For me, I find my sleep suffers because of what some describe as "revenge bedtime procrastination". When my job is shit (i.e. now), I'm more inclined to stay on the PC later doing things that bring me some level of joy, or play games to escape the mind spinning its wheels. I seem to more easily recognise that my job is unfulfilling because I'm staying up later or I'm dreading going to bed. Going to bed early for a good night's sleep seems a lot easier a habit to build when my day-life is going well.
Quick advice - see if you can shift that to getting up earlier. You will probably spend the couple of hours in the morning in a way that sets you up for a better day vs staying up late sets you up for a bad tomorrow.
I say this as an always "late" person who now tries to get up at 5 to work out and reflect, it's been very helpful.
A life changing thing for me was specifically scheduling time to do fun things in the morning before doing the things I have to do. If I wake up at six, I still don’t start my day until eight, and instead spend those two hours on things I otherwise would have done the night before. This broke the feeling of dreading mornings that lead to a negative spiral. Even if I know most of the day will be awful, if I can look forward to my me time in the morning I can convince myself to go to bed.
Wish this worked for me, but my brain straight up ignores[0] any kind of alarm clocks, music, light, etc. until it's something like 10:00 in the morning, or until a person wakes me up (and checks 5-10 minutes later if I'm actually up)[1]. So, shifting time to morning turned out to be impossible to maintain when I was living alone - I could hold such schedule for maybe a week at most, gradually oversleeping more and more. Still, it was possible then and I wish I tried harder, because now it's strictly not - I have two small kids, and one true thing about them is that they always wake up earlier than you[2]. So there's no space for personal time in the morning.
Also I wonder if I'm the only one here who feels that their mind takes some 2/3 of the day to get into high gear?.It's probably more about emotional balance than cognitive functions, but I feel like I'm best able to focus only from late afternoon onward, making late night the only time that's useful for anything.
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[0] - I tried all kinds of things. Music blaring from the speakers at 06:30 sharp? Within a week, I've mastered getting up, hitting the power button on the amplifier, and falling back to bed in one, smooth move, with ballet-like fluidity. Got an alarm clock that requires you to solve math problems to turn it off? I quickly realized I must've mastered the art of multiplying 2-digit numbers in memory while unconscious, because I would wake up at 11:00 to discover multiple such alarms disabled, with no memory of doing it, or even hearing them ring.
[1] - Yes, that means business trips are especially hard for me. When traveling alone, I rely on wake-up calls from my wife (and check-ups afterward). Even with that, I still almost missed a plane once.
[2] - Except when there's an important appointment coming up that we need to get up unusually early for - on those nights, they're near-impossible to wake up.
Sounds familiar. There's probably some sort of pineal gland feature that makes this habitual shifting essentially impossible. You just get more and more sleep deprivation combined with lying in bed not sleeping.
My ex wife told me I'd once answered her phone call in the morning and had a complete conversation only speaking absolute nonsense until she hung up. I had no recollection of that at all.
Two things that might work in these cases are melatonin and bright "sun"light in the morning. These should control the natural circadian cycle. I haven't found success, yet, but haven't tried too hard since I can live with my schedule.
> My ex wife told me I'd once answered her phone call in the morning and had a complete conversation only speaking absolute nonsense until she hung up. I had no recollection of that at all.
I've had that several times. The kicker is, I actually did make enough sense that she didn't suspect I wasn't awake, and it wasn't until later that I learned from her that the conversation happened - usually because I agreed to something, or was given important information, which I had no recollection of. The phone log, of course, confirmed a conversation took place.
Melatonin sounds like it may work long-term, but at this point my wakeup time is set by our kids, and my bedtime is set by my acute revenge bedtime procrastination, so sleep deprivation it is :/. I wish there was something that could immediately force/reset the circadian rhythm, which I could use on business travel.
Some people have more difficulty shifting, but that aside, some factors that feed into chronotype can be more impactful than others. If you moved to the other side of the world, you would surely shift your circadian rhythm and fall back to the habit of getting up at 10am or later, eventually (faster than you think). Sunlight is a powerful factor, but there is also timing of work, social cues, food, and preference. All of that informs tendency towards morning-ness or evening-ness.
The reason this is important is you can manipulate those factors to shift, the same way traveling several time zones away would automatically make you shift.
Yes, and thanks to HN I went in and got myself diagnosed; turns out I have ADHD, and while treating it solved a host of problems[0] and overall improved my quality of life, it did not help for the problems I mention in this thread.
Well, maybe getting my brain into high gear is much faster with stimulant meds in the mix, but it only revealed that my limiting factor isn't cognitive, but emotional - and so it often still takes me a good chunk of the day before I have all the emotions in enough of a balance to focus without fighting some anxiety.
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[0] - Or at least allowed me to overcome some major problems, and then replace them with even tougher problems.
FYI for anyone wants to try this test: it requires an email address for results (at the end of the test). Also there was only <10 questions. It didn't feel like a competent test.
Could devices to trigger other senses work?
Like an aromatic diffuser on a timer switch that pumps out a scent, or a SAD lamp that simulates sunlight. A vibration device for the bed
Waking up is solved for me now - I'm married, my wife is an early bird (and our kids are the worms, they get up even earlier, or am I getting that adage wrong?), and she makes sure I get up (and stay up).
Right now, the bedtime is a problem - revenge bedtime procrastination + everyone getting used to me doing extra work overnight during some more busy times (I work remotely, so sometimes I handle kid emergencies during the day) + various other issues --> even if I had an "insta-sleep" pill, I'd have hard time getting myself to take it before 02:00.
A SAD lamp is something I'd like to try in general, maybe it'll improve my overall mood or something. I seem to function best in either near-complete darkness (i.e. only light being the screen, indicator LEDs and some street lamps in the distance outside), or very bright environments. The average brightness people I know keep at home makes me instantly sleepy, and I spend most of my cognitive resources on forcing myself to stay awake.
This is my solution. I try to get a 90 minute nap whenever I can, but 30 and caffeine can help too. These two numbers are important so that you don’t wake up in a REM cycle.
Did you try sleeping earlier? If you regularly sleep at 01:00, then you won't be able to wake up at 06:00. If you go to sleep at 22:00 then it's not as impossible as you think.
I wish people would understand that "just get up early" simply does not and cannot work for a significant portion of the population (20-50% depending on which study you choose).
Therefore it is aggravating advice to constantly receive, from those for whom it worked, to those for whom it won't.
In the US military, new recruits are put on a very early schedule (think: 5:00am wakeup) and an appropriately early bedtime. Within a matter of weeks, they become habituated to it such that everyone's body automatically starts operating on that schedule, even if no one wakes them up in the morning. I am skeptical that there is a biological reason 20-50% of the population can't get up early because it doesn't seem to be an issue in the myriad environments where waking up early is a general requirement. These environments aren't selecting for people that can get up early, they habituate people into getting up early. It clearly is possible most of the time.
I've had points in life where school or work demanded I wake up early. After a few weeks I could go to bed and sleep at something approximating the time required for an appropriate night of rest and would automatically wake up at the time required - true.
This sounds like success, but is significantly less so than it sounds:
- It didn't change the time my body wants to do those things.
- Waking up: I'd wake up because it's the time I currently wake up daily and know I need to, but the feeling of wanting to go back to bed for hours was still there - not even feeling like I'm not rested, just a vague sense of "this is a time for sleep". Performance for the first 3-5 hours of my day was noticeably poor.
- Going to bed: With enough practice I could usually sleep early enough. I never once wanted to sleep early enough or actually felt tired when I had to go to bed. I had to have multiple alarms set to go to bed, because even though that was the time I'd been going to bed for months - my body still does not give off a single signal to sleep at that time.
- One single night off-schedule would completely blow up the whole thing and take a week or more to feel back on the schedule fully. Months of being on the "early" schedule could be instantly thrown away and I'd be back on the "late" - adaptation is only required in the unnatural direction, the natural one is instant.
- I have actually spent weeks off-grid hiking and away from screens/artificial light before and the behavior still persists. It's not until hours after dark that I feel tired and I don't naturally want to wake up until far past sunrise. (I am also perfectly happy sleeping in full daylight, room light/darkness has no impact on my sleep).
I have the same feeling regarding much of what you said, with the slight difference that even though my body didn't feel the need to go to bed, strangely enough, after lying in bed for 20 minutes or so, I often fall asleep without noticing any sleepiness before that, just wide awake, and the next thing I know I am waking up in the morning.
While I was never in the military, I have been in environments where I needed to be an earlybird. It's exactly as you say: the adaption to the environment makes the early rising palatable. However, once left to my own devices, I quickly return to my nocturnal habits. For me, it's less revenge bedtime procrastination and more so that nights are better for long blocks of uninterrupted time than days.
I think people can train themselves to get up at any time, even in the middle of the night, but I have doubts that they'd all be fully alert at that hour even if they did it for months or years. I can train myself to wake up early, but my brain doesn't fully "wake up" until much later in the day. It might be genetic (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150514085748.h...) and there are groups looking at drugs to help night owls adapt to the artificial constraints modern society imposes on them.
