Ask HN: Do you sleep better by the ocean?
I always sleep better by the ocean. My RHR drops 5-10 beats, and I wake up feeling much more relaxed. Am I alone?
What causes this effect? Is it negative ions? Clean air? Ocean sound? I’ve tried with the windows closed, and the effect holds. I’ve tried it on and off vacation, and the effect holds. So I’m really at a loss for what it could be.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadOcean is also very calming.
BTW. I was trying to "replicate it" in city with various dolby atmos etc. gimmicks and headphones/etc. and without any similar results.
Mother nature
But my guess is that we're in a womb of water for 9 months so subconsciously are soothed by it. Personal anecdotal evidence is any time I've slept where i could hear ocean/rain/rivers I've had great sleep.
Would 100% move to Hawaii in the future
I wish you best of luck in chasing your dream but I feel compelled to tell you that the word is that in non-tourist areas there is some pretty heavy racism going on against non-islanders. It is based on them (you) driving up property prices and basic goods availability.
Maybe you already knew but still.
Sounds like where I am now. Near as I can tell, nobody wants my generation to settle anywhere, because we "drive up" property prices. Like we want to pay $1M for a home, or had any hand in the local zoning idiocracy.
The issue isn't that rich people buy homes in rich areas, it's that they buy homes in poor areas and poor people can no longer afford to.
No they are 'forced' to buy a home.
The home that fulfills their needs is 1M. If they could find a home that fulfilled their needs for $5 and 10c they would spend $5.10 on their home.
The 'poor' person who sold their house to them in the poor area for $1mil ('where back in my day a house cost nothing') now has $1mil. The 'rich' person has a mortgage.
I live in a country where $900/mo is considered a good salary. New 120 m^2 flats in my city now cost $600k because people from abroad have come in, bought stuff and raised prices. What are regular people here, who have no "houses to sell", supposed to do? Move away from the place they've lived for decades because people from rich countries are "forced" to buy a home?
Has nobody heard of gentrification?
But they could afford before the gentrificaion.
They were not buying assets when they could afford them, they certainly are not buying assets now that they can not afford them. As you have written them off as "poor" for all eternity then they will never be able to afford them.
Therefore the purchase price of the property in question is entirely irrelevant to your poor person, those flats could be $6, $600k, or $6mil they are not buying them.
I get the frustration with gentrification. But what's the alternative? Everyone must live and die in the town/city in which they were born? What's more, if nobody is coming to your town to live/work, it just slowly declines as the population ages out of work. Visit some of the old mining towns in the UK to see what that's like.
At least if you have a steady stream of incoming "rich people", then the entrepreneurial folk in the town have a chance at extracting some of that wealth.
But that's fine, poor people shouldn't be alive anyway.
It is unfair that I can not get a 12 bedroom detached house on the upper west side of New York, where I was born and raised for $50,000. I demand someone gives it to me.
So it is not socialism but common sense to call for residency zoning area reserved for workers.
In tourist zones this is normal: from Alps to Mediterranean. But if you mention big cities suddenly nobody ever heard of workers working there only landlords and retail shops.
And I am not talking across the street where you work I am talking 1h commute area around industrial zone rejecting cheap apartments and building gated communities where one foreign firm can buy all 128 houses at once.
If we can talk against concert ticket/ps5/3070ti scalping and overcharging we can talk about housing without being mocked at and called greedy lazy socialist. I just dont wanna live in a shoe box or be 3h in traffic every day.
> If we can talk against concert ticket/ps5/3070ti scalping and overcharging
I was able to buy a ps4 on release for $399.99. How is it fair that they want $499 for a ps5. Is this really equivalent?
There is a difference between my lament for a $1M on the outskirts of a city that has maybe 3 bed being cheaper, and wishing for a 12 bed for $50k in literal Manhattan.
I am glad that you are finally speaking sensibly. /s
If covid has taken anything from me, it is the opportunity to go do that. The river is by an archaeological site, so it is cordoned off most of the time. I want to return to see the tree, and the river, and to sleep by it. I don't know when I'll be able to do so.
There's been a few studies that show as PM2.5 goes up people sleep less, I assume because they sleep better so need less sleep.
I'm totally speculating based on my years living at high altitude, but if you also mostly reside at a higher altitude, you are acclimated to less oxygen, which could decrease your rate when you change to a location with more. If that were the reason, you could expect to see your RHR go back up to "normal" after a few weeks at sea level.
Or it could be something completely unrelated, I just didn't see this in your list of possible causes.
I looked into the negative ion thing a few years ago, and there does appear to be something to it. It seems it can have a positive impact on the lungs, which actually handle more than just breathing. Serotonin is inactivated in the lungs, so in theory negative ions could help reduce circulating serotonin, which could have a mood boosting effect. This is of course if you buy into the argument that serotonin is not so much the happy chemical but the chemical of stress [1].
https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/serotonin-depression-a...
There are several other things that make a beach inconvenient for hunting, e.g. large open spaces which compromise stalking behaviors, sand/water slows you down, tall skinny palm trees equipped with coconuts that serve as projectiles which land predators can’t climb but primates can.
I would imagine that there’s a similar explanation related to ease of hunting that could explain why rain sounds are calming.