[Guide] Sleep and Insomnia - Page 6
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evanthebouncy!
United States12796 Posts
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micronesia
United States24342 Posts
On April 03 2011 05:23 evanthebouncy! wrote: great post man, but my problems is staying up browsing the web and playing sc2. T_T Yes I had similar problems when I considered myself an insomniac. Also I'm using Flux which is a program that dims your monitor a bit at night... not going to specifically recommend it though as I can't make any promises about it... but it seems to help me a bit. | ||
0meg4
Brazil97 Posts
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son1dow
Lithuania322 Posts
I really have nothing else to say. Just mad props. And also thanks to the guy who bumped it. | ||
Siniyas
Germany66 Posts
I found a solution and also know the how i get into this bad sleeping schedule now, so i want to share what i found out. So what happened in my normal sleep behavior was. i look at the time in the evening, saying to myself, man i should go to bed if i want to get to my lectures on time. But im not tired, like alot of you, so i surf the net/watch some shows bla bla. Then i go to bed, feeling a little sleepy but not that much. I try to sleep, but as for alot of you, my thoughts start racing(not always alot bu sometimes i stay up in bed like 40-60mins. Obviously that sucks. Then in the morning, i get up if i hear the alarm, which takes alot of willpower, oftentimes i roll over to the side go to sleep for another 30-40 mins and have some weird dreams. When i have nothing to do for the day its even worse. I wake up, go to sleep, wake up ,go to sleep. The longer the holidays with nothing to do and no events that require getting up early, i go to bed later and later and wake up later too. Now why is that? Why does this vicious cycle go on and on and on. The one major reasons, that all others are suplemental to, is sleep quality. Sleep quality sucks, you sleep longer, take longer to get up, take longer to wind down and suddenly you have a 28 hour cycle or something. Now for me one of the major things with getting this undone, was sleeping at the right time. And for me and i believe for most humans, this time is between the sun going down and the sun rising. That is because when the sunlight hits you, your body naturally wakes up and when it gets dark your body winds down. Looking at my morning routine i see, when i wake up at 11-12 i never feel awake. There is always drowsynes that pulls me back to sleep. The sun is trying to wake me up, my body is trying to get more sleep. So to fix this, i needed to go to bed way earlier. I tried often to go to bed 1 hour earlier each day, but that didnt work out, as for proably alot of you. Now second method. Pulling an all nighter, or sleeping very little one day and waking up super early. This didnt work out for me in the past. But after having to get up early for an exam, it did. What did i do? I simply stayed up. In earlier tries i either went to bed early like 18-20 or late 20-23. What happened was, i either sleept for like 5-6 hours and was awake in the middle of the night, tried to get some more sleep and then slept through to 11-12 or just slept through to 11-12. Obviously very devestating. This time i went to bed early and woke up in the middle of the night like 3:00 but didnt go to bed again. I fought my way through to 21:00 went to bed and woke up at like 5:00. You can, see where this is going. I fit more and more into this natural cycle of going to bed at like 22:00-22:30 and waking up at like 7:00, when the rays of morning sunlight brace my face, feeling rested. It was actually easy to get up. At night time, i felt profoundly tired. As soon as the feeling would come over me i would go to bed pretty quickly. No reading or other activity to wind down like usually. Now you may say, dude just block out the sun. Close down your windows. But i think it is not that simple. First the sun light helps you to wake up and stay awake. Even though i would say, get woken up prematurly by the sun is worse than having no sunlight. But still when i woke up in the range of 2-3 i would feel very tired after i while usually around 5-7 and it would carry on, even though getting lighter, to like 12:00 . The second thing is, beeing up at the normal hours gets you more activity, which makes more tired in the evening. There is a large diference if you fill 3-4 hours on the computer, with 3-4 hours, in the city, or in a park, or simply cleaning up your place. The last 2 parts, that are important , are eating and habit. For eating, i think its important to not eat well in advance of sleeping anything that gives power. Dont have a big dinner, of meat and carbs and sweets, like i often did for myself late at night. You will feel tired after eating, but this is not a good time to sleep. And after an hour or two energy will start to rise strongly and keep beeing there. That mixed with not feeling sleepy, because you havent been awake long enough, is part of what keeps your thoughts racing in bed. For habit, people often try to change the habit itself, which never really worked for me. Go to bed earlier! Stop thinking and go to sleep! Get up immedietly! Many of you have probably tried doing and saying this to yourself. But it is tremendously hard, because of the physiogical state of yourself. Some people might say, " dude just have discipline". But does figurativly smasching your head against a wall till it breaks really require more discipline? How about just going around that wall? It was so easy for me to get into the habit of a healthy sleep cycle once conditions were met and those habits actually enforced by my body and having success. Dont try to just magically change your habits, they will grow and provide a savety-net for you over time. Your old habits are going to stay there also and it is easy to slip back into them, which happened to me 2 times already, but it is also possible to stay in this healthy cycle and not try to move a mountain everytime you wake up and try to get up. Hope this helps some people, who have similar problems. | ||