I think is a combination of physical activity waking the recruits up and keeping them alert, as well as physical exhaustion helping them fall asleep. I suppose anyone who is chronically unable to stick to that schedule would get weeded out quickly.
I suffered from delayed sleep phase syndrome for years and years. Root cause was undiagnosed health issues causing chronic pain and alertness.
Once I nailed down the problem all it took from there was a mere complete lifestyle change, once which takes constant discipline to maintain. Which I manage to maintain mostly because lapses in discipline result in me being slapped hard back to reality.
I was told to try melatonin so - many - times. I had so many printouts on sleep hygiene handed to me over the years. I was told repeatedly both to wake up early AND to restrict how long I spend in bed. Being told to wake up early was given The idea of doing a differential NEVER occurred to people as my sleep problems were obviously a result of my poor ethics and laziness and could be fixed with nothing more than an attitude adjustment.
The point of this all being, is to say I agree with you rather strongly.
Fair point, but I find the kind of advice given goes beyond being unhelpful into being actually damaging. It's exasperating at best and makes the 'patient' feel as if no one understands them, or worse that the world is against them.
On balance I weigh the damage of that as more negative than the absence of advice that might help.
I used to be depressed and constantly received the same bullshit advice which led me to believe nobody understands me and that I’m incurable and I was about to give up. Please don’t be a cliche programmer and speak on matters outside of your expertise as if you know what you’re talking about, this is dangerous territory.
As someone who used to think I had unique physiology, I eventually appreciated people who kept suggesting sensible advice with no downsides to try it. Thanks.
We are all completely empowered to accept or reject all advice.
Separately from that, there's a question of "which strategy is most likely to yield a good outcome." EG - you are welcome to get 100% of your calories from junk food, which is separate from our ability to discuss that you'll probably have a better life doing something different.
On this sleep thing - one can do whatever the hell they want, and of course they may have limits in place that are unique to them. Which doesn't preclude us talking about what would be best and then whether we want to and can get there.
Yeah suggestions about what to do, sans anything helpful about how to do it, are just annoying, especially when the thing is hard to do.
That said, there’s a very big difference between doesn’t work and can’t work. Humans are pretty adaptable given the right circumstances, so I’d wager we’re talking mostly about the doesn’t category. Your comment totally reminds me of many conversations I’ve heard and read about weight loss where someone says “just consume fewer calories”, as if it’s somehow simple. Other person, annoyed, says “I’ve tried that, it doesn’t work for me” or “studies have shown that doesn’t work for most people”. It’s true that it generally doesn’t work for most people, I believe the failure rates are even higher than 50%, and yet it’s guaranteed that it can work, it’s physics. It’s not because people actually eat fewer calories and it fails, it’s because people generally aren’t able to reduce their calorie intake permanently, they revert. And trying to will yourself to overcome hunger tends to backfire, just like trying to will yourself to ‘just get up early’ tends to backfire. It doesn’t work because they don’t really know how to change their habits; habits are really hard to break, behavior is really hard to change. A lot of people fail to appreciate how hard it is, especially when some people do seem to be able to do it.
I’ve gone through long periods where I was unable to be a morning person and, maybe like you, I could have bopped someone lightly on the nose for saying to me ‘just get up early’. But changes in my life have made it easier; my job changed, my kids turned into teenagers, my exercise changed, my outlook on life has change, my evening activities have changed. I also have a better idea of how to wake up early, and it doesn’t need to involve setting alarms and trying to force myself, it’s much more about how to spend the time, much more about what I want to get done, and much less about when.
I think the point may have been more that many people have chronotypes [1] that negate the benefits of changing a sleep schedule to something that fits your waking schedule. Doing this may allow for better time allocations, but comes at the cost of the effectiveness of your forced circadian rhythm.
Oh no I might have accidentally stepped on a small land mine. Circadian rhythms aren’t permanent. If they were, international travel would be impossible for humans. Circadian rhythms are defined as entrainable, meaning adjustments to the environment must change the rhythm. I might have to walk this back some day, but right now that site you linked gives me vibes of homeopathy. There’s a non-zero amount of irony in asking if individual humans identify with different animal species, isn’t there? The idea that an animal species as a whole sleeps at a given time undermines the very idea that each human is a unique snowflake, and suggests that the variation in humans that we’re talking about is not fixed, but is a product of environment, habits, behaviors, situational preferences, etc., doesn’t it? I mean we have lots and lots and lots of evidence that humans can change sleep schedule when they have to, and that preferences largely come from what we’re used to, no?
> Circadian rhythms aren’t permanent. If they were, international travel would be impossible for humans. Circadian rhythms are defined as entrainable, meaning adjustments to the environment must change the rhythm.
Sure. That's why I'm a night owl in every timezone.
You seem to be assuming that circadian rhythms are driven by some stable 24h/cycle oscillator, with an offset that can be changed with some effort, whether self-directed or in response to environment changes. But if that was the case, international travel would be a chore - you'd probably be back home before you finished adjusting.
The way I see it, circadian rhythms are more like the oscillator with a floating reference point, constantly adapting to environmental cues, and a stable offset that's near-impossible to change (probably genetically fixed). Under this model, international travel is easy - the body will quickly adjust the reference point to the new timezone, based on environmental cues, but the offset remains fixed. And this is what I observe - I'm a night owl in every timezone.
> You seem to be assuming that circadian rhythms are driven by some stable 24h/cycle oscillator, with an offset that can be changed with some effort, whether self-directed or in response to environment changes.
I don’t know how you got that out of what I said above, but FWIW, Wikipedia does say that in order to call something a Circadian rhythm, it must be a cycle of about 24 hours, and it must be resettable [1], which seems to match your assumptions about my assumptions exactly... your description appears to fit the definition of Circadian rhythm almost exactly, you’re only missing the bit about temperature compensation.
> if that was the case, international travel would be a chore - you’d probably be back home before you finished adjusting.
I totally don’t understand what you’re saying here. Jet lag is pretty well understood, no? It takes a few days to adjust, and they you’re fine. If you fly home after a day or two, yeah, you’re home before your Circadian rhythm got reset. If you stay a week or more, and you’d be fine overseas and then have to reset again when you get home. It’s widely agreed that jet lag does make international travel a bit of a chore, no?
I mostly assume that the minute people start talking about Circadian rhythms, we’re probably in the arena of pseudoscience. I’ve just noticed over time that invocations of Circadian rhythms get used incorrectly a lot to justify bogus arguments, like with daylight saving time, for example, with claims that humans can be out of sync with their rhythms for months and months. That’s not true according to Wikipedia’s definition, because Circadian rhythms must also be able to be “reset by exposure to external stimuli (such as light and heat).” [1] And the reset generally takes at most a few days for most people. [2] The ‘sleep foundation’ article above certainly loses credibility by mentioning Circadian rhythms and then launching into the ‘what’s your spirit animal’ personality quiz blogspam fad.
I don’t know what evidence there is for an offset that changes when traveling but can’t change when staying put, or that it’s genetic. Do you have links to any? There’s a metric ton of evidence that superficially seems to counter that idea, because humans adapt and change sleep schedules all the time, they respond to light therapy, etc.
Look I’m generally a night owl too, and left to my own devices I wake up late and go to sleep late. I have absolutely no doubt that it’s very difficult for some people to change though, I’m not suggesting it’s easy. But - have you ever tried camping outdoors for a week or more? It’s quite surprising to me how fast I adjust to waking up with the sun. Try it! There’s also loads of evidence that people have a hard time changing any habits, and that use of electronic screens and artificial lighting mess with our sleep schedules, and that jobs and life stress can as well. We have to rule all those effects out first before saying it can’t be changed, and those are really hard to rule out, no?
I may have some terminology off. The point of chronotypes is to sort out the what, who, and why of "morning people", "night owls" and various states between. I don't care for the animal metaphors either, and they can easily be omitted with no loss of value. As a "night owl" myself, I have anecdotally found that while I can certainly force myself to function early in the morning on a regular basis, my body never stops hating that even after years of doing so. The best times for me to get up and go to sleep are closer to 10 am and 2 am, respectively. The chronotypes system proposed here was useful in helping contextualize all that.
It's incomplete advice, but it can't be separated from effective advice. Similarly, "just eat less" is not useful/workable on it's own, but at the end of the day, losing weight relies on caloric deficit; it's still true.
The missing piece with this, not unlike weight-loss, is the use of effective tools (that can include sunlight, scheduling everything differently, among other things).
I agree with this. I struggled the same thing as GP mentioned, and worse. And from my experience it’s a vicious cycle.
I don’t necessarily agree with the specific “get up at T”, but generally working towards getting rid of bad sleeping habits (and nutrition etc.) is incredibly beneficial. Seemingly small improvements can have a positive snowball effect.
Negative circumstances (like “my job is shit”) can be overcome more easily the more energy you have.
