During a stressful part of my life recently I struggled with getting to sleep. I just couldn't stop thinking about shit that was going on.
until one night I fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV, and it occurred to me that I could just modify this behaviour to bed.
So I put a handful of old Star Trek episodes on my phone. Each night I put me earphones on (so as not to disturb my wife), turn on an episode of Star Trek, and I am asleep within the first five minutes. ... I can even repeat episodes... it doesnt even matter since Im asleep within literally 5mins.
At first the earphones were annoying, but after a week you dont even notice them.
The stress at work continues, but I sleep like a baby.
I think the familiarity of Star Trek (which I watched a lot as a kid) gives me a subconsious sense of security.
Lack of sleep ages you, makes you overweight, and susceptible to many health issues. Here's what I did to get enough sleep:
* Make sure every monitor/portable device is using Redshift / Night Light blue light filter.
* Set a "sleep alarm" After which no work on a screen. Only reading books/audiobooks
* 0.5mg of Melatonin helps sleep naturally (more gives trippy dreams)
* AVOID sleeping pills (they're more addictive than crack)
* Exercise 3-5 times a week
* Get some natural sunlight during the day
Using melatonin properly completely changed how I sleep. I used to have trouble falling asleep and waking up in the morning, so my sleep schedule would drift back to the point where I would be late to work because I was falling asleep at 4am. I followed the advice of this article[1] and got my sleep schedule back on track. TLDR:
* I take 0.3mg at 7:00pm with the goal of falling asleep at 11:00pm
* Redshift always on at 4500k, turns to 2500k at 10:00pm
I still use a screen until the moment I fall asleep, and I probably don't get enough sunlight. However the changes listed are sufficient for me at least.
Not properly tried this before, but I'd imagine if it was interesting I'd want to stay awake and listen to it or find out more information... if it's boring I'd just be annoyed by the noise. Maybe bore myself to sleep?
I prefer science and history, not stories or news. Interesting enough to engage you, but not too much. Science Friday or Sean Carroll's Mindscape are good examples. Anything you find that lets your mind disengage and wander around bedtime. Make sure you have a sleep timer that stops after 30-60 min and/or turn off autoplay.
TLDR: MIT did a study and patented Melatonin usage with reasonable dosages. Manufactures just increased the dose 10x to get around the patent. The patent is expired but the damage remains.
0.5mg of melatonin is a perfectly good dose. For many people, anything over 1mg means sleepiness on the next day. I suggest doing some research, including how to taper it down once you no longer feel it's right for you.
> I think the familiarity of Star Trek (which I watched a lot as a kid) gives me a subconsious sense of security.
This. I have high anxiety and sleeping is difficult when you brain is trying to send you into a panic about all the shit you have to deal with. So I use two things, weed and TV.
I smoke some heavy indica just before bed and within an hour or two I have trouble keeping my eyes open. Though some nights it gets pretty bad so I put on MST3K or ST-TNG. It's like hanging out with old friends, especially MST3K. It's comfy with the volume on very low, screen dimmed maximum and a sleeping mask. Basically, you do your best to drown out the world and your mind.
Though the big help with weed is I don't get that extreme groggy almost vertigo feeling in the morning either. It's almost like being drunk without the intoxication or nausea. Like you are awake but your body didn't get the memo. Though I'm looking to move to making my own edibles as smoking is unhealthy in the long run.
No screens was integral for me, as well as changing the type of lighting I use. I generally try to shut down my screens when f.lux starts up on my computer, as I know it's better for my brain to start getting tired them. I'll also use a redder light instead of a right LED one, which I've found helps too.
For 2 years I went to sleep with Brewster's Millions (1985 not 1945) playing just loud enough I could hear the words from my desk speakers, would never take more than 10 minutes to be out cold.
Now I've just trained myself to go to sleep. I put my ear plugs in, tell Google to turn the speakers (so my phone charging doesn't make random noise through them) and my salt lamp off and I'm out within a minute or two.
> I just couldn't stop thinking about shit that was going on.
This was the issue. I had to learn how to just shut thoughts off. Not think of nothing, just not think. Watching a television show for an hour before bed (with the monitor color adjusted, whatever Chrome OS calls their version of f.lux) let's me get my mind off of whatever and then I'm in bed within a 5 minute window Sundays-Thursdays.
lol, I'm using Star Trek Enterprise for exactly the same thing at the moment. According to my Oura ring my sleep latency (as they call it - time to fall asleep) is about 5-10mins. I just put an earbud in one ear and sleep on the other side.
