I’m so tired at the end of the day I have no problem falling asleep.
Shit, I have at least a cup of coffee at night and I have no trouble sleeping like 99% of the time. And when I do have trouble it’s for unrelated reasons. I also eat late. I’m apparently doing everything wrong but I’m lucky I guess
How to sleep:
Step 1. No phone/TV/screens in the bedroom
Step 2. No screens 30 min before going to bed
Step 3. Go to bed at the same time each night
Step 4. Set yourself up to actually get enough sleep
Try this for 6 weeks and then if you seriously still cant sleep discuss with a doctor.
I’ve always found that point odd because for me I can’t sleep when hungry often my body’s wake up alarm is getting hungry so all eating dinner hours before sleep just makes me wake up starved in the middle of the night so I usually eat as late as possible so I can have my more consistent alarm clock wake me up instead of my stomach
I think people are built differently and what works for some people doesn’t work for others. I know people who can’t function without a hearty breakfast. For me, eating soon after I get up makes me feel sick. I feel best if I don’t eat for several hours after I get up.
For sleeping, I think the most important thing is routine / habit. If your body recognizes that you’re in the routine you do before bed, it knows what comes next. What that routine is can differ from person to person.
You’re missing the only one that actually works for me. Get up at roughly the same time every morning. I won’t do it, but I should.
There are alarm apps that can be set up to require taking a picture of a specific thing to turn the alarm off. I used one in college, where I had to take a picture of my toilet. Ten years later I still wake up around 6am every day with no alarm.
my body forces me up around 6-7 for some reason and i wake up periodically throughout the night
its a blessing when i want to be productive early because of things i didnt do the night before
but its a curse when i just want some sleep for once.
sometimes i sleep the whole night no problems and feel NICE in the morning but im usually ludicrously baked (more than usual) when that happens.
Consistent sleep is the #1 sleep-related correlate of academic performance, even more so than duration or quality! Sleeping at the same time every night is incredibly important.
I don’t even need to do the no screens part. I try to read on my tablet before bed and end up passing out 15 minutes into it. It takes me months to finish books.
It seems obvious but also: don’t drink anything with caffeine before bed and don’t eat a good couple of hours before sleep too.
I’ve had many friends who’d have a tea before going to sleep to ‘calm’ them without realising most have quite a lot still. Or guzzling down a soda too.
That seems a bit much. Then you shouldn’t have a coffee after 10am. Most people are perfectly fine with having coffee in the afternoon.
thing is, this is basically just saying “just sleep bro”, i can’t do any of these things.
if i go without screens i will go mad from boredom, if i go to bed the same time each night i will lie awake in bed until i go mad with boredom or get up because fuck that noise, and what does “set yourself up to get enough sleep” even mean? that’s terribly vague.
i have yet to find anything that lets me get even vaguely consistently good sleep, i’ve tried all the things people say to do and it does NOTHING if it’s even feasible in the first place.
What’s happening with you when you get bored we tell people to stop using screens and coffee specifically because boredom is the goal you might need some medical attention if you can’t sleep when bord
what does boredom have to do with going to sleep? you need to be tired, not bored. if i’m sufficiently tired no amount of entertainment will keep me awake and if i’m not tired them being bored is just going to make my thoughts spin in circles and make me restless.
Dude if you can’t go without screens for 30 min you might have other problems.
But try reading books instead. Should be enough to stop you going mad (hopefully) without messing with your sleep.
yeah no shit i’ve been waiting a year now to start getting diagnosed for autism/adhd
as for books: finding a book that doesn’t bore me to bits is an arse, all the good stuff is digital.
Screens give off blue light, which your body uses to measure “daytime.” If you cant do screen free activities before bed, install a color corrector that shifts your devices outputs to red dominant light ~1-2 hours before you would like to sleep.
Break the habit of doing non sleep things in the afternoon in your bed. If the only thing you do in bed is sleep, it trains your brain to start internal sleep processes when you get into the sleep spot.
If you havent tried it before, try exercising 1-3 hours before you want to sleep. Can be simple like a walk or jog, or quick and short reps of jumping jacks, crunches, and stretches. Whatever works. The workout helps burn off energy and other hormones that keep you up, tuckers you out a bit, and very very lightly damages muscles which gives your body a “reason” to sleep. You do most of your healing asleep.