Seems trite, but it’s trivially true. My mental state improved gradually and I gathered more courage, got more resilient and more creative.
I’m much happier, helpful and have much more impact on my life and my surroundings than ever before. And it all started with the basics.
This is what I do to maintain a some what normal sleep schedule while having to find quite time to work on personal projects with a 4yo in my free time. The thing that gets me is I seem to be way more productive at the end of the day at night. Idk if its just being a night owl, or maybe something to do with attention issues, but I feel like I grind out a lot more code from say 10->3am than 3am->8am even if I am more tired near the end of the night if I stay up late. But I still stick to the waking up early routine as I get a good rest and can always "sleep in" by getting up a little later so I always get 6-7 hours sleep instead of 5-6.
I tried to get up early (5am) almost all my adult life. Till I could, after I was a parent.
My key observation is this, no matter how well I sleep, I will wake up groggy eyed, my mind begging me to go back to bed, for my own sake.
I get out of bed as soon as my eyes open unless its before 4am. My mind plays the dirty trick every day, and I have to tell myself, "what good will a few more minutes of sleep do that the whole night could not" and I'm up.
If my head hurts 10 mins after I'm out of bed, I go back to bed.
These days I sleep at around 8, and it made it much easier for me to get up at 5 and still get 8 hours of sleep. And then I have energy to do basically anything in those early hours.
If I even get just 6 hours, I immediately feel crankiness the next day.
I finish work at like 6. Add an hour for cooking and eating dinner after that and it leaves 1 hour for personal activities with such a schedule. If I go to the office for a day, I don't get home until 7:30pm.
Was going to suggest the same thing. A great way to break the cycle is to somehow wake up early one day and force yourself to not sleep. You'll feel very sleepy early in the night and will fall asleep.
I envy those for whom this is the case. For me, I might be dead tired during the day, but I will spontaneously regain energy in the evening - enough to delay my bedtime a couple hours again.
It's absurd and somewhat dangerous - if I ever pull an all-nighter on something, it's really important I force myself to go to sleep early the next day, because I will suddenly become full of energy again come 21:00 - 23:00, go to sleep late again, and suffer further come next morning.
Going to sleep feels like it brings the next day, and if you aren't looking forward to what you have to do the next day....you put it off for as long as possible.
I'm the same too. I know it doesn't make logical sense because it starts a bad spiral, but my body (gut?) is trying really hard to procrastinate sleeping because it doesn't want the next day to come. Rationally speaking I know what I should be doing, but it feels like my mind is not strong enough to fight the emotional/gut instinct.
I also procrastinate bed time. I've always linked it to anxiety (non necessarily in strict medical terms/meaning).
That's my rationale: In the evening the day's over and 'nothing can happen' anymore for that day, so I feel I can chill out. On the contrary, tomorrow 'anything has yet to happen' and I can have a feeling of worry.
That's the reason I've given myself to procrastinate bed time. Not sure of that's the case or I'm just a night owl (possibly that's the case as per Occam's).
Anyway, I feel you.
This is me. For me, it's not about the next day, but exactly about that "nothing can happen" feeling - everyone is finally asleep, no one has any expectations towards me, nobody will be calling me (it's night, it's rude to call people at night), nor will they be texting me (they're normal people, they're already in beds, sleeping). It's the only time my body is able to relax a little. It's the only time I can think about things, without interruptions and the nagging feelings I should be doing something else.
I tried, I tried really hard to give it up, but I can't. Now, with small kids in the mix, the mornings are not even an option.
This is what "revenge" in "revenge bedtime procrastination" is about. That feeling that it's the only time that's actually yours, the only moment of actual autonomy in your life. Everything else is driven by others - working a job, running errands, being there with your loved ones. When it starts feeling like an unending stream of obligations, those few hours late at night are a form of defiance, showing the middle finger to the universe, reclaiming some time for yourself.
I'm a bit reverse. Anxiety drives me towards people. Being on top of everything at work, getting into the flow - I too don't want to touch my PC for fun, but I also don't want to talk to people, or do anything that would "flush the cache" or "page to disk" all the work stuff, because I feel that once I break my stride, I won't regain it any time soon.
It's perhaps irrational, but it's something I struggle with - my perfect way of working unfortunately goes against every social expectation, life/work balance stuff, etc.
Improving my sleep has beens something I've been meaning to do for a long time and I've heard of that Japanese idea in the past, but haven't entirely gelled with it. I think it's a bit of that and a bit of...something else that makes me stay up way longer than I should do.
To be perfectly honest, usually I'm staying up because of "the hormny" or because I've found something technical/geeky to immerse myself in. But I think the core thing is not "losing track" of time, but for some reason I see the time and just feel apathy like, it doesn't matter that it's 2,3 am or whatever.
For me, it's usually my adhd brain dredging up bad memories. I'm ashamed to admit my go to 'treatment' used to be taking a couple shots of whiskey before bed. That (I think?) caused vivid nightmares which made me avoid going to sleep even more.
Eventually, I realized this wasn't healthy and I switched to doing strenuous exercise. Hard to be wound up when you're exhausted! It's not a cure all. Sometimes I wind up doing so many sets of pushups a night that I feel it the next day, but it's definitely better than nothing.
I can highly recommend listening to fiction audiobooks instead of playing games. I‘ve been listening to a few series (latest one the Red Rising series) and only seldomly stayed awake past midnight. With the lights out, I‘ve found it hard not falling asleep with an audiobook.
I used to have a chron job that forcibly updated and shutdown my pc when it was time for bed. It really helped me stop diving into midnight rabbit holes.
The post is mostly covering "mind" and "metabolic" things, but the effect extends to "body" things:
- more likely to avoid hurtful situations (lower attention, zone out events, micro sleep events, reflexes diminished).
- more likely to hurt yourself when such accidents occur
- once hurt, physical recovery is severely hampered
Car accidents are the obvious ones here but it extends to simple things like accidental cuts with knives, slipping in the tub, or sprained ankles or knees just walking down stairs or curbs.
And some other "mind" and "metabolic" things:
- immune system effectiveness plummets, so more chances to get sick
- REM deprivation causes neuronal death
- long term, leads to anxiety, false memories, paranoia, hallucinations, and psychosis (been there, done that; not a good place to be)
We all know that water is essential to not dying, but sleep appears to be on equal footing (3 days without either and you're in catastrophic states), maybe even more important (the - sad - record of a human surviving without water is 18 days, for sleep it's 10)
Canker sores for me happen if I'm 2-4 days of reduced sleep hours.
Supplementing lysine has been helpful in reducing canker sores over a long period of time. Cutting my incidences from 1 a month to 1 every 2-4 months. It also seems to effect how quickly it heals.
Resonates with anyone that has had children. Biggest impact for both my wife and I was overall sleep quality/quantity and sacrificing sleep for a modicum of personal time at the end of the day.
My wife still manages 12+ hours per day - I get about 4-6. She wonders why I am gradually becoming irrationally irritable, as in her view being overtired is something that is easily controlled. Easily said when you get to sleep in to 1pm or later every day.
I find myself picking fights with anyone and everyone, even inanimate objects. I know it’s crazy.
We don’t have time together any more - I just fall asleep the moment the child is asleep, as I know I’ll be getting up several times in the night and before the birds in the morning, and I just can’t keep my eyes open beyond a certain point.
The flip-side is that she feels that she spends her every waking hour looking after the baby - which isn’t far off the truth, as I look after her while she sleeps - so nobody is happy. My spare time is spent working and building and repairing stuff at home.
I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone has more than one child. How can anyone go “that was fun, let’s do it again”.
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We have 3 kids and it was never as hard as you're describing, so that probably has something to do with people wanting to have more than one kid.
I don't want to overstep, but you guys are doing it wrong. Your wife sleeping 12 hours doesn't sound right to me. We took shifts, but my wife was going to bed very early (9pm) and waking up around 5 or 6pm and then I'd sleep. She did this so we had a solution that worked for both of us. If your wife is not willing to do that, then you should be swapping nights at the very least.
Your wife sleeping at midnight and waking up so late is not sharing the workload at all and is frankly abusive IMO. I'd also look into postpartum issues since sleeping 12 hours is not normal.
Meh.. couples just need to find what works for them. There is no one right approach.
I did nights for all my kids. Unlike my partner, I can fall asleep almost instantly, no matter when I'm woken up. My partner, if woken up at 3am, is up for the rest of the night.
So I did nights. Wake up, feed, change diaper, rock back to bed, fall asleep right away, then rinse and repeat 2 more times at 2-3 hr internals.
Though I was sleep deprived, it wasn't that bad and still went to work each day. My partner had the kid during the day, and it just worked for us.
Probably doesn’t help that we live off-grid in total isolation, in a country where childminding doesn’t really exist, as most folks here have multi-generational households, so there’s no demand.
We didn't have nearby family either so can understand how hard that is. Good news is it should start getting easier soon. Good luck man and demand some help if you're absolutely at your breaking point. Everyone needs sleep.