I cannot fall asleep unless I have Zero Punctuation playing in the background. On Youtube they have started uploading hours-long compilation videos of his, and there are quite a few comments from other people saying it helps them sleep as well. A strange phenomenon.
When I was a kid, probably from ages 13-18 or so, I always fell asleep to a Harry Potter audiobook. I owned a copy of Half Blood Prince on CD (more accurately on 20 CDs) and I wouldn't bother changing out the disc (at least not that often), it was just some background noise to help me fall asleep.
Thats funny; I used to do this with Tom Baker Dr. Who and ... Discovery Channel Wings (I guess I grew up near an air force base?). Seems based on comments to be a common thing; lullaby for grownup nerds!
this trick works. my twist on it is to watch people play old video games on youtube.
however, it doesn't work when i need a clear mind, especially when i am exhausted. it is frustrating that no amount of movies, songs, video games will help clear your mind -- at least not mine -- which in turn makes you stay awake...
i used to know how meditate in college, but i have somehow lost that ability it seems (yes, one can lose it lol)
I picked up very serious sleep problems (and seemingly permanent bags under my eyes) right around puberty and lived with it for about twenty years. Tried most of the "hacks" on this page (yes, including exercise) to no avail.
It all unexpectedly went away when I moved into my current apartment. I have huge, unblocked, east-facing windows, and every morning I’m bathed in sunlight. No more sleeping in; I’m wide awake, no arguments. Consequently, by midnight I am dead to the world.
All of this makes me a bit worried for the future, as "big unblocked east window in the bedroom" seems like a big ask for a rental. But yeah, it worked, my sleep is solved for the time being. Except for chunks of February.
I unscientifically believe that we shouldn't use an alarm clock or any kind of trigger to wake up.
My rational is: if your body has enough sleep, it'll wake up on its own.
On the flip side: it's actually very hard to sleep when your body doesn't need sleep.
On another flip side: it's easy to stay awake even though your body needs sleep.
With this, we should all sleep in a completely dark (blocked) room with no sound and etc. The "big unblocked east window in the bedroom" (unless the curtain blocks the light effectively) is a no for me.
I've read "why we sleep", and I get this conflict where:
1. The author believes in the no-trigger-to-wake-up as well.
2. Somehow I also get the impression that the author also believes that we should use sunlight as a trigger for waking up. We'd feel fresher. But wouldn't that cut off our sleep?
The problem with that idea is that it completely misses the fact that most of us have to get up at a specific time in order to get to work or school or whatever else we have to do.
I tried the no-trigger approach for a while, when I was between jobs and didn't have anything to do otherwise. What I found out is that my natural schedule, without manual intervention, has me going to bed at approximately 2am and waking up at around 10:30-11am. When I regained employment, it was a pretty rough transition to go back to waking up at 7am again. After going through that experience, I'd caution people about buying into the no-trigger method. Yes, your brain will naturally get you the amount of sleep that you need. However, there is no guarantee that your natural sleep cycle will mesh with the other obligations you have in your life.
Wild idea: maybe some people's sleep cycles are just inherently incompatible with society and the arbitrary schedules and obligations that a particular society and context has landed on.
Yeah i sometimes wonder about this in the context of our evolutionary history. Having some people around who naturally stay up late to tend the fire and keep a look out seems advantageous. I suppose teenagers can fill this role, but their numbers fluctuate.
This is why I continue to seek out and work evening shifts. 3am-10:30am is just about exactly what my body wants to do naturally. Shifts that start at noon and get out after dark are perfect; once I got that synergy, I stopped feeling tired all the time.
That said, sleep is a complicated, personal thing, and everyone's a little different. You should do what feels right to your body, because it might be very different from what works for my own.
One major assumption that your reasoning relies on is that: human can't adjust their sleep cycle at all.
My unscientific assumption is that we can adjust our sleep cycle to be earlier. But it'll probably take time and effort to do so though.
When I say sleep cycle, I mean: I usually go to bed at 2am, and I want to go to be at 9pm. Can I slowly adjust my body to achieve that?