Sleepless rest is better than no rest at all. Lying awake for 2 hours and then sleeping for 4 does more for your body than just sleeping for 4 hours. Sleep is king, but even if you arent asleep, resting still helps your body recover. If you cannot sleep, try not to stress about not sleeping, because at least you are getting rest.
On your off days and free time, there is no shame in midday napping. Often, people try not to nap out of fear it will spoil their sleep. Sometimes, those naps help you catch up on sleep to get you back into a healthy sleep schedule. And, again, any rest is better than none.
of course i’ve been using night filters on my screens, as i said i’ve tried EVERYTHING to get better sleep and nothing works.
as for naps, those are even more impossible to achieve. the like… 5 times? i’ve managed to take a nap i’ve just ended up sleeping for several hours which only serves to further fuck up the sleep schedule.
I was about 45 when I found this:
Bedtime stories that bore you to sleep. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it changed my life.
Yeah people giving simplistic life advice generally don’t understand the actual issues because they don’t have the problem, it’s painfully common especially with things like insomnia, anxiety, and similar ‘just don’t worry about things’, ‘have you tried not being depressed and just going out and doing stuff?’, ‘just lay down and wait until you sleep’
I can lay my head on a pillow after a long walk, no screen time and all the other shit they say and still spend the entire night caught in churning and bubbling anxiety that builds and builds until I’m as wired as a crackhead.
I’m not saying don’t try things people suggest but I guess don’t expect them to work and beat yourself up with them. If you can’t find something that works for you then see a doctor about getting sleep drugs, while you meme seems to be pushing the Puritanical idea that anything but a natural life is bad that’s totally stupid and op should be ashamed.
We’re complex biological machines that go wrong in a myriad of ways, it’s perfectly fine to require the addition of outside substances to moderate and control your health - honestly future generations will probably be shocked how few people used sleep aids.
Of course not every drug works the same on everyone and many can have negative side effects so it can take some shopping around but talk to medical professionals.
(Full disclosure I don’t take medical sleep aids due to other complications but I know many who do and swear by them)
I can’t drink coffee after like 2pm either. Sugar or other carbs before bed can also impact my sleep quality
Same here on the carbs. I notice when I eat after 6pm it’s going to affect me with either a not great sleep and the need for bathroom break(s) through the night. Low intake of sugar throughout the day I sleep much better and more soundly.
When I did Atkins many years ago, it was some of the best sleep I ever had. It was like I was a teenager again that could sleep all day and night.
- Invest in a decent mattress.
They say that there’s two things you don’t skimp on: shoes, and your bed. You’re gonna spend half of your life in one, and the other half laying on the other.
I bought a nice mattress a couple of years ago during a clearance sale, and I would’ve paid full price for it even now. Best investment I’ve ever made, and I’ve had zero sleep issues since then.
Americans are often overmedicated, and these kind of drugs usually make you reliant on them to sleep, so that may be the reason.
Again, big pharma doing big pharma things
Melatonin production stops once you start taking it artificially. American melatonin also can have fucked up stuff like melatonin tablets 1000% being over the shown amount it should contain.
Yeah, I don’t know anyone who takes sleep aids every night. I take them when I want to knock myself out and have a day off the next day, but otherwise no one I know even seems to be aware of Zquil/etc
I went through a brief period in college when I was taking a full load and working 30 hours a week. I needed to carefully plan my sleep schedule. I was taking sleeping pills to go to sleep right away and caffeine pills to get going, with coffee/soda throughout the day. Was it healthy? Absolutely not.
On the plus side, I developed a new drink at the cafe I was working at, The Opener; for those 5am shifts.
- walk by coffee pots, start all of the machines.
- walk to espresso machine, pull an espresso shot into a regular coffee mug.
- set down all of my ‘stuff’
- at this point espresso has finished
- take espresso mug back to coffee makers. At this point they are hot and flowing. Replace coffee pot with my mug.
- Once mug is topped off with coffee, replace coffee pot.
- Sip drink while turning on the lights and computers
or anybody in my friend group
I think that’s the problem. People think their friend groups are representative, but they’re not.