Sounds like you need to share the night shift. It isn't sustainable to work all day and have every night's sleep ruined like that. It'll get better as the baby sleeps longer and longer, but chances are that you'll get burned out before that unless you get to sleep better.
We had separate beds so one of us could sleep undisturbed every night.
Yeah, we have separate beds - she sleeps in what was our room, I sleep on the couch, so I don’t disturb her when I get up to tend to the bairn.
She, I feel reasonably, points out that it was not me that spent 10 months being pregnant with our child - and she sleeps extremely soundly, to the extent that she will sleep straight through screaming and crying more often than not, which means I have to be on alert, as I never do much more than a shallow, nightmare-filled doze.
To be honest, it’s not much different to the worst periods of technical hell for my startup back in the day, when I would be yanked out of bed repeatedly to deal with Situations while being yelled at by clients.
Now my client is eight months old, and is actually considerably more patient than many of the adults I used to deal with.
I might be wrong, but sleeping in till 1pm with an 8 month old baby sounds like maybe something else may be going on.
My partner had a very difficult birth that has led to a series of mental health issues. I didn't spot these for months initially, and it took a lot for it all to come to a head and out in the open.
It was easy to miss the issues with a child to care for.
If she gets to sleep through the night, she gets to wake early and take care of the child while you get a few hours uninterrupted sleep. Sleep is as important for your mental health and longevity as exercise is for your physical health and longevity.
I am a heavy sleeper too, so the agreement my wife and I had, was that she attend her son at night, he needed to be breastfed anyway, while I got to sleep. Then I was up at an ungodly early time and took care of my son while she could get some uninterrupted sleep. We did this for both of our children.
Her being pregnant is not an argument in favour of you having to do everything at night. Perhaps in the first few weeks while she recover, but after that, it's shared in a reasonable way. She does not get to dictate, but in unison you get to find a happy compromise, which includes enough sleep at regular intervals for both of you.
If you are willing to listen, listen to this: You are well on your way to a roommate situation, the first and biggest step towards a divorce. If you do not correct that course, both of you, that is with all likelihood what will happen. This path of a little bit of resentment many times, is a relationship killer.
If she didn't start sleeping those number of hours until after having the baby, this sounds like it could be postpartum depression. I'd recommend she gets evaluated by a psychiatrist to confirm, of course.
She’s always slept like that. I’m in therapy, and am considering starting antidepressants, as the whole shebang is making me suicidal - and I think it’s mostly just the constant, gnawing exhaustion - I feel like I have flies crawling around behind my eyes. The sun pisses me off. I shout and swear at the stars at night.
Poor kid is stuck in the middle. Doing my best for both of them, I really am, but I gravely underestimated how hard this would be. I thought years of being on call would prepare me, but it’s an entirely different kettle of fish.
I'll reiterate what others have said. It's unusual that your wife is sleeping 12 hours. I don't know the details of your situation, but my initial impression is that it's woefully unfair. If the baby needs tending in the middle of the night, whoever's slept the most recently should be the one getting up.
Antidepressants are serious business. If you're actually just exhausted, it seems like you would be better off changing your environment rather than your brain chemistry. My wife has been on antidepressants since suffering from postpartum depression from our first child. Her current prescription seems to have her leveled out, but has also suppressed important aspects of her personality and perhaps even memory. This past year we've been in a rut where she refuses to even discuss changing anything because it's easier for her than confronting her underlying trauma.
For what it's worth, if you're fly-crawling-suicidal tired, it's better for you and your family to let your baby scream in their crib for an hour or two while you go sleep in a car. It isn't going to traumatize your baby, and might even be healthy for them to learn how to self-soothe. If you can afford it, it's also ok for you to occasionally take off a night and stay alone in a hotel, and let your wife take care of the baby. It would be more effective than antidepressants, assuming exhaustion is truly the root issue.
That will solve most of your health and mental problems.
Being a martyr getting no sleep and destroying your body and mind so your wife can sleep 12 hours isn't helping your wife or your kids. Not in the short term and 100% not in the long term.
You are going down a path that will result in major health and mental issues for yourself and at the end of the day, your wife and kids will hate you for what you allowed yourself to turn in to... a mean, unhealthy, unstable, fragile, and eventually dead husband.
Sounds like you're taking an unfair amount of the burden and you're suffering as a result.
I'd have an honest discussion about this wit her.
Spending every waking hour with the baby doesn't entitle her to steal your sleep. If she got 10 and you got 6-8 hours, that would make a huge difference to you and to your family.
Don't let her gaslight you into thinking working a job to support the family and doing home repair and maintenance isn't as mentally and physically taxing as caring for a baby.
Well the sleep deprivation stage doesn't last that long (although it seems long when going through it) for most babies.
And in terms of one child, your brain (and evolution) does a great job at helping you forget and filter out only the positive experiences of a newborn.
Plus once you've had one, you don't stress nearly as much about the subsequent ones which taxes your brain a lot less. You don't feel quite so exhausted by it and you know it doesn't last forver.
I have a 5 year old and an 11 month old. I take immunosuppressants to manage a serious health condition. I've had sinus infections for 7 of the past 8 weeks, since the 5 year old started school. My teeth ache from coughing. The 11 month old has had a fever all weekend, and hasn't gone more than a 2 hour stretch without screaming. The 5 year old seems to have temporary hearing loss from being sick, and some resentment from being ignored in favor of the baby. My wife and I need to loudly yell 6-7 times between each other or the 5 year old in order to effectively communicate. I got about 3 hours of sleep tonight, and I'm thinking more about making hash browns than falling back asleep.
A similar scenario happened about 6 months ago. Of course, that round of sinus infections kicked off with a norovirus that had everyone but the baby violently exploding. It was especially fun because my wife also had a severely broken leg. She also suffered permanent hearing loss above 3.5Khz in one ear.
I am very fortunate that the company I work at has been overwhelmingly understanding and supportive.
Yes. I don’t know how, but she always has - bed at midnight, and she rises anywhere between midday and 4pm. I envy her amicability with Morpheus. I used to be able to sleep a decent amount, but I burned that part of my brain out during my startup days - I get by ok on six uninterrupted hours, but when my night is more like three two hour naps punctuated by stress, I start to disintegrate - as I learned in my startup days.
For some time I was driving to the office (or my clients'), and almost everyday taking a nap in it after dropping the kids at daycare. When we got a minivan I even sneaked a comforter in it. I was going at the lowest level to avoid being seen, and took an extra half hour sleep. It made all the difference. Yet I felt shameful.
I remember the sensation of feeling drained of all energy at 8am, after battling to get kids through the door.
Time plays in your favor. It gets easier, much faster than you think.
The caffeine trap can be particularly insidious, especially for those of us who metabolize it slower. Its half-life can range from as low as 1.5 hours all the way up to 9.5 hours.
So on the high end of that scale, if you drink 3 cups of coffee, containing say 300mg of caffeine, between 7 and 10 AM then you still have around 100mg of caffeine kicking around in your system when 11pm rolls around, clogging up your adenosine receptors and disrupting your body's ability to signal to itself (and you) that it wants and is ready for rest.
[And if you don't follow any sleep hygiene practices, you are also probably depriving the body of its primary mechanism for initiating the sleep processes. You can take supplemented melatonin but it is usually only effective for short or medium-term use, and in my personal experience is way less effective than the home-grown good stuff produced in the pineal gland]
So you lose 30 minutes here, and hour there of sleep. Not necessarily every night, but on a weekly basis you find yourself worn out, mentally ready to rest and recharge, but there is a disconnect in your brain and body that doesn't allow a smooth wake-sleep transition. The longer this trend occurs, the more sleep debt you find yourself in, the more you tend to throw in another half-cup around noon from time to time just to make sure you can keep going.
Worst of all is when you hit on the realization that alcohol or some other drug can help to knock you out when you're still too wired to sleep even though you really want or need it.. unfortunately (with the possible exception of a few herbs) basically every medication or drug that puts you to sleep also negatively impacts the quality of that sleep. Which in the above scenario is going to spell out more caffeine in the routine, sooner or later, to compensate further. Do be aware that this doesn't necessarily have to be conscious realization, it is an extremely easy and I assume common habit to fall into.
If you happen to process caffeine at a 1.5 hour half life, and can conk out like a light under most circumstances, I am truly jealous. Enjoy your God-given gifts ya lucky bastard!
I don't know how tolerance plays into this, but I drink like 1L or more of coffee a day, and have done so for more than a decade, and I have never felt any difficulty falling asleep.
Well, besides some reluctance during weekdays because I just don't want the next day to arrive, because of work, so I sometimes just go to sleep later and suffer the consequences for the next following days; but during long vacations (1-2 consecutive weeks long) it's all good, even with little to no variation on how much coffee I drink or the times I wake up and go to bed compared to outside vacation, so I think the problems are not related to coffee (at least not too much).
I don't even feel "awoken" when I drink coffee, and it's always weird when I read people saying they drink coffee to feel more awake. Or to get more energy, or something.