> After going through that experience, I'd caution people about buying into the no-trigger method. Yes, your brain will naturally get you the amount of sleep that you need. However, there is no guarantee that your natural sleep cycle will mesh with the other obligations you have in your life.
It seems you agree that the no-trigger method is good if we only consider health.
"why we sleep" convinces me that sleep deprivation (even a little) is bad. Essentially, it's a trade-off between damaging your health vs. obligations. This tradeoff is difficult to quantify, so it depends on how you perceive value in each.
Another way that I think about is: the mistake is "going to bed late". You already made the mistake, but you still can choose the punishment. You can choose to damage your health OR you can choose to fail the obligation.
Of course, a better way to avoid all this dilemma together is to go to bed early.
I'd suggest the no-trigger method as the way of life and re-arrange your life to fit the no-trigger method.
I share your beliefs. I once experimented with a completely rules-free schedule, under the belief that my circadian rhythm was slightly longer than an earth day, and thus my "day" would slowly shift forwards until my day was everyone's night, and then back again. It didn't feel good and I stopped it after one rotation.
As far as the sun as a waking trigger, I believe that as well. With an alarm, it's nothing... nothing... nothing... and then BAM! Time to wake up! The sun rises gradually, and light is entering your eyes before you regain consciousness, so even though it seems like you suddenly wake due to the light, I think it's a more gradual process. That, and I fall back on a naturalistic idea that since that's how humans have woken since time immemorial, that our brains are wired for it in a way.
Gradual light exposure is a good point. But I'd say light increases according to its own schedule... it doesn't take our need to sleep into consideration.
Absorbing light after waking up is an activity that I agree with though. I actually have SAD lamp at home for this.
I have been following these rules for several years and I find that the hardest thing is convincing my coworkers not to hate me for rolling in at 10:30 or 11:00am everyday because I don't go to sleep until 2am or so.
I really enjoy not getting that awful rush of stress hormones every workday morning and I feel like it helps me to stay more calm and relaxed. I feel healthier as a person so I think it is worth it overall for my employer.
Similar experience, had 15ish years of a terrible relationship with sleep starting when high school started, with a side order of seasonal depression. I blame a combination of:
1) puberty,
2) putting the long break in Summer rather than Winter plus a very early start time with the result that for several months I'd only see the Sun for at most 2.5 hours in the afternoon (walked into the building with the stars still out),
3) a homework load + butt-in-seat time that had more of my hours spoken for than I even came close to reaching again until I had multiple young kids of my own plus a full time job, plus the conditions being a hell of a lot closer to prison than to either college or working adult life (college was harder in some ways, of course, but less time consuming and way less stressful, I found, thanks to the much lower in-class time per week and more flexibility scheduling homework/study time, and consequently felt like a vacation after four years of high school),
4) glowing screens and the opportunity to reclaim some time for myself late at night with highly-engaging entertainment (by which I mean video games and screwing around on computers, the latter of which actually ended up being the most valuable thing I did in high school bar none, admittedly)
Oh and there's a good chance, according to current research, that the whole Winter-is-school-time thing plus younger grades not getting us outside enough in those low-sunlight-per-day months was a major contributor to my being nearsighted by 7th grade. IOW K-12 school broke me both physically and psychologically for no good reason, with consequences lasting between a two-digit count of years and a lifetime, and I had it pretty easy, relatively speaking.
“Huh, so maybe one of those seasonal-affect-disorder lamps would blah blah…” I’ve never been willing to try one as every one on the market is so ungodly ugly. There’s an opportunity out there for either a SAD bulb that could be added-on to a normal lamp, or an entire SAD lamp designed by an actual interior designer/artist.
This is basically the first line treatment for delayed sleep phase syndrome, but if you can't afford a large east window you can a blue light generating device(like the ones used for seasonal effective disorder).
I'm in a particularly stressful time in my life (just moved, intense new job) where I've been struggling to sleep. There will be some nights where I simply don't sleep at all; just lay awake in bed all night. Of course I'm aware of all the health/safety/productivity issues associated with no sleep, and the anxiety of not sleeping just furthers my inability to fall asleep.
This is what I've been attempting to do to help with my sleep problems, with reasonable success:
1. Lift heavy each week day.
I'm using a PPL routine with at least one big lift each day. I also trying to burn a significant amount of calories each day in the gym.
2. Strict evening routine.
I try to go to bed within the same hour each night if I can help it.
