this level is received.
It was just a Masters program thesis. Actually a dry run prep course (2017) for the end of the program thesis...which ended up being "confirmation bias in the age of Trump" (2018). That was the first time I tried to incorporate my theories on dopamine in politics, but the advisor made me remove it.
....because "that would take a whole career to study, and we don't have the time or resources". Obviously, I've incorporated a lot of that into my public writing/speaking since. I actually had a really hard time finding a brain injury population to study. I was struggling with my own symptoms...
....particularly social anxiety/isolation. So having to pursue human interaction was really difficult. It didn't help that many support groups are understandably very protective of their TBI members, and don't want them to be exploited. At the suggestion of a professor I sought out a support group
on Facebook. I was incredibly moved reading the personal stories on the site of people. It was the first time that I had encountered people who were struggling with what I had struggle with, with people who had their relationships destroyed because family members couldn't understand our experience
I was so moved that I wrote a 7300 word introduction/explanation of my experiences of dealing with changes in brain functioning/personality...while trying to navigate a Cluster B wife/divorce...and all of the pathological dishonesty/alternate realities/revisionist histories that accompanying that.