So I don't think I've ever drank it for any reason other than the taste. Caffeinated or decaffeinated; a 325ml mug full of undiluted?[1][2] espresso, vs milk coffee; literally no (perceivable) difference to me other than taste.
If anything, when I want to "stay awake", I try to drink something very sweet. It doesn't "wake me up" like I hear people say with coffee, but it very slowly takes away just a little bit of sleepyness.
[1]: Probably the wrong term. But I mean, taking a coffee "capsule", serve with the recommended "size" (which is very small), and repeat with more "capsules" until the mug is full. I don't do this very often though.
[2]: And yes, I want to learn how to make myself a coffee that tastes almost as good, so that I can stop polluting with these disposable capsules.
Diagnosed ADHD person here. Among my acquaintances I’m known as a person who will accept coffee any time off day when I come visit. I don’t that because I really enjoy the flavor off coffee and it doesn’t seem to affect my sleep.
Anecdotally, I’ve had conversations with more than 50 people who say caffeine does not affect them who likely have ADHD or some kind of attention disorder.
For example, I was at a gas station this weekend buying coffee during a small road trip. The cashier and I we’re making small talk that it was early and I wanted my morning coffee, they said oh caffeine doesn’t affect me. When I hear something like that I usually ask if them if they have ADHD and they’ll typically respond with a yes.
There is definitely bias in my non-scientific survey, I only ask people who make the comment about caffeine not affecting them.
Do you mean it doesn’t affect their sleep? I remember the first time I tried coffee and the effect was profound, like my brain wasn’t working properly before that moment. I have also been diagnosed with ADHD, but I am affected by caffeine so maybe that’s a misdiagnosis. I also have huge variation over my life where I can sometimes handle 6+ cups without issue and other times half of a Diet Coke will send me spiraling into anxiety. It seems like it has to do with my stomach or baseline levels of anxiety, definitely worse after some sort of trauma. Maybe just a comorbidity that complicates things
I also drink a lot of coffee. I notice the feeling, but it's slight. I rarely drink energy drinks anymore so if I drink a Red Bull I do feel it. My caffeine tolerance is pretty high. I can drink coffee with dinner and sleep fine an hour later.
I believe the 1.5 hour half life is only for smokers
Edit: the mechanism seems to be due to inducing Cytochrome P450 1A2, an enzyme responsible for caffeine metabolism and many other drugs. This is also induced by diet with cruciferous vegetables and medications like Prilosec/Omeprazole. So if you find yourself sleeping better or needing more caffeine to get through the day, ingestion of these could potentially explain it. Likewise it can be inhibited by foods such as cumin or turmeric and medications, so if you notice more energy after turmeric supplementation or heightened caffeine sensitivity after eating more Indian food or your sleep is impacted when you start taking oral contraceptives, this could potentially explain why.
If I could go back 10 years and talk to myself from the past, I would definitely tell myself: get away from that screen from time to time, especially on weekends. Buy a cheap 4x4 and GET OUT THERE. Get exercise, get fresh air, get to see the world through your own eyes instead of through a 2D screen, get physically tired, AVOID if possible any alcohol intake (this is a whole different topic, but alcohol might destroy your sleep, even if you only drink occasionally).
I wish I had done it 10 years ago, when my sleep quality and quantity were just depressingly low. These days even with small children I have better quality of sleep than I used to have back then when I would spend hours and hours in front of a computer screen (at work and after work as a hobby).
I'm highly skeptical concerning the claimed 'effects' of lack of sleep. I don't doubt those are correlated with lack of sleep, but for many of them, obvious confounding factors exist.
As a trivial example, overworked people typically get less sleep than average folks. And excessive work is also correlated with several of the 'effects' from the list, such as "fatigued and demotivated" and "lower libido". This means that even though lack of sleep is (indirectly) linked to those problems, getting more sleep won't necessarily fix them, because the real cause is something else.
I find it strange that a post explicitly addressed to HN readers fails to even mention this extremely obvious issue.
Some of the effects may not be casual, but there is substantial evidence for many of the cognitive effects in sleep deprivation studies, which just introduce a lack of sleep. There is probably good evidence for the other effects as well, although I’m not immediately familiar with it.
While other issues may be also playing a role or even be the primary cause, the physiological effects of sleep deprivation are likely to make almost any underlying cause worse.
I've felt the impacts of sleep deprivation on mood, thinking, speech, etc because of gaming late into the night, so stress/overwork wasn't a factor in that case.
for sure, I set the Set Daily Puzzle world record during a time of my life when I had been subsisting on an average of 1-2 hours sleep a night, if that.
It's also the fluffiest thing I've seen on HN in a while.
Below have been my strategies to improve my sleep over the years:
* No coffee after 12.00 - No black tea after this time on most days either
* Peppermint tea a few hours before bed
* Magnesium before bed
* No alarm (I naturally wake up between 7 and 8am, though sometimes stay in bed for longer)
* Ereader in bed - reading helps put me to sleep
* Blackout curtains (a must in Swedish summer)
* Sometimes, visualizing scenes from whatever story I'm writing as I fall asleep. This can both help me get ideas for the story and help me fall asleep.
I am very bad with controlling screen time before bed and have pretty much given up on doing that at this point... For now. I still find myself waking up at 4am sometimes and then going back to sleep. It doesn't take long to get back, but it takes a lot of effort not to grab my phone and start scrolling in these times. If I must put my eyes on _something_, I try to make it my Kobo reader.
>Sometimes, visualizing scenes from whatever story I'm writing as I fall asleep. This can both help me get ideas for the story and help me fall asleep.
This is how I would fall asleep as a kid (when I had a flip phone). My mind was so active yet I fell into some amazing sleep.
I'd wager most people here who don't get enough sleep aren't doing so out of some sort of grindset mentality, but because they simply cannot. I find it very hard to fall asleep, nearly impossible to sleep in (a consequence of getting older?), and more interrupted sleep. I'm reticent to try drugs to enable sleep because I've heard that the sleep they provide is not true sleep.
I have this pattern of getting really tired in the early afternoon, and then by night time, I would be fully awake. I couldn’t just sleep when I was tired because then I won’t sleep at night, and it just become this terrible cycle. I can’t stay awake at night because things need to be done during the day.
It’s been better recently, but some years ago, I would come home from work just completely exhausted and pass out immediately. I would only sleep for a few hours, but then wouldn’t get tired again until 4-5am at which point I often would just power through it because I’d have to get ready and go to work in a couple hours anyway. It peaked a few years ago when I completely wrecked my sleep and didn’t sleep for a few days straight. I remember waking up, thinking about something I believe was just utter nonsense, and a second later being unable to recall what I was even thinking about. I ended up getting my sleep schedule back by cycling some light stimulants during the day and crappy sleep aids at night until I was back to a normal schedule, but that probably wasn’t very healthy itself.
I've always been sort of a "night owl" I can stay up to 2 or 3 am pretty easily and like sleeping until 10 or 11am. I seem to get my best "deep" sleep between 6am and 10am.
Yeah that sounds similar to what my sleep schedule has been since I’ve been out of work. Prior to that I was doing mostly 12a-8a, but I was working remotely so it was easier.
I do enjoy the night, it’s cooler and calmer, sadly there’s just not much that can get done. I remember years ago working a night job, where I would often work very long hours, but I would get accusations of being lazy from people who just saw me as sleeping all day.
That was absolutely me too, until about a year ago when I lost the ability to sleep in (at all, I cannot sleep past 8ish). It's been a painful adjusting period.
That sounds a lot like the kind of "brain desynchronization" as I call it, related in my experience to alcohol use. Alcohol kind of puts half of my brain to sleep, and after I sober up and go to sleep that same half us behind schedule, so to speak.
That may not necessarily be totally true, you're most likely referring to hypnotics (ambien, lunesta, etc)—which were used by doctors for patients in some circumstances but are slowly falling out of fashion for the reasons you describe.
There are older and newer classes of drugs on the market that are being used as first-line therapies which not only preserve sleep architecture but in many cases even enhance it. Trazodone (a very old SARI) for example increases the amount of slow-wave sleep in healthy individuals and amount of time spent asleep. There are many newer drugs, suvorexant, ramelteon, etc. These medications are of course not without side effects but for many patients they work very well.
I'd say if you're suffering from chronic sleep deprivation then the cost-benefit analysis strongly leans in the direction of a pharmaceutical that fixes that since sleep is second to none in improving health and wellness outcomes.
There are many insults that can cause disrupted sleep architecture like you're describing—impaired gut microbiota, stress, lack of exercise, etc—all of which may respond to their own remedies. I experimented for years and finally have wonderful sleep with desmopressin + trazodone. And I was at a place where my sleep was seemingly uncureable—waking up every hour or every few hours on most nights.
If you want great sleep, you might have to fight to find the correct path for your own situation.
This is good advice, thank you. I've tried Trazodone, but it gave me really strange nightmares (as someone who never has nightmares). I've found Gabapentin to be useful, but recently it's been less effective and I've had to up the dosage which gives me a bit of anxiety over wondering where that stops.