3. Reduce responsibilities.
One of the biggest issues for me is missing my routine. I now try to keep my weekday schedule the same (don't go out at night) so I can have plenty of wind-down time at home before bed.
4. Wind down time.
I try to do something relaxing before going to bed that will distract my mind (like play a low intensity videogame, read about non work-related topics, etc.)
5. Supplements.
I drink a cup of chamomile tea and take 5 mg of melatonin before I go to bed, and this seems to help (or might be a placebo)
6. Listen to something calming and familiar while I fall asleep.
Unlike others in this thread, no Star Trek for me; I like to listen to twitch streamer ZFG speedrun Ocarina of Time. I turn the volume on my phone to the lowest setting, put the phone face-down on the bed next to me, and the audio commentary seems to be helpful background noise.
I had trouble sleeping most of the time from about age 13 to 29. I more or less went through the same process as the author and discovered CBT for sleep is incredibly useful - this is what worked for me more than anything else. Since then I maybe have a poor night of sleep once a month at most. Ultimately, just calming down and letting sleep happen is what is going to fix sleep problems for those who are anxious about sleep (which it sounds like you may be) and this is a hard thing to learn when you're in that sleep anxiety mindset. Highly recommend CBT for sleep.
Counterpoint: I started having the worst insomnia ever after I started lifting. I feel like my adrenaline level is higher now. I love lifting, and it has a lot of benefits, but for me, better sleep is not one of them. I also noticed it made my restless leg syndrome worse. Stretching and getting back on magnesium seems to have helped that, but my sleep quality and duration is still shit.
Tip: since you're on magnesium, try magnesium glycinate if that's not already the kind you take. Glycine helps you sleep, especially if taken at night.
Problem is that you become dependent on weed if you use it often enough. And it screws with your REM sleep hence crazy dreams (REM rebound) when you stop smoking it.
Indicas give me hangovers. I've found sativas work better in the long run, but you have to wait for the euphoria and energy to wear off and that can sometimes take a while.
My insomnia is a little different than the author's; I fall asleep easily but wake up three or four hours later. And when I'm up, I'm wide awake.
I tried just about everything discussed here....meditation, podcasts, watching television, reading before bed but nothing really helped me consistently. I even bought a treadmill and started running every day which does help, but the thing that actually did the trick best was a few puffs of marijuana about an hour before bedtime. It was sufficient to take me "out of my head" enough to get a better night's sleep without feeling foggy the next day.
One of the problems with insomnia as a construct is that it lumps a bunch of problems together that probably don't have the same mechanisms. The vast majority of insomnia treatment and advice is focused on "initial insomnia", i.e. inability to fall asleep when you first go to bed.
If it can be compatible with your schedule, try splitting your sleep into two 4 hour chunks. They dont have to be 12 hours apart. The mosy productive and energetic ive ever felt was while doing this. That being said it sounds like you already have a good system figured out. Aything that doesnt involve a prescription sleep aid is a big win
I deal with this occasionally (seems to crop up for me every couple of years depending on life circumstances). Look into sleep restriction therapy. It's been the "silver bullet" for me. You essentially limit yourself to a 5 hour sleep window every night. Once you can sleep 5 sound hours for a week you're allowed to add 30 minutes and repeat the cycle. It sucks for the first few days, but the exhaustion will eventually win out.
Meditating right before going to bed, given that you haven't stared at any screen for an hour prior, can help tremendously with insomnia. That and intense and regular exercise, a clean diet, hydration... Healthy habits, to cut it short. Also, make sure your bedroom is dark and its temperature is cool.
I've heard a couple of times of this technique by the US Army in which you relax your body starting by the face, then arms, torso, legs. Finally you picture yourself in a canoe in the middle of a lake or something similar to avoid thinking of anything. Anyone knows how effective is this?
