Drink some tea, get comfy in bed, read an actual printed-on-paper book, don’t interact with anything digital. Give it an hour.
Might work!
As I said, one of the primary Twitter recommendations on snoring was to exercise and lose weight. I believe them.
Depends on the person. For me, my apnea and snoring are definitely weight related. That isn’t the case for everyone.
Sleep is a weird thing. When you don’t want to sleep one can’t stay awake, and when you desperately want to sleep your brain won’t let you - at least that’s how it goes for my Dad and I.
These are the suggestions my sleep psychologist is having me adhere to. It was starting to work before I went into the hospital. Some day in the future I’d like to go to sleep naturally but as I recently discovered, even a minor dose change (12.5mg Ambien CR down to 10 mg non CR) causes me to go days without sleep which is awful.
Keep in mind these may not be applicable to anyone else, but I wanted to mention in case someone could find them helpful.
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- If you can’t fall asleeep within 30 minutes, get out of bed and do something, anything that is not work related that won’t rev your mind up. Read a book, watch some tv on the couch, play a computer game, do something relaxing. When you start to feel a touch of sleepiness head back to bed.
The theory goes, the longer you’re in bed not sleeping, the more you’re conditioning your mind to understand the bed is something outside of a sleeping function.
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Set devices to use a night shift mode an hour before you would like to go to bed. iPads have this setting which cuts down on blue wavelengths. While it makes device screens easier to see, the brightness caused by full spectrum and especially intense blue light shuts down melatonin production in the brain. Lead time is necessary as we naturally evolved to see a dimming effect and it takes time to release melatonin.
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Take a melatonin tablet an hour before bed. We use Sundown because they supposedly use a 3rd party inafilliated lab to test their products contents and dosage.
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If you have trouble breathing, a fan passing air over your face does slightly increase the Oxygen levels. I never tried to look up the study, but I’d have to assume it is because it’s moving CO2 laden air away from your head faster than stagnant air does.
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If you need something audibly distracting but water or nature sounds don’t offer enough, use a tv show featuring the voicework of people you like for that distraction. For me it’s Venture Brothers, or several BBC comedies. Set to season 1 ep 1, turn the brightness all the way down and let it play. Thankfully my wife likes this too. I’d never be able to sleep if I had to sleep in silent darkness. Freaks me out psychologically. I’m not scared of the dark, but I am with my own thoughts that won’t settle down.
Someone mentioned NyQuil - if anyone does this be careful as it can be addicting. Jane Lynch did this and she needed more and more. She ended up drinking 3 full bottles a night. But she was an alcoholic decades before and did not realize NyQuil had the alcohol content it does. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/white-noise/is-nyquil-a-drug-of-choice/
It has a lovely side effect (for me, anyway) of giving me a relaxed, floaty feeling…almost like being on a low-dose of nitrous.
Fixed that for you. Keep your sound on, turn your screen off, float downstream. I mean, watching is relaxing too so, y’know, feel free to keep the screen on.
There were two things that helped me wind down when my mind was still thrashing around after an 8+ hour shift waiting on at a busy restaurant:
- sitting in a room with a ticking clock (not something I’d ever sleep to, but the rhythm settled me)
- and flicking over to watch The Joy of Painting.
I swear Bob was talking to me and only me at that time of the night. His presence and voice and manner was so utterly calming. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that he’s become the ASMR king.
I have had trouble sleeping my whole life, but those issues disappeared by simply leaving all my family and friends behind and going to a foreign, utterly stressful environment, it seems. I cannot being to understand why I sleep without much troubles anymore (maybe it’s a flight?), but I am thinking that “easy” sleep might not be of the best quality.
I had no idea that ASMR was a thing, much less a documented one.
So this is what was happening to me everytime my mother was vacuumcleaning the condo! Always put me to sleep, even at 40, right away, even in the middle of the day.
And that Bob Ross fellow. Wow. Triggered it almost right away.
I have been trying to control my anger with deep breathing techniques this year, with some results, but not optimal. I am trying the 4-7-8 method @magnet recommends starting today.
Have you tried the 4-7-8 breathing technique?
A lot of friends of mine with trouble falling asleep, especially the “night thinkers” says this help them. A lot.
Neither did I until my friend mentioned it about a year or so ago! He’s really into all that stuff and it seems both he and my girlfriend get those tingles associated with ASMR. I don’t think I do, but I still find Bob Ross hypnotic and incredibly relaxing so it was fascinating to hear he was highly regarded in the ASMR community for various reasons. Accidental pioneer indeed!
My trick for falling asleep is to wear a knit cap and pull it down over my eyes. It blocks out all light and is warm and comforting.
Oh, see a few others recommended it as well =)
I’d tink - and I’ll have to test this myself - that it’s good for high bloodpressure caused by stress as well.
My wife does that, but the heat would fry my head and brain. Maybe literally LOL. My temperature regulation has been wildly off since I spent time in a coma however. I went from temps of 106-107F for days to 96F as they battled the infection and deep coma set in.
The last time I ran out, I went to Walgreens and got whatever brand they sell there. Suddenly I have to take 3 times as much. Ugh. I guess you have to stick to the same brand because you have no idea what they’re actually putting in it.
There is little quality control and no oversight of nearly all of these companies. I’m trying to find the articles, but there was a huge scandal where it was found the makers of Centrum or One-a-Day and many other multivitamins manufacturers concentrations were so far off they were a danger to people (and some of ingredients were totally missing). Either I’m bad at Google or the relevant companies have done a great job of burying those stories. It was major news in the science world at the time and I think CBS or NBC News even covered it as well.
That’s actually historically pretty normal sleep behavior. Historically pre-industrial humans would sleep for half the night, then wake up for a few hours, then go back to sleep. Medieval society even had names for the late night waking hours:
I have spent most of my night and some of my morning again chilling out with Bob. It’s just a wonderful time. The sound and feel of the brush and knife too: it makes me want to grab a brush for the first time in my whole life!
I thought it would hurt, but seeing as aware as I am of the loss of my daily nature escapades since moving to pipecity, him emphasing his love of those sights actually make me eager to experience it again, instead of bitter of my loss.
It was for “nutritional supplements”
The authorities said they had conducted tests on top-selling store brands of herbal supplements at four national retailers — GNC, Target, Walgreens and Walmart — and found that four out of five of the products did not contain any of the herbs on their labels. The tests showed that pills labeled medicinal herbs often contained little more than cheap fillers like powdered rice, asparagus and houseplants, and in some cases substances that could be dangerous to those with allergies.
Nutritional supplement industry got their laws passed in 80s and 90s. They can do whatever they want. It’s only when someone dies AND someone from the public complains that the FDA can even investigate (like Ephedra?)
The thing is, as nice as his voice is and all those sounds you get with him painting and scraping and ‘beating the devil’ out of the brush, watching his scenes emerge from the canvas and hearing his little stories and comments and the love for what he’s doing is really comforting in itself. There’s absolutely nothing negative in the show, it’s like a warm blanket. I’m glad you’ve been enjoying it! :-)