In the last 6 months the level of exercise I get has skyrocketed, and I thought it would help but it's ironically made it worse. Stress is definitely a possible factor, but there's nothing in my life that is particularly more stressful than it was before. That's why this has all been perplexing: my sleep hygiene and everything surrounding it has gotten better as my ability to sleep has gotten worse.
Yeah, that’s strange; I’d say keep investigating. Again I think it’s about cost benefit. I’ve had a few friends who tried trazodone off my remarks and the ramping on period is tough for many. Sometimes the side effects go away and maybe sometimes they don’t.
I’ve meditated a lot in the past to the point where I have a very strong representation of my inner mental state; and because of this it’s glaringly obvious to me when I’m even slightly mentally impaired from even minor sleep disturbances. I think some people may not notice the cognitive attenuation as acutely and for others it may not bother them much.
But if it bothers you keep investigating. As far as exercise making it worse; I’m not sure about that. One thing I do know is that the microbiome plays a key role in exercise recovery, and it’s possible that if you have impaired homeostasis in the gut it could be responsible for sleep disturbances. Maybe you could check your RHR and HRV for the hours or days after a session of exercise and see how long it takes you to return to baseline. People with ideal microbiome profiles return to baseline remarkably quickly even when they don’t have great cardiovascular fitness (from my understanding of the literature). This next point is a bit speculative but another possibility is that exercise forces more slow wave and rem sleep. These are the periods in which people are the most likely to suffer apnea events for those who are susceptible to it. If you’re one of those individuals then the increased number of those events could leave you feeling less refreshed. So that’s another thing that could be worth looking into
It’s not strictly for bedwetting. I’d generally wake up a few times a night to urinate and I’d noticed that my sleep would become very fragmented for 30-60min before actually being fully awaken to void. Knowing that this was affecting my sleep quality, I tried limiting fluids and compression socks. Neither fully worked, so a pharmaceutical intervention seemed worth a try when I stumbled upon it online. The difference is night and day, I sleep throughout the night rather than the multiple awakenings I had been susceptible to. My urine is also a dark yellow upon awakening rather than the clearish tint I had been accustomed to.
My blood work is normal but my gut floras are not in perfect ratios as revealed by some testing. For some reason in my case that has manifested as electrolyte/fluid balance issues at night which are corrected by the desmopressin.
Yes, I've actually been more physically tired than usual lately (training/gym which never used to be part of my routine now are). Last week I was dead tired and had exercised for hours and I still had trouble sleeping.
You may want to consider a short course of sleep aids to see if it can help adjust your schedule. This is unscientific, but I’ve found that if I’m dealing with persistent insomnia, taking something to help me fall asleep when I want to can lead me to “readjust” to the new schedule.
I used this the most when traveling and dealing with jet lag, but I still occasionally find it useful to take an OTC sleep aid when my schedule gets “off.”
Interrupted sleep is tougher. I’ve had some success by just accepting that if I haven’t fallen back asleep in 15-20 minutes I probably should get up and walk around for a bit and maybe try the couch instead, but it’s not great.
Physical labor. Or exercise. If you push yourself to the point where you're physically tired, you'll sleep like a rock. If it doesn't, you're either not pushing hard enough or you ought to see a doctor.
Never worked for me, I think if you're physically fit, being physically tired has no correlation on sleep. Since 12y/o I've struggled to sleep before 1-2am, and since 14y/o I've exercised a frankly ridiculous amount.
14-18yo I went to the gym 1hr/day every weekday, boxing 1-2hrs 3x/wk, karate 1hr 2x/wk.
18yo+ I've boxed, run 30-40 miles/wk (some 3/4hr runs in there too leading up to ultras), climbed 2-10hrs/wk, and gym 2-3x/wk for the last 5 years although that schedule and activity level has varied since I have no real reason to kill myself training now that I don't compete in anything.
None of the above have an impact on sleep or ability to fall asleep, I have taken weeks off due to injury or months off due to burnout after a 12hr race, and my sleep schedule hasn't changed. Still tired-ish around 5-7, then 7-2am find it impossible to fall asleep, followed by 5-6hrs sleep and repeat.
I 100% agree with the guy who replied to you that got heavily downvoted that "just exercise" is a vastly oversimplified response to the complex issues most people have with sleep. Not everybody's sleep issues are due to an inactive lifestyle, and I'd bet that is not the case for the majority of people.
Heavy exercise, like lifting weights after work(5PM), makes me fall asleep eve harder.
I can still feel the adrenaline and elevated heart rate and body temperature that just makes it even more difficult to fall asleep so I have no idea how people who go to the gym at 9PM manage to fall asleep. I wish I knew their secret or had their genetics.
Lighter exercises that don't stress the body, like long walks and yoga are much better for sleeping but not good for building muscle.
My problem isn't falling asleep, it's staying asleep for long enough to feel rested. I usually wake up after 4-5h and can't easily fall back to sleep. By the time I get sleepy again(7-8AM) it's already morning and time to get up for work.
So far I haven't found a (natural) cure for this. There's medication that aids with getting long sleep but the side effects (drowsy ness and brain fog) are nearly just as bad as the lack of sleep.
Have you experimented with sleeping while fasted at all? I have heard a few people say they get their best sleep when sleeping on an empty stomach.
I also find white noise and a sleep mask have helped a fair bit. I’m a very light sleeper so little background noises wake me easily, so having white noise on helps there. And wearing a sleep mask notably improved my sleep as our bedroom can get quite bright (even with blackout curtains).
Anecdotally though, the most important factors for me are sun exposure (particularly morning and evening), weight lifting (or exercise in general), and cutting out caffeine.
I do think sufficient physical activity helps, but timing is important. I find that if I work out too late in the evening remnants of adrenaline are still coursing by the time I try to go to sleep and actually hamper, rather than help getting to sleep.
My issues sleeping have gotten worse in the time that I've started to seriously weight train. I am having nights where I'm so exhausted I could cry and still have a hard time getting steady sleep.
If you don't like drugs, look up Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I). It is kind of a collection of tricks, but it goes further than your basic sleep hygiene checklist. One thing it includes that helps many people if they can do it is the Spielman sleep-restriction protocol: https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical-treatments/c/cognitiv...
I'm now at a point where I manage to take a step back when I feel generally down, and just look into whether I had enough sleep, or if the weather is crap. These are the two most important predictors for whether I'll find my job to be terminally depressing, or my situation to be doomed ; and I try to convince myself to take my distress with a fistful of salt then, and wait to be less tired or the weather to get better, before I overanalyze my situation.
It does not always work, but sometimes it helps a little with rationalizing
Melatonin has been a complete game changer for me in this regard. I've struggled to get decent sleep since my late teens. I'm plagued by an overactive brain at night. About a year ago I started taking just 3mg of melatonin before bed and haven't looked back since. I'm sure my particular circumstances were such that it just happened to be my cureall and won't work for everyone, but if you have trouble sleeping and haven't tried it yet, definitely give it a go. It might be all you need.
I was prescribed melatonin by a doctor, and the dose went up little by little from 3mg to 10mg before we decided it didn't work for me. Sure it helped me fall asleep, but then I woke up a few hours later and couldn't sleep again. Years later I have started taking 0.5mg (1mg is the smallest pill I could find, and I split them in two) and it's much better that way.
Low-dose doxepin (3mg) has also helped, but I find that I have to take breaks from it, because it stops working after a while. This dose is much lower than the usual dose for depression, but a local pharmacy manufactures the pills based on a doctor's prescription.
Would definitely concur, and add that it's frustratingly hard to find small pills of melatonin.
I remember going to a presentation where the presenter was describing a clinical trial they were performing where they gave melatonin to some people for some reason I can't remember. But when they mentioned that they were giving 20mg each night the presenter noticed the look of absolute horror on my face. I almost asked them whether they wanted the participants to wake up again the next day.
I used to take half a milligram nightly, and did for about ten years. Recently I have been so exhausted all the time that I no longer have any trouble getting to sleep. Also, I think my body clock has changed now that I'm ten years older, because it does. I slept better when I stopped taking it, even though I definitely found it useful for a long time.
I hope I don't come across as the "well ackshually" guy, and I'm not definitely telling you to change, but maybe this could be useful to you: the alcohol episode of Huberman Lab podcast mentioned briefly at about 1:02:40 that in a discussion with a UC Berkley sleep researcher, it was said that having any alcohol at all on board interferes with sleep to the point that those in the field call it pseudo-sleep because it lacks most of the restorative value of sleep.
Glad you are interested. Keep in mind that his talk of supplements should be weighed with the knowledge that he is financially involved with supplement companies. It's not a secret, but worth some awareness.
Relieving my sleep apnea has been - by far - the biggest impact to my health and well-being. It's like a new lease on life. Just took a $60 retainer from Walgreens (this won't work for everyone). Memory, word recall, mood, energy - you name it: just much better than before. It was a slow process to get below what I would call normal (to say nothing of, "optimal"). It snuck up on me and I just never understood how terrible I was while just trying to live "normally.