Vain
Netherlands1115 Posts
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Frigo
Hungary1023 Posts
I've noticed that the more I study, the more difficult it is to fall asleep. This peaked when I was studying for Calculus 3 finals, I was staring at the ceiling for 8 hours straight instead of sleeping. Also, sometimes I just fall asleep in the middle of the day, taking a nap anywhere within the 1..9 hour range. Otherwise I have a healthy 27 hour cycle :3 | ||
Ricjames
Czech Republic1047 Posts
On April 03 2011 06:47 Siniyas wrote: Ok Guys. Im a guy who sleeps in very long and has a hard time getting up. Also often have dificulty going to sleep. I found a solution and also know the how i get into this bad sleeping schedule now, so i want to share what i found out. So what happened in my normal sleep behavior was. i look at the time in the evening, saying to myself, man i should go to bed if i want to get to my lectures on time. But im not tired, like alot of you, so i surf the net/watch some shows bla bla. Then i go to bed, feeling a little sleepy but not that much. I try to sleep, but as for alot of you, my thoughts start racing(not always alot bu sometimes i stay up in bed like 40-60mins. Obviously that sucks. Then in the morning, i get up if i hear the alarm, which takes alot of willpower, oftentimes i roll over to the side go to sleep for another 30-40 mins and have some weird dreams. When i have nothing to do for the day its even worse. I wake up, go to sleep, wake up ,go to sleep. The longer the holidays with nothing to do and no events that require getting up early, i go to bed later and later and wake up later too. Now why is that? Why does this vicious cycle go on and on and on. The one major reasons, that all others are suplemental to, is sleep quality. Sleep quality sucks, you sleep longer, take longer to get up, take longer to wind down and suddenly you have a 28 hour cycle or something. Now for me one of the major things with getting this undone, was sleeping at the right time. And for me and i believe for most humans, this time is between the sun going down and the sun rising. That is because when the sunlight hits you, your body naturally wakes up and when it gets dark your body winds down. Looking at my morning routine i see, when i wake up at 11-12 i never feel awake. There is always drowsynes that pulls me back to sleep. The sun is trying to wake me up, my body is trying to get more sleep. So to fix this, i needed to go to bed way earlier. I tried often to go to bed 1 hour earlier each day, but that didnt work out, as for proably alot of you. Now second method. Pulling an all nighter, or sleeping very little one day and waking up super early. This didnt work out for me in the past. But after having to get up early for an exam, it did. What did i do? I simply stayed up. In earlier tries i either went to bed early like 18-20 or late 20-23. What happened was, i either sleept for like 5-6 hours and was awake in the middle of the night, tried to get some more sleep and then slept through to 11-12 or just slept through to 11-12. Obviously very devestating. This time i went to bed early and woke up in the middle of the night like 3:00 but didnt go to bed again. I fought my way through to 21:00 went to bed and woke up at like 5:00. You can, see where this is going. I fit more and more into this natural cycle of going to bed at like 22:00-22:30 and waking up at like 7:00, when the rays of morning sunlight brace my face, feeling rested. It was actually easy to get up. At night time, i felt profoundly tired. As soon as the feeling would come over me i would go to bed pretty quickly. No reading or other activity to wind down like usually. Now you may say, dude just block out the sun. Close down your windows. But i think it is not that simple. First the sun light helps you to wake up and stay awake. Even though i would say, get woken up prematurly by the sun is worse than having no sunlight. But still when i woke up in the range of 2-3 i would feel very tired after i while usually around 5-7 and it would carry on, even though getting lighter, to like 12:00 . The second thing is, beeing up at the normal hours gets you more activity, which makes more tired in the evening. There is a large diference if you fill 3-4 hours on the computer, with 3-4 hours, in the city, or in a park, or simply cleaning up your place. The last 2 parts, that are important , are eating and habit. For eating, i think its important to not eat well in advance of sleeping anything that gives power. Dont have a big dinner, of meat and carbs and sweets, like i often did for myself late at night. You will feel tired after eating, but this is not a good time to sleep. And after an hour or two energy will start to rise strongly and keep beeing there. That mixed with not feeling sleepy, because you havent been awake long enough, is part of what keeps your thoughts racing in bed. For habit, people often try to change the habit itself, which never really worked for me. Go to bed earlier! Stop thinking and go to sleep! Get up immedietly! Many of you have probably tried