2 new tricks to add here (that work magic for me at least)
- child pose for about 10 minutes with the head/forehead resting on a pillow
- forced yawning, but without needing to actually make a sound, (and without needing to open the mouth wide). Hard to explain, there's some oral/neck musculature that is not triggered voluntarily that I've been experimenting on which becomes somewhat easier to control with exercise. I'd start with lots of yawning first
a) only dim lights after sunset (reflect for a moment on how unnatural it is, after million or years of modern human evolution, that we all of a sudden have light after sundown. (especially blue light screens, seriously, use apps) ; this disrupts your circadian rhythms and melatonin cycles, so it's a big deal.
b) black out shades. don't underestimate - I've monitored my sleep +2 years with multiple fitness trackers, and noticed a clear positive difference in restlessness levels. it also cured my problem of waking up in the middle of the night to pee believe it or not.
c) air tight wax ear plugs ; sounds will wake you up and you often won't know why. a motorcycle, someone closes a door etc.
d) chilly room. I find ~70F is great. again going back to evo history, it's always been chillier at night.
e) habit x 10. go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time. be unplugged for at least an hour before sleep and relax for a bit when you wake up. follow point a) after sundown. your sleep drive will take over. this might take months to get there, especially if you're a high cortisol individual, but biology will take over if you let it.
I've been using the Dreem headband for a year and a half and there are enough factual errors about it in this piece to make me distrust the rest of it.
Firstly, it doesn't require leaving your smartphone on all night as she writes. Once started, it's autonomous (it even reportedly shuts down its onboard WiFi/BT, probably for power saving reasons but also to alleviate any fears about having an RF emitter so close to your head for 8 hours)
Secondly, getting an accurate hypnogram (detailed sleep phases) on a consumer EEG device is a huge deal in itself (she doesn't seem to understand the point), but this one goes even further by promising to actively enhance slow wave/deep sleep through precisely timed audio stimulations (white noise pulses). The research in this area is apparently the starting point of the company.
Thirdly, the app does include the kind of CBT program she praises at the end of the article. I find the combination of this with a device that provides an accurate sleep log to be a potentially more efficient combination than CBT alone.
One area where I do have reservations with this class of devices is privacy : not only do you have your exact sleep/wake times + hundreds of MBs of your EEG data uploaded to their servers every morning, the latest version apparently has a built-in microphone !
It's reserved for future use (an obvious application is snoring / sleep apnea detection) and reportedly not activated yet, but of course it's closed source firmware and you have to take their word for it, and even if you trust their intentions (I do, and there's always GDPR), you also have to trust their security as well.
Disclaimer : I have no stake or direct interest in Dreem, but I'm very familiar with their product and even interviewed with them at one point.
I use sleep for android which has my sleep/wake times, heart rate, and I use the mic to record sleep talking. Doesn't really bother my privacy. If they want my insane ramblings from when I'm asleep that's fine with me. I sleep talk a lot and none of it makes any sense but it's good for a laugh. One of my favorites was talking about "the most beautiful sweater" for about 30 seconds
Yeah, I suffered from insomnia for most of my life. I didn't really realize it was an issue until I was about 20-21. I think it took falling asleep at the wheel and rear ending someone, crashing on my bicycle multiple times from not being able to stay awake (going downhill at 20+mph btw), and a plethora of other stupid events for me to realize maybe I should seek help finally. I think it's pretty amazing to see what I accomplished on so little but, ultimately, it's sad because I know I could've done way more with better sleep.
And it was 100% stress related. Taking pills, trying breathing exercises, and everything else didn't fix it. It could make me slightly better than doing nothing but it was never fixed.
I have a rhythm now I follow that works better. But, really, I never found a "solution". I just got into a less stressful life. (Finally having a girlfriend, high(er) paying job, etc. was the "trick" - aka solve what causes my stressors)
I had so much trouble with insomnia a few years back - I remember not being able to get sleep for at least 3-5 days straight on multiple different occasions. I thought I was going to die at least two of those times it happened.
These days my ability to fall asleep feels like a superpower (because - 1. I know just how absurdly many people out there are functioning on less than optimal sleep on a daily basis, and 2. I know I'm not the only one who has had trouble with falling asleep).
These are the bits of advice I have:
1. I've woken or havent been able to fall asleep because I was hungry. Always try to have eaten at least one satiating meal a day. Also make sure you're not dehydrated or have to pee.
2. Don't ever worry or intentionally think that you have to fall asleep. The stress, the cortisol, and the excitement(when you start falling asleep) will keep you awake. Going one night without sleep is not the end of the world. At worst you were really really relaxed in a nice cozy bed for 8 hours, so take comfort in that time.
3. This one is the most important: think about your brain like its some sort of muscle. If it's engaged its sort of 'flexing', and its very hard to fall asleep if its flexing. If I just 'unflex' my mind the way I would let go of my grip, the next thing I usually notice is that its morning and my alarm clock is waking me up.
