I am the opposite, I can fall asleep fine, I just can’t sleep for more than 4-5 hours before I am wide awake. Read sleep books and went to a sleep doctor, and still can’t fix it (insurance wouldn’t pay for a sleep test). I used to be a heavy beer drinker (3-6 a night for 20+ years), so I think that is what mostly killed it for me. I sleep like a drinker now, fall asleep easy and wake up early feeling tired. The sleep doctor said that I might have permanently damaged my brain chemistry. I also went to an allergist and found out I am extremely allergic to dust mites which has created a whole other problem that seems impossible to fix short of moving to a low humidity area.
So now I live my life always tired which is probably going to lead to a whole new set of health problems.
Anyway, the point is, I would avoid the a few beers a night thing because you don’t want to get into a habit with it. Somewhere it goes from just a couple of beers a night to not being able to imagine not having a couple of beers a night.
I don’t think that anyone has mentioned stretching yet, so I will. Doing yoga-like stretching, especially stretching my spine, makes me yawn like crazy when it’s bedtime.
Best bet there would be hard liquors. Winners according to quick googling are Everclear (no surprise, if you could stomach it) with Smirnoff unflavored vodkas not too far behind in the alcohol/calorie department.
And one drink a day is probably good for you by most science out there. It’s going past that where the problems tend to crop up.
As far as no calories, that just wont exist for something your body will actually process. Everclear is basically just alcohol and water and still has a fair number because alcohol has calories. Nyquil has them as well, actually a lot more of them per unit of alcohol (it’s only like 20 proof or something).
You could probably find some drug that does it but there will likely be side effects. I’ve taken a few different things that made me drowsy and probably amount to no real calorie intake since they’re tiny pills, but I wouldn’t say it simulates alcohol per se.
That’s me. If I wake up after 3 or 4 hours, which I often do, I get revved up with anxiety over this or that and I’m wide awake. Sitting here now after going to sleep at 11:30 and waking up at 3:00. It sucks.
Ill second the suggestion regarding doing a sleep study. If you are snoring and have issues sleeping, there’s a good chance you have sleep apnea. After years of this issue I finally took my doctor’s advice and did a sleep study. They found I was having over 50 apnea events an hour. Now you don’t necessarily wake up all of the time, at least not completely but it does interrupt your sleep cycle making it hard to get consistent quality sleep. I have been using cpap therapy now for about three months. It is definitely making a major difference. It used to take me at least an hour to actually fall asleep, now I’m out within 15 minutes and Ill sleep soundly. It also has stopped my snoring and my throat no longer drys out during the nite. Ill admit wearing a cpap mask at nite takes some getting used to but so far the benefits make it worth it. For what its worth, I also started using my Echo to play natural sounds while I sleep. I put rain storms and ocean wave sounds on a loop and those have really helped me fall asleep as well.
Does the Echo play natural sounds until you tell it to stop, or does it stop automatically after awhile? I was thinking of trying some sort of white noise, but since I wake up after a few hours I need something that won’t turn off.
Just to say, but the total combination of symptoms wumpus is reporting don’t really sync up with apnea well. Yeah, he snores, but reportedly sleeps straight through the night and feels rested in the morning, which are basically never gonna happen with serious sleep apnea. Trust me, I know :-(
Also, Jeff, regarding the repeated melatonin suggestion you say you had limited success with, remember that melatonin is a very precise tool, not a bludgeon. Lots of bottles easily found in supermarkets are very high dose and intended to knock you out with an unnatural flood of hormones. It works better, albeit with more effort and research on your part, in very small doses that slowly nudge your body towards the sleep cycle you desire. These low dose solutions are best combined with other techniques mentioned here like developing a nighttime routine, avoiding bright lights and caffeine for several hours before bed, using the bedroom only for sleeping, exercise, etc.
The idea being to allow your body’s natural inclination to quickly and reliably slip into restful sleep at the same time everyday to reassert itself over the stresses, ailments, and/or bad habits that have overwhelmed that.
Oh, and do remember that research shows generally that the older we get, the less sleep we need and the harder it becomes to achieve, unfortunately. Habits and activities you could shrug off and sleep easily despite ten years ago can lead to serious insomnia as you get older.
I also thought I was “sleeping soundly through the night” and “waking up feeling rested” in the morning. I thought it was highly unlikely I had sleep apnea, and it turned out I was waking up 65 times per hour. The point is, sleep apnea happens so gradually, people can be powerfully deluded about how they’re actually sleeping.
Here’s something I wrote about it:
I’d recommend literally anyone who snores at least mentioning it to their doctor, as opposed to trying to diagnose themselves. Finding out I had sleep apnea was literally the best thing that happened to me since I got married: it’s like, one simple diagnosis, and then all of a sudden, literally everything in your life is better–even things you already thought were pretty good.
I just kind of scanned though this so I might be repeating some stuff…
The sleep apnea thing is real and carries dangers way worse than just trouble sleeping. If you snore a lot you should at least talk to your doctor about it.
A full dose of Benadryl actually keeps me awake, but if I take only 1/2 of 1 tablet it does help - but your body will likely get used to it after a few days. Probably only a short-term occasional help.