doing and saying this to yourself. But it is tremendously hard, because of the physiogical state of yourself. Some people might say, " dude just have discipline". But does figurativly smasching your head against a wall till it breaks really require more discipline? How about just going around that wall? It was so easy for me to get into the habit of a healthy sleep cycle once conditions were met and those habits actually enforced by my body and having success. Dont try to just magically change your habits, they will grow and provide a savety-net for you over time. Your old habits are going to stay there also and it is easy to slip back into them, which happened to me 2 times already, but it is also possible to stay in this healthy cycle and not try to move a mountain everytime you wake up and try to get up. Hope this helps some people, who have similar problems. It is nice that you managed to straighten your sleep habits, however i tried to do this many times and the result was horrible. Earlier i go to sleep, the longer i sleep and more tired i feel when i wake up. I am lately getting app. 5 hours of sleep during week nights and 8-10 hours during weekends. However i feel very tired in the evening between 18-20pm, sometimes i even crash during these hours and then i can't fall asleep again before 2 am and the circle continous. The worst thing is when i start to sleep too much, there are days when i sleep from 3 am. until 15pm and i even fall asleep again at 17-18pm cause i feel so tired. | ||
Retgery
Canada1229 Posts
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micronesia
United States24342 Posts
On September 13 2011 08:13 Retgery wrote: I feel like I should bump this because it helped me alot. You should really post a link to the Flux program in the OP. I just noticed this bump of yours because.... someone made a thread about the flux program haha XD | ||
Release
United States4397 Posts
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whatthefat
United States918 Posts
Do a lot of people on tl have Delayed Phase Disorder? Probably. Delayed Phase Disorder is the tendency to be unable to fall asleep until 3am or 4am, but then get a good 7-8 hours of sleep. The opposite can also occur where you have trouble staying awake past 8pm (elderly people for example). These problems can be treated with artificial bright-light boxes that simulate the sun and adjust your body temperature cycle to a more appropriate time. However, bright-light boxes are not required. This is especially true on bright mornings where you can go outside in order to jump-start your wakefulness system (just don't wear sunglasses). I agree that this is very likely affecting gamers - including myself! Even light from a computer screen is plenty bright to reset the circadian clock - although the Flux program may indeed help that, as the circadian clock is sensitive to shorter wavelength light that the visual system. The really important message here is: Light exposure near or after your bedtime will delay your circadian clock. That means the next night, your body will want to go to bed later. So now if you try to go to bed at the same time as the night before, you may experience insomnia. Because the body has its own clock, you cannot just choose when you want to go to bed - the body anticipates an expected bedtime based on your behavior on prior days. That's what makes weekend to weekday transitions particularly hard - when you abruptly shift to an earlier schedule on Sunday/Monday you are effectively jet-lagged. The way to keep your body on an earlier schedule is to cut out light exposure near bedtime, and increase light exposure in the morning after you wake up. Does this mean that you should panic if you realize you are going to get less than five and a half hours of sleep? Certainly not. Even if you are getting as little as three hours of sleep per night (as is the case with some demanding professions or at certain times), you can function without significant consequences (think of the Apollo 13 astronauts who slept three hours a night and yet performed the operations to get the ship back to Earth safely). The idea of 'core' sleep isn't very well founded - especially since we still have a pretty loose grasp on what sleep is actually doing from a functional perspective. There is evidence that regularly sleeping 6 h per night results in measurable cognitive deficits relative to sleeping 8 h per night, and that these deficits continue to accumulate almost linearly day by day over a period of 2 weeks (see Van Dongen et al., Sleep, 2003). Worse still, subjective assessments of performance level out after a few days under these conditions, meaning if you're chronically deprived of sleep, you're probably no longer even aware of how poorly you're functioning! | ||
T3tra
United States406 Posts
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ilikeLIONZ
Germany427 Posts
i could notice a lot of similarities to the basics of psychology and pedagogy which i learned in school for 2 years, so that guide was very convincing for me. was a great read so far, thanks for the effort! | ||
slytown
Korea (South)1411 Posts
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ilikeLIONZ
Germany427 Posts