Other than these things, everything else I've seen had little affect on my abilities to sleep when I had insomnia - working out until exhaustion out didn't work, neither did weed, neither did alcohol, and neither did induced food coma, reading a book, watching tv, counting sheep. And when I learned again how to fall asleep, I haven't had a problem with blue light, I haven't had a problem with caffeine, I didn't even have a problem with a lot of noise. These things help or hurt your ability to sleep but it doesn't ultimately determine whether or not you do.
Unlike many members of my family who can fall asleep regardless of the circumstances, I need to feel sleepy/tired to sleep. I'm fairly fit, so getting to that state with a job that involves me sitting at a desk can be a challenge.
When I do sleep, I sleep pretty well, but getting to that state can be tough. I simply have to do some physical work each day to tire my body - otherwise, sleeping is near impossible. The gym is often not enough (and if I go in the evening, it actually wakes me up). I find I need to do something moderately strenuous and mundane, like carrying a few groceries for a mile or two, or maybe sweeping + mopping a few floors round the house or perhaps some DIY.
Also, if I'm unable to sleep, rather than trying to sleep, I find it's better to get up and do some work, even if means being in front of a screen. That knocks me out eventually!
You can't sleep when there are enemies nearby. Didn't you play Skyrim, Minecraft, Fallout...
Or more seriously you have messed up bloodwork. Get your blood checked. Vitamin D is necessary during day. Seeing the morning light and end of day sun set can actually help.
Or you didn't exercise enough. Various military organisations have sorted out sleep: they can get you tired enough to sleep vertical. Often while still marching.
I find that I have always have trouble sleeping, but then when I took up a practice of strong-determination-sitting (meditation+) I would fall asleep during the meditation! and I would also notice that my mind-activity was several noticeable clicks lower after a 20 minute sit.
Exercise doesn't really work for everyone. I found when I used to have trouble sleeping, heavy lifting made my sleep 10x worse (and still messes with my sleep now when I try it every now and then). Light to moderate exercise tended to improve my sleep, but the improvement was fairly minor. CBT-I and getting some bright light in the morning, on the other hand, were complete game changers for me. I've gone from sleeping maybe 5 - 6.5 hours of poor sleep a night (waking up multiple times, early waking), to normally 7 - 8 hours of good quality sleep and the improvement has been consistent for the past few years now.
Everyone is different, but for me strength training wakes me up, while cardio helps me sleep. What surprises me sometimes is how much cardio I need for good sleep. In one particularly high pressure week, I had to row (erg) 7-10km per a day to sleep well.
I'm similar. Without intense exercise, my brain is at high revs all day and I can't keep it under control to fall asleep. I need to knock myself out with exhaustion.
I used to run 50km per week or so and still feel like I could use more. Restless legs, active mind, fidgeting, etc. These days I'm running much less, but I'm lost without it.
Not really on topic, but I'm trying to find some way to get EMG (muscle) readings preferably without using glue (which I suspect can become messy) or disposable electrodes (which can become costly). What is the best way to do this?
Great tips overall, thank you all. I might add getting familiar with CBT-I (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia). I was struggling for months with sleep and this was a life saviour.
It has the opposite effect on me whatever the strain. It gets me energized and personally I would totally avoid id before sleep. However, seems to do wonders for some.
also magnesium supplements - I had some nervous system/restless leg issues and finally diagnosed as deficient in it, cured insomnia that was ongoing for months - just wanted to throw this out there
Life is not a computer you can hack. I bet we barely understand 1% of how our system works and trying to hack it means one is not even aware of their ignorance.
All of those also screw up your sleep something fierce, and so (general you) end up piling hacks on top of hacks to make something kinda sorta work that you understand less than you did the original system.
(Although, PSA, I do understand that the vast majority of people whose sleep is ruined by alcohol or caffeine or both are also too addicted to quit, and this isn't at this point a conscious attempt at "hacking" anything.)
Oh, if one sees the enormity of complexity body & mind has - one can be sure he can not foresee all side effects. I like that you gave examples like caffeine which messes up your nervous system or alcohol which destroys your conscious attention and lever, among other things :)
Well I also did not say it's permanent. Messing up can be temporal but it also builds up and becomes harder to get off. Temporal should not be taken lightly.