I would compare it to having a fairly robust drinking problem, and then finally getting sober.
I'm trying nasal strips for snoring. The results so far are mixed - the strip reduces my snoring... while it's on. Problem is, it tends to unstick from my nose in 30-60 minutes. Even if I clean/de-oil and dry my nose immediately before application (in fact, I feel this makes the problem worse). Is there some trick to those nasal strips to ensure they stay on through the night?
There are stronger adhesive strips, also try putting the strip farther up or down your nose so that it doesn't have to bend as far. I've had good success putting it right below the bone of the nasal passage.
Correct, but I’m not here to sell you on that brand or say it’ll work for everyone. But for me it is very effective. I can actually have a relationship with someone (and sleep next to them at night!)
Shockingly prevalent too, especially if you're male, and gets more common with age. ~90% of elderly men and ~80% of elderly women have apnea (I point to these stats because they're higher confidence, but somewhere between 1/20 and 1/3 among the general population).
My partner suffers from this. She tried many solutions but to no vail. But it seems having an intentional period of wind down before bed (e.g., 1 hour on the couch, scrolling social media and listening to podcasts) helps. When she goes to bed after that, she never uses her phone and can sleep much better.
I'm in the same boat except that I only go to bed when I'm absolutely completely drained and exhausted, which is probably not good...
> She tried many solutions but to no vail. But it seems having an intentional period of wind down before bed (e.g., 1 hour on the couch, scrolling social media and listening to podcasts) helps. When she goes to bed after that, she never uses her phone and can sleep much better.
It feels so strange to read posts where people rediscover the importance of basic sleep hygiene. Having some time to wind down and not using phones in bed are two of the most basic sleep hygiene practices around.
I'm curious what "many solutions" she tried before getting back to the basics, because the exact sleep hygiene practices you described are at the front of the list for things that doctors explore first with patients.
Unfortunately, some doctors and/or internet advice places skip straight to medications, supplements, and an assumption that the problem can only be addressed by chemical means. The number of people who jump straight to melatonin or even prescription sedatives without making any attempts to alter their daily practices is worrisome.
A similar thing works for me. I don’t use my phone in the bed at night anymore and wait until I am tired before going to bed. After doing this for a few months I began to get tired around the same time every night (midnight for me). I wake up around 8:30am and I am rarely tired in the morning.
One thing I would like to improve on is staying asleep throughout the night which I think would allow me to wake up earlier. I have tried Benadryl which works well, melatonin works okay, but the thing that works the best for me is THC. However, I am trying to stop that because I have read that you do not get as good of sleep when you use THC before bed.
Another thing that helps is having it freezing cold in the bedroom.
For me a CPAP machine makes a big difference, but it's not something I would have thought I needed except for my wife telling me I had breathing problems while asleep. Worth getting tested for if you suspect it in any way.
> I have tried Benadryl which works well
There have been some studies linking anticholinergics like Benadryl to dementia when taken later in life, so that might be worth looking into, if you haven't already, and you use it regularly.
Definitely. I live in an area with a lot of light pollution, so much so that even when it's supposed to be full dark, there's enough ambient light outside that it's more like "late evening" at best. I find that any time I'm away from home, I actually sleep better because there's no extreme light pollution keeping me up.
Agree with all. TIL: One way I know I'm behind on my sleep is I can't stop eating (noshing).
My insomnia journey...
I had turrible insomnia for decades, worse over time. I tried All The Things, multiple times. Which everyone should try, if only to learn more about oneself.
But if you try All The Things and still suffer, do not give up. Keep looking, keep asking.
Turns out my root cause was bone spurs on my spine. Tiny little pinches of my nerves, which prevented my mind and my body from ever relaxing.
It took years to get a proper diagnosis, separate from the insomnia concern, and then even more time to get an effective treatment.
Happily, "fixing" those bone spurs resolved most of my anxiousness and insomnia. Now I sleep like a corpse. It's glorious.
This is my personal example of an apparent phantom chronic illness. Where care providers offer what they know and then basically give up.
Which makes sense, for them, because healthcare is basically triage. A care provider does their best in moment given the knowledge and resources they have. Then they do the same for another dozen patients, every single day.
But you shouldn't give up.
If you're suffering, there's a cause. Keep asking. Keep searching. Someone out there has the answers you need.
I love comments like yours. Modern medicine is amazing but still full of uncharted areas and hard to diagnose stuff, especially when it's not immediately life threatening. It's ultimately up to us to insist, to say "no, this is not right, I'm not functioning correctly" and to find what's going on. But it's a long, difficult path and it requires insane amounts of grit to go through it, though the rejection and the indifference and the dead ends. So it makes me super happy when someone is actually able to find out what was going on and - cherry on top! - fix it
I had weird muscle issues. Fasciculations. Something usually dismissed out of hand. But with the severity and some other stuff, I presented a bit like MS, ALS, restless leg syndrome, and some other stuff I now forget. Did tests, drugs, therapies -- nothing conclusive, nothing helped.
Eventually, finally, got some MRIs done. Was immediately obvious my nerves were impinged. Which led to surgeries.
Happily, surgery resolved most of my anxiety symptoms (which had also been treatment resistant). Of which my care providers are very skeptical. Specifically, that my physical sensation of anxiety, like clinching, induced my emotional state. Maybe not. But lacking a better theory, I'm preceding with the info that I have.
Any parent will tell you that having kids is not going to help your sleep, but most parents find sacrifice unequivocally worth it on the net.
Not sure if this is truly what you meant but I would find it highly abnormal that a child does not bring your sufficient joy and meaning that would offset sleep loss.
1. Most people would never say bad things about parenting because it makes them look like demons. I basically tell my friends and colleagues that it is OK and I'm still not sure whether it worths it or not. That's as far honest as I'm willing, although it is pretty close to truth nowadays. I was a lot more snarky a year ago.
2. Humans are very good at adapting. If you told me 3 years ago that I have to go through all these, I'd never think about getting a kid. But somehow it actually feels OK now. And that's what I tell other people.
3. Having kids basically means having a completely different life style for me. I can see why some people actually feel so excited about it because their life style actually fit. It's about trading one life style to another, and this is something we rarely told others, who nevertheless never bother to ask anyway, because they don't know what to ask. Nowadays, I'd tell any young people to get their dreams done before getting a kid, unless they really really want it. You want to go travel the world? Do it before getting a kid. You want to teach yourself a long chain of Mathematics/Physics topics? Do it before getting a kid. I'm not saying you can't do them after having kids, but it's a LOT safer to do them before.
On point 3, I've never met a parent (at least a first time parent) who knew exactly what having a child would be like. I don't know that people can have a life style that "fits" children without having them. Of course, with such a subjective topic I'm sure I'm bound to be mistaken.
In my experience, the original excitement and expectation fade away slowly after birth and is replaced by paternal/maternal love, as well as different excitement and expectations. Then over a longer time, you start understanding how profoundly your life is being reordered and how you've become a different person, for both the positive and negative. No one can know this a priori.
This resonates. For me personally, having kids has been amazing both because of the direct benefits in joy and love and fun, and because the challenging aspects of having kids are the challenges that can make you grow as a person.
Probably different for everyone but for me the kid-driven growth areas are time management/prioritization and patience. Having kids forced me to prioritize how I spend my time in a way that has made me more effective in life because while I have fewer flexible hours, I am putting them to much more intentional use. And learning how to speak kindly and patiently to a toddler who is being difficult has made me much better in a slew of professional and personal types of interactions.
Obviously subjective but I don't agree with the final bullet point.
I believe that human happiness is primarily determined by the amount of meaning and impact we have.
If someone is learning math/physics because they are committed to furthering the world through some breakthrough then yes kids would be deteminetal to that
But if you are just randomly amusing yourself learning topics and one day you are 50+ the ship on family has basically sailed. And you look back on your life as a bunch of short term amusement that gets you to a very depressing place.
how old are your kids? Based on everything i've read on the matter, your satisfaction with having kids just continues to increase over time and by the time they are independent adults its probably more rewarding that almost anything else you could possible imagine doing.
It can be difficult, but it's also just a blip on the radar.
I don't know if this is your first or second, but I found that everything was significantly easier the second time around. I didn't realize how much my wife and I had learned to handle things more efficiently and split the load better over time.
You learn quickly.
> I now fully understand why some people don't want to get kids.
I don't know about that. I think the current trend is greatly overestimating the lifetime impact of some of these short-term difficulties of child raising. If someone actually wants kids but avoids it because they don't want their sleep inconvenienced for a couple percent of their entire life, I'd question if they're weighing the tradeoffs appropriately. It's a choice for the rest of your life, but some people treat it like those first several months are the entirety of the decision making process, which is weird.
I also heard that the second is easier, but it is still some drain so we decided not to get a second one. I think it really depends on 1) How much energy one has stored before getting the kid, and 2) How easy/difficult the kid could be.