On April 11 2011 23:47 Ricjames wrote: It is nice that you managed to straighten your sleep habits, however i tried to do this many times and the result was horrible. Earlier i go to sleep, the longer i sleep and more tired i feel when i wake up. I am lately getting app. 5 hours of sleep during week nights and 8-10 hours during weekends. However i feel very tired in the evening between 18-20pm, sometimes i even crash during these hours and then i can't fall asleep again before 2 am and the circle continous. The worst thing is when i start to sleep too much, there are days when i sleep from 3 am. until 15pm and i even fall asleep again at 17-18pm cause i feel so tired. you should let a dentist check if you grind your teeth during night, there might be tentions in your muscles during sleep if you do so. that prevents a relaxing and refreshing sleep. you get a thingy to put on a row of teeth, which is supposed to prevent that, but it apparently doesn't work in my case it's worth to ask it, next time when you're at the dentist! | ||
IMHope
Korea (South)1241 Posts
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Nizaris
Belgium2230 Posts
always refused sleeping pills because i found them stupid. They don't treat the cause, therefore are u gonna take pills all your life ? I'd rather have bad sleep then being on medication for life. | ||
Gnight
77 Posts
As someone who is suffering from Insomnia for over 10 years now I can see you did your reasarch (as much as has been researched) on this subject and you put forth alot of informative and, most important, helpfull things in this guide for people who suffer from Insomnia to help them treat this. Though I would like to not that it's more so for the "lighter cases" of Insomnia that this guide is meant too as for me the guide will not help me treat my Insomnia in any way, not that I expected anything else to be honest. Would be nice if this (that it's mainly meant towards the "lighter" forms of Insomnia) was clearly stated somewhere at the start of the guide, in order to avoid misunderstandings. I say this because alot of people who hear/realise I suffer from Insomnia often underestimate right away the severity of it and this isn't something I like to see. But it's not a big deal either way, just a small bit of advice. Also you might want to ask (or do it yourself if you have that power on this forum) to change the location of this thread towards the Health & Fitness section. Feel it will fit more in that section then in the General Forum section. The date of when this was created might be the cause of why, seeing I don't think there was a Health & Fitness section at that time. On October 03 2011 21:23 whatthefat wrote: The idea of 'core' sleep isn't very well founded - especially since we still have a pretty loose grasp on what sleep is actually doing from a functional perspective. There is evidence that regularly sleeping 6 h per night results in measurable cognitive deficits relative to sleeping 8 h per night, and that these deficits continue to accumulate almost linearly day by day over a period of 2 weeks (see Van Dongen et al., Sleep, 2003). Worse still, subjective assessments of performance level out after a few days under these conditions, meaning if you're chronically deprived of sleep, you're probably no longer even aware of how poorly you're functioning! Pretty much what whatthefat says here. As someone who catches less sleep then 3 hours a day (if I had to go for a average, as it can vary quite a bit from day to day and week to week, it would be around the 7-9 hours sleep a week) getting less sleep can have a big impact on one's health. Of course this varies for each person and there are alot of different factors that one has to take into account to, but getting less sleep can (and most likely will) result in significant consequences. The example made here of the Apollo 13 astronauts is a rather poorly made one (no offense Micro), because those astronauts were (to my knowledge) prepared for such situations and trained for it. Of course for them getting less sleep wasn't much of a impact on their capabilities of operating, because of their training, but on top of this also comes the time span they had less sleep. The expedition wasn't a long one and they most likely could have even functioned without significant consequences if they hadn't had any sleep whatsoever, because they prepared their body and mind to function under such conditions and the human body is quite capable of adapting. Though it's a completely other matter if they would continue to get 3 hours of sleep after their expedition for a longer period of time, then they would face rather big consequences for their functioning and health. Even with their training, preparations for their body adapting to this, their is a limit to how far the human body can go and I know this, as I have crossed that line a long time ago and I have to live with it every day. I can type out a long list of the significant consequences I face, in my every day life or the long run, but I don't think that is really needed to get my point across. While I have a tiny urge to go deeper into everything put forward in the guide, I think it's best to refrain from doing this. It's clear that this guide is meant for the "lighter" cases of Insomnia and I shouldn't complicate things with my experience. Besides, there's alot of information in the guide that I could go deeper into or is up for discussion in that guide, a bit too much to do it all for my taste right now. ^ ^ As for research, Insomnia isn't really well covered. There's still alot of it that is more theory based then scientific based, which is a shame on one hand, but it does show that it isn't something to be taking lightly. I have been asked multiple times to aid in research (as a Insomnia subject), but so far I have refused most of those requests because of privacy reasons. Either way, a nice read nonetheless, so thanks for that Micro. | ||
doss
Canada137 Posts
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