And I like how you passed up the other examples. Are you also advocating against medical drugs or vaccines? They fit the "hack your body" description to a tee.
I used the ones which have clear undesirable side effects, others might have it as well just that we don't know about them.
>Are you also advocating against medical drugs or vaccines?
I am only advocating about being conscious of how much we don't know. If medical drug or vaccine saves lives - I have no problem with it, still most likely we don't know all the side effects.
In my experience, it depends on which sport you do and when you do it during the day.
I used to play squash during the evening around 8pm and on these days I would fall asleep very late, like around 2am. This was mostly due, I think, to my heart rate still being quite high (I could feel it), and slowing down very slowly until it reached a reasonable level at which I could get asleep. This is something that other friends playing squash in the evening reported as well.
Strength athlete here, I train in the evenings and my quality of sleep is always garbage when I'm peaking from all of the stress on my CNS. The end of cycles are hands down my worst sleep weeks, I'll be dog ass tired and have trouble staying asleep.
For one person a heavy day might be a few sets of deadlifts at 80-90% 1rm, for some of us that might mean 2-2.5 hours of training where are warm up alone moves considerably more mass than your entire training and then we also tack on multiple accessory movements and conditioning and if you aren't doing that in the morning it's almost certainly going to mess with your sleep quality that night.
I have a training-induced insomnia blog post that is years old and gets hits every single day without fail. It's probably 1/4 of the total traffic on my personal blog and probably more like 60-65% of Google-referred traffic despite the fact I have 18 years of blog posts.
> If you go to sleep when you're so tired, as opposed to when the societal clock says you should, you won't have any trouble sleeping.
Great PMA, but you're absolutely wrong.
I did that last night, got tired and went to bed around 10pm. And then I woke up at 1am. Now that it's approaching 6, I'm getting tired. But this happens to me occasionally and I know from past experience that my two options are:
1) Go back to bed at around 7, wake up at 8 or 9, and feel awful all day
2) Power through, and feel awful all day.
Maybe I'll be tired enough tonight that I'll catch up on this morning's loss. But given past experience, I'll probably get 2-4 hours of sleep a night for the next week. When I say "wake up" I mean that I'm alert and can't get sleepy -- I can stay in bed and be bored for hours, and sleep won't come no matter how tired I feel.
> I did that last night, got tired and went to bed around 10pm. And then I woke up at 1am. Now that it's approaching 6, I'm getting tired. But this happens to me occasionally and I know from past experience that my two options are:
This is how your sleep schedule is naturally designed to work. Sleep for a bit, wake up, sleep again.
Nope. I typically wake up for a few minutes at a time and get a full night's sleep. Every few months, I have a bout of insomnia that reduces me to a couple of hours of sleep for a while. Believe it or not, I know what my normal is better than you.
>I did that last night, got tired and went to bed around 10pm. And then I woke up at 1am. Now that it's approaching 6, I'm getting tired. But this happens to me occasionally and I know from past experience that my two options are:
>1) Go back to bed at around 7, wake up at 8 or 9, and feel awful all day
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Faced with this scenario, I would get up at 1AM, go back to bed around 7 or 8, and sleep into the afternoon. Wake up feeling great.
> This is exactly what I'm talking about. Faced with this scenario, I would get up at 1AM, go back to bed around 7 or 8, and sleep into the afternoon. Wake up feeling great.
Good for you! I went back to bed around 7, slept for about 15 minutes, and woke up again. I would love to sleep 'til noon, and my work schedule permits it. I've never been able to sleep during the day, except when I'm sick or have multiple days of exhaustion piled up. Your experience is not my experience, stop giving me advice based on what works for you!
Edit: Also I guess I should point out, sleep was way easier in my 20s, but I'm approaching 40 and encountering the same issues my parents did at my age.
until one night I fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV, and it occurred to me that I could just modify this behaviour to bed.
So I put a handful of old Star Trek episodes on my phone. Each night I put me earphones on (so as not to disturb my wife), turn on an episode of Star Trek, and I am asleep within the first five minutes. ... I can even repeat episodes... it doesnt even matter since Im asleep within literally 5mins.
At first the earphones were annoying, but after a week you dont even notice them.
The stress at work continues, but I sleep like a baby.
I think the familiarity of Star Trek (which I watched a lot as a kid) gives me a subconsious sense of security.