It's definitely not just a few months. It has been 3 years for me and I don't really think it's going to end soon. Again this is just personal, not an average experience.
Difference between parental experience can be wild.
Sometimes up to literal survivorship bias talk from other parents; can be mildly annoying but ultimately I always feel happy for them and their kid(s) that they just don’t seem to (want to?) really know better. Again, good for them - and us all - lest we’d have gone extinct long time ago ;)
I’ve also had a few friends who manage to burn out in every situation. They’ve burned out in every job they’ve ever had, they burned out in college, they burned out in high school, etc.
So of course, they’re burning out with parenting now too.
At some point, we have to acknowledge that personality plays a big role in this. Some people create their own stress in any situation.
I actually agree with you. I'm exactly the kind of people that are easy to burn out. Your description 100% matches me. This is such a perfect match that I'll write it down and paste it somewhere.
I really really hate being bored. I do not have the will power to grit through a lot of things that many other qualified people can grit through (so this is conditional probability, think P(dropping college | getting pretty good grade first year)). I didn't fail high school -- I actually ranked some top 25% in my first year but dropped to bottom 25% at some point and barely dragged myself to median at the end. I didn't finish my first college. I got completely burned out that I got a zero GPA for one term (I didn't drop any class, I just sit at the finals and handed in empty). I did drag myself through the second college and a master with B+. But it took me a couple more years to get it done. Occasionally I'd drop all courses just because I don't want to do it. I never completed any hobby project. I bite my nails and fingers frequently from childhood. I just don't have the ability to walk through any medium-long term plan, and it's getting worse.
Well, not something I can fix quickly, especially at my age, so I'll drag myself along. I can see my son having some of the same attributes that I have. It runs in the family. I'm going to get some therapy.
Honestly, no reason for not having children is good enough for some people.
I'm a woman in my mid-40s. I do not have children and have simply never wanted children.
I've been called selfish, shallow, and other such things. Something must be wrong with me. No man will ever marry me if I won't have children. I'll change my mind - on a scale of "because I'm young and stupid" to "biological clock will kick in".
Back in the day I discussed the no-child option with my wife. We are both cool with it, but neither of us really stood a firm ground so we eventually gave birth to my son. It has been a mixed experience and I totally get why people don't want kid(s).
I usually have an open mind to other people's personal choices. I rarely judge other people's personal choices. This is probably one of my few good qualities.
I’m fairly confident that the lack of sleep during my first child’s first two years permanently altered my brain in way that has seriously affected my ability to do my job. I think there is research to back my claim that sleep can change your brain just as trauma does.
Another anecdote, but I remember someone here commenting that after several days without sleep he got his amygdala (maybe?) physically damaged and that permanently f-ed up his sleep schedule.
As a terminal procrastinator who frequently pulls all-nighters (this year I even got to two in 3 days) I was terrified (and apparently decided to never comply with any deadline anymore, but that's another story).
I wonder how possible it is to permanently damage the brain without physically impacting it or rooting around in there. There are studies that show visible changes in the amygdala and other structures in the brain after 8 weeks of 15 minutes per day of mindfullness meditation for instance. One "side effect" of it for me has been noticeable memory improvements. The brain changes in response to stimuli for sure, but the changes may be reversible.
The thing to realize is your (I am presuming) inflexible job was probably as responsible as your kid. They should let you work very flexible hours if you just had a kid unless by nature it just can't be done for that job.
Reasonable assumption but in this case I was able to be flexible enough. The problem was my child not sleeping more than a couple hours at a time and our stupid adherence to the "baby should sleep in a different rule" in the US.
* Sleep deprivation reduces immune system function.
I was surprised when none of the gov advice during covid included "improve your sleep", because that's one of the best ways to strengthen your immune system, reduce your chances of contracting illnesses, and improve your chances of a fast and complication free recovery.
I wish I had control over my sleep like others seem to. It would be awesome if I could pass out at 10pm and wake up 8am. That kind of schedule is just impossible for me though. Night time is when my brain kicks into gear and then when I finally do sleep, I find it extremely difficult to wake up.
These days I'm sleeping between roughly 7am to 4pm. Recently I slept 18 hours. If I could fix it somehow I would. It's completely out of my control.
It is not. I have been in your shoes not once and lots of recommended things failed, some have not. This will require deep dive into reasons and mitigations, but I suggest you to proactively explore it and hopefully - fix.
I find difficulty sleeping also depends on what I read before going to sleep. If I read books I sleep much easier and deeper than if I browse Reddit. I think the alarmism, sensationalism, and aggression triggers the nervous system and fills the mind with worthless thoughts which in turn prevents the falling a sleep.
Maybe a good start could be not giving your brain what it wants, when it starts getting that active. Just let yourself become bored.
And if possible, get outside, walk, run, hike, enjoy nature, build something with your hands, get TIRED.
Reduce blue light and if possible remove any screens past 7-8pm (books, podcasts and audiobooks help a lot here!).
In the morning, get as much sunlight as possible.
Do not stress over your current schedule too much. Try to wake up early in the morning for a few consecutive days, even if you do not go to bed early enough. After some time, your body might adjust again to a normal rhythm.
Not saying most or all of these are not true, but this list liberally mixes causation and correlation, without any sort of reference to the controlling for second and third-order effects. So if you stay up late AND eat shitty food AND don't exercise, yep you'll be at risk of weight gain, diabetes and a shorter lifespan, and maybe lack of sleep plays a role but you can't say it's the root cause.
For anyone interested, there's an interesting fact that adenosine build-up due to sleep deprivation improves depression briefly, in many cases [1]. It's not a treatment, obviously, personally I have used it as an immediate relief technique.
As a narcoleptic these always remind me that I'm kind of screwed on many fronts. I still try to do the good things (been going for morning walks, slowly getting to the point I don't have my phone with me in bed, drinking lots of water).
I can sleep 6~7 hours most nights and never wake up rested and energized. Usually I attribute this to getting older, but then once every couple months I wake up feeling like a young guy, full of energy... and can't really trace that back to diet or caffeine intake easily. Next thing I plan to try is some kind of optimism... I'm naturally a melancholic, a pessimist, like always thinking about the worst case kind of person and wonder how much all that worry (health, kids, savings, job...) affects the sleep.
Is there something you find wrong with that? I generally find comments on HN to be thoughtful and people tend to invest some effort. There’s also a surprising amount of subject matter experts lurking until their subjects come up. A “prompt article” seems a decent way to get some of that going, no?
Then it should just be posted as a text post. No need for this to be posted more than once as well. I don't find low effort attention grabbing interesting or helpful.
Weirdly, I have this terrible habit of avoiding activities that cause the fast passage of time. If I play video games for 2hrs I will teleport to getting back to work sooner.
> More substance abuse/addiction (alcohol and caffiene, specifically) [ironically both depressants and stimulents]
Is caffeine really a depressant? I have great joy in consuming caffeine either from Japanese Sencha tea, Matcha, or occasionally a non-watery Americano.
I've been very interested in getting more data about just how much and what kind of sleep I'm getting. I know smart watches these days claim to provide that. Anyone know how accurate it is, and which watches are best for it?
It was incredibly useful for me when I was in the market for a smart watch.
TL;DR if you want to track sleep, get an Apple Watch. Or if you are in the Android ecosystem go for one of the entry level Fitbits as they have pretty good tracking for their cost.
I struggle to have the discipline to get enough sleep. I'm going to bookmark this, pin it in a tab, and use it to remind myself that the consequences of my stupidity are greater than what I would accomplish by staying awak.
this post for the same author about their decent into madness and loss of sens of self is an interesting read. Specifically its interesting how a universal experience of ego destruction is made send of afterwards in such a way that is so individualized to that persons age and culture.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/L9q5iFJAggvoWNrRf/that-time-...
fighting with this problem for long time, so far my sleep got much better than previous months and years, lots of thanks to author for short and to the point plain English explanation, I like the writing style a lot. I learned a lot in just a minute, thats productive for me.
I thought the same. I didn’t “experience” any of these things. I’ve always been driven, fit, resilient. Procrastinated about my health, and being better about sleep/all-nighters.
Then I was diagnosed with cancer at 30.
Blessed to have treated it. I don’t take health for granted any longer, sleep is a critical component of my health. Mental and physical state are 10x where they were.
Ymmv. There’s no proof that I directly contributed my cancer, but I suspect I did.
I cannot sleep and there’s nothing I can do to alter that and no doctor that I’ve found can help. It was not my choice to stop being able to sleep. It’s not my fault either. One finds the benefits in it because the only other option is suicide, which is from what I gather a fairly common outcome. Consider that when you make statements about the negative consequences of insomnia. For many it’s not a choice and they are in a desperate, suicidal state. Telling them, “you’re giving yourself cancer,” is a bit cruel. Lastly, you’d be amazed how many famous people lived long productive lives on 4 hours a night or less. For those of us who the medical establishment has abandoned, these anecdotes are all we have. Be gentler please.
