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
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.
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.
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.
Someone gave me the advice of actually not reading before bed, because your body will associate reading with sleep and make it more difficult at other times.
I don’t exactly follow it, but reading is definitely effective at putting me to sleep
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.
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.
I know you got downvoted, but I do have autism and adhd and I feel this in my bones. It’s the opposite of neurotypicals— we actually need the stimulation in order to get to sleep.
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.
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)
Moderate exercise for 20 minutes daily is also important for sleep regulation.
Although I will preface all this advice with the fact that if your natural circadian rhythm does not line up with the time you sleep your quality of sleep will always remain degraded.
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.
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.
Expand that to: “stuff that keeps you separated from the ground”. Tires fall in that category. If you live where it snows and don’t have good mass transit, get snow tires, and otherwise rotate, inflate and take care of your tires, and they’ll take care of you.
I slept fine when working a flip schedule. I programmed my into body that we will be going to sleep after we get home from work regardless of the time of day.
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.
I don’t know man… not sure exactly what you’re saying. Always wise to be cautious about taking any kind of drug or supplement, especially regularly. It doesn’t seem like melatonin is one to be worried about but if you’re saying you experienced problems with it after regular use, sure seems reasonable to lay off.
There is lots of variation in how individuals respond to specific substances so maybe it affects some people, including yourself, differently.
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
I can usually only sleep for about 5 hours a night and have a very brief window of opportunity to get to bed, usually between 10-12. If I miss it, I’m up all night, tossing & turning. If I go to bed earlier than that somehow, I wake up at 2 in the morning and can’t get back to bed. We value sleep alot, but I wonder how it is in the animal kingdom, do they really get alot of sleep, or are they on edge all the time?
Just looked it up, other primates are listed as getting 9–15 hours of sleep a day, we are so fucked up.
Prior to electricity and the industrial revolution, most people in Western cultures slept in two 3-4 hour shifts, separated by about an hour of being awake, every night. They would go to bed at 8 or 9, wake up at midnight for an hour or so, then go back to bed for another few hours.
With the invention of electricity and lighting, people pushed back the time that they would go to bed, and when the industrial revolution happened, there was an emphasis on productivity and not spending much time in bed.
Also, they have done studies on the sleeping habits of modern indigenous tribes that live without electricity. The studies found that these people sleep an average of around 6 hours a night, and don’t have problems with sleep disorders like the modern western world does. So it seems like electricity and screen time definitely play a role in sleep quality.
I have similar sleeping habits to you, and went down the rabbit hole of looking into our ancestors sleeping habits. Let’s bring second bedtime back.
With all due respect, maybe chill a little bit on plugging the same podcast 5 different times in the same thread. I thought you were a bot until I double checked your account.
Sorry. I spent 45 years of my life with ever increasing insomnia. During the worst year, I never slept more than four hours a night and would have several nights per week when I didn’t sleep at all. I tried all the suggestions, even talking to a doctor and getting a prescription for sleeping pills, which didn’t work.
Since finding the podcast, I’ve had maybe five nights in eight years where I didn’t fall asleep within 15 minutes of playing it.
When I first started using it, I would play one episode when I was ready to go to sleep, but then I’d wake up when it ended. So, I started loading a playlist with all the episodes and playing non-stop, but then my alarm wouldn’t wake me up in the morning (it would go off, then I’d hit snooze and the podcast would knock me out again). Finally I set on a routine in which I set it to play all night with a sleep timer to stop it a few minutes before my alarm.
Perhaps I come on too strong, but I was reaching the end of my rope when I found this. Like I said, it doesn’t work for everyone, but on the off chance there’s someone else like me who could be helped by this ridiculous thing, I can’t help pushing it ever chance I get.
Edit: Also, I don’t get anything out of the podcast except sleep. In fact, I pay to support it via patreon. It’s completely free for anyone who wants to try it. I just want to make sure the people who need it can find it.
Dawg I haven’t been sleeping my whole life. Like I’m only 20 and I can’t remember the last time I laid in bed and just fell asleep easily. It’s always tossing and turning since I was probably around 9
yeah, I feel this. I’ve always tossed and turned, but I’d still fall asleep quickly, sleep most of the night, and wake up refreshed. Now I’m medicated which is super helpful in day-to-day life, but it comes with insomnia. I’m not sure how much is the meds and how much is just having kids and getting older, but it feels like I just can’t win.
I have what Misty would consider to be an honest profession. But I get yelled at externally and internally all day every day for the most infinitely small matters all day every day. Even with a clear conscious, that hard day’s work messes with my sleep.
I’m reassessing my life this fall. I’m pretty old, so new marketable skills aren’t really an option. Not sure what the next step is.
(It’s not where I work or who I work for. It’s the industry in and of itself. When you’ve got direct influence over other people’s personal finances, the darkest sides of humanity consistently emerge)
We are addicted to coffee. But not good coffee. Shitty Starbucks or Peet’s coffee. Only a few of us truly live and drink small shop ethically sourced but we know that’s for rich folks!
A simple cup of filter coffee is easy enough to make at home with cheap equipment, sure, but espresso/milk drinks are a different story, and some people prefer milk drinks to filter coffee. A decent home espresso machine that can also steam milk is gonna run you around $150 at the low end. Some people don’t have that much laying around at once, but can afford the $3 cappuccino a couple times a week.
A venti drink is like 20oz, is probably at least 3 shots of espresso, and is not comparable to the drinks I’m talking about.
You can get a short cappuccino (8oz) from Starbucks for around $3. This is comparable to most cafe prices for a reasonably sized, single-shot milk drink.
Depends on whether you consider a Flair a “machine” I guess… But yeah, I would agree you’re probably better off with a moka pot than most $150 or less espresso machines. For $150 budget to make strong coffee with milk type drinks, I’d recommend most folks get a moka pot and milk frother.
Thats just poor personal finance then. Paying 3$ a couple times a week, so let’s say 4 times, runs you up at 12$ a week. So within 13 weeks you’d have the money to buy a machine.
Exactly, thank you. It takes so long just to break even with even the cheapest home espresso equipment, plus you then have to learn to use and maintain said equipment - for some people, the convenience of having a barista fix you a better cup of coffee than you could make yourself at home is worth the $3.
I use a moka pot at home with milk and sugar. It’s like half way to espresso for much cheaper. When I’m feeling fancy I have a cheap milk frother too. It isn’t as good as a real espresso drink, but I get those occasionally as a treat.
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