What I have read about alcohol is that it ups your metabolism 4-5 hours down the road as your liver processes it. If your trouble is just falling asleep then probably not a problem, but it can make waking up during the night worse. Plus beer makes me have to get up to pee.
Overall, the behavioral approach is bound to best. I guess a lot of that would be in the link from Ephraim. One tip I got from my doctor that I hadn’t read before is to only try to fall asleep for 10 minutes at a time. Get up, do something else (I usually just sit in a chair in a dark quiet room). I also had to do more like 15 minutes, because I was keeping myself awake just trying to keep track of if it had been 10 minutes yet…
As for the ‘want the effect of beer without the beer’ - the idea of getting into a good routine is that you will be freed from the feeling that you “need something” to help you fall asleep.
Sleep studies are expensive, even with insurance, and have some stigma to it, but I’ve recently found it’s completely worth it. It may not address the falling asleep as much as quality of sleep, but that quality of sleep made a real difference in my energy level throughout the day.
There are lots of factors that can affect the act of falling of sleep or quality of sleep and so many of them have negative perception issues.
Stress, well there are just tons of articles and loud mouths out there telling people how weak they are if they don’t handle stress well, and even then, what does that even look like. If you socialize, work hard, do well and your stress or inability to turn your mind off at night keeps you up does that suddenly mean you you don’t handle stress? You don’t have to look very far to see the blame game with anxiety and depression. Throw in some snoring and restlessness at night, people make assumption about your exercise habits, your motivation and might examine your diet just for fun. Top it off with not all sleep is equal, so number of hours might turn into weird debates about how someone is lucky to get x number of hours of sleep even if the other person gets more REM.
I am certainly no expert in this area. This was a recent change for me, but I found going to a pulmonologist , doing a sleep study, and the treatment absolutely made a difference. It hasn’t cured the turn the brain off problem so I can sleep sooner, but when I do sleep, it really is better sleep and I don’t feel like I am crawling out of the grave every morning, and occasionally I wake up before my alarm… which hasn’t happened for me in almost 20 years.
Wait isn’t this a mask you have to wear on your face every night?
Yeah one time in high school I got a weird overnight shift at Safeway grocery store and the first thing I noticed was the procession of very old people coming in at the crack of dawn in the morning.
Not stigma but as I understand it you need to sleep at some facility which is not great for people like me with multiple small kids in their family and two working parents.
There are a variety of masks, not all of them full facial masks nor are full facial masks always needed. The machines themselves vary a bit but they’re kind of the size of a, well a VHS rewinder comes to mind but also maybe like a shoebox.
I regularly can’t fall asleep.
I often can’t fall asleep even when I feel tired.
Once asleep, I generally sleep through the night just fine.
It’s nearly impossible for me to wake up early in the morning.
Pulling an all-nighter is surprisingly easy for me.
I generally direct my lifestyle to avoid morning commitments.
Sound familiar anyone?
Doing it ‘right’ is getting 30 minutes of very bright light in the morning, artificial or natural, and getting little to no light in the hours leading up to sleep. You can browse the web with a light shining right into your eyes, go outside for a walk in the sun, whatever. Then do the opposite at night. The only way to do this effectively without turning all your lights/electronics is to wear glasses the block all the blue light. Using Flux or Windows night mode or whatever reduces eye strain but it’s like a 5% as powerful compared to wearing good glasses that block it. The specific lights in this blog post are kind of weak IMO, but the general concept is good.
This is a total pain in the ass, yes.
One way to predict whether taking such drastic measures might help is to think back in your memory – what were the times when you fell asleep easily? Did you go to any summer camps as a child? Have you ever gone camping as an adult? Have you even had a multi-day power outage and noticed you were falling asleep faster? Those situations are giving you light treatment by happenstance, so if you found improvement in those situations, you can try to replicate this effect in your every day life.
Yes, these are generally safe but the tolerance rate is ridiculous. I never take them more than two days in a row, then take a week off. It’s very easy to get to a point where taking two just brings you back to your baseline.
Yup, evidence suggest smaller doses of melatonin are most effective. Like 1mg delayed release over the night (and some people cut that in half).
On the apnea thing, if you know you snore a lot, it’s a better-safe-than-sorry situation. They can give you a take-home version of the sleep test which will generally find obvious cases and lets you sleep at home on your own schedule, it just monitors heart rate, breath sounds, snoring sounds, and chest expansion from breaths. And then if that’s positive, you go in for a full sleep study with the full system. The full study is terrible for us night owls because they expect you to go to sleep at like 10PM, but they can tell a lot even if you only sleep for a short period.
You get used to mask as long as you use it regularly. I switch between a nasal mask and a nasal pillow mask as necessary (sometimes the nasal pillows irritate the nose so I switch to the other). The only thing that bothers me is sometimes i move and the mask slips and the air leak can wake you up. But…I used to wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and now I do not.
BTW, waking up repeatedly due to the urge to urinate is another sign of sleep apnea. I used to think it happened because I am getting old but losing breaths actually causes adrenaline to discharge which wakes you up. That has stopped for me.
