It takes effort! Preparing for bed early and disciplining yourself to put the light out is not easy. Not nearly as easy as popping a pill. But it's so much more effective than any drug listed here.
And for a safe and provable quick cognitive boost, take some caffeine, preferable green tea with theanine.
Sleep tips that help me:
1. meditation: still experimenting with body-scan vs. breath meditation, they both help but have different effects.
2. magnesium: makes my body more relaxed.
3. sleeping less if needed: improves likelihood of falling asleep the next day, it's a tricky thing to do but applied sparingly and timed right it works really well. When I do this I prefer to sleep the 6 to 7 hour range.
4. reduce stress: sometimes hard to do but pretty essential for me.
5. flux.
6. opening your window for sunlight during the day: get vitamin D first thing in the morning.
7. buy quality decaffeinated tea: some green tea manufacturers say it's decaffeinated but it's not really. Or maybe it is but it still keeps me energized and awake.
8. no caffeine after 2: preferably not after 12, preferably not at all, use meditation and power naps as a first line of defence, only add caffeine when those 2 aren't enough. Preferably do the power nap + caffeine wombo combo (takes 20 min. for caffeine to reach your brain which is also the ideal power nap time).
I'm curious about other sleep tips that you guys have. I really want to improve this as much as possible.
Distance is not that important - what matters is time and intensity: run at least 20m with 10 of them near your upper limit. Make sure you pick a sustainable pace that makes it hard but not impossible to breath. Don't compare to others - your body needs to be challenged relative to itself. Run comfortably for 10 minutes then a little more than slightly uncomfortably for another 10.
You will feel better as soon as you stop. You will feel calmer, focused, confident and strong for hours after. You will feel better next day. When I had a bad funk it helped me get out of it.
I tried a lot of other forms of exercise from weights and swimming and HIIT and martial arts and yoga. They all help (in other ways) but not as well as running. If you can, complement it with weights 1-2 a week, and yoga 1-2 times as well.
I'll just add that many people are mentally exhausted, and frustrated they cannot sleep. But I bet they are not physically exhausted. HIIT, distance running, whatever works, etc. are all great ways to tire out your body.
(IMO the best time for exercising is during the morning and afternoon)
I did not respond to your sibling comment who speaks of anxiety. It sounds like a real pathology and something I have no business generalizing about.
You, however, mention no such thing so I am emboldened to encourage you to exercise - something not mentioned in your list.
I would experiment with both walking for 2-3 hours (on a day off, presumably) and also a 1.5 to 2 hour intense weightlifting workout (primarily focused on your thighs/legs[1][2], since they are the biggest muscles.
I'm not saying to do these things on the same day, just that they are both good candidates for an exercise activity which could influence your ability to go to sleep.
I like your list - especially getting out in the sun early and setting your circadian rhythms, but your list strikes me as it would somebody putting special air filters in their car when they've never taken it in for an oil change. Only reach for the specialized optimizations when you've exhausted the major factors.
[1] which implies squats and deadlifts, although a real leg press (the kind you load with plates, not select weight from the stack) would also do the trick.
being nitpicky here but we shouldn't be promoting "time in the gym" as a measurement of a workout's success. frankly, if you're doing an "intense" workout for "2 hours" something's wrong.
Some background, and you can adjust to fit your personal situation ...
I am 39 years old and in order to do (relatively) heavy squats and deadlifts I require about 45 minutes of prehab, stretching, warmups and accessory exercises.
I also have 3 kids so I can't do two weight workouts per week.
Therefore, I "lift weights" for two hours each week, the first 45 minutes of which is a fairly intense and comprehensive lead-up to two (yes, just two) sets of squats, followed by the rest of my leg/back exercises, then 15 minutes of upper body prehab/stretching/warmup and 30 mins of actual lifting.
So yeah - 25 and no kids ? By all means, enjoy your hour long workout :)
The good news is that if you are sedentary, older, or sedentary and older, even a little bit of exercise will be extremely effective. Go for that long walk, or maybe a shorter jog, and do some pushups and un-weighted squats. You'll be exhausted, and you'll be less likely to injure yourself. :)
Stronglifts is amazingly high impact for the time it takes.
also, i'm not sure if you're trolling us with your 11 sets of squats. are you serious? eleven sets?
TAX THE NERVOUS SYSTEM WITH ISO-LATERAL MOVEMENTS. Exercise is commonly recommended to improve sleep. The problem for me was that results were unpredictable. I might exercise for 20 minutes and fall asleep in 10 minutes, or I might exercise for two hours and fall asleep in two hours. There was no repeatable cause and effect. It seemed like a coin toss. This changed when I began to incorporate iso-lateral (one-arm or one-leg) resistance training. I logged faster to-sleep times after 8 out of 10 training sessions. The more complex the stabilization required, the shorter the to-sleep time.
Now, I've done it all and nothing seem to help:
- tried medicine(benzodiazepam family, ugly stuff, addictive, stopped after just 1 week, fuck the doctor that prescribed this)
- tried removing everything with a lot of caffeine, everything in the vegetable world has it, impossible to eliminate, but no more: coffee, tea, sugary drinks
- adapter water drinking to maximum needed
- running 15 minutes HIIT style(4 minutes at 12.5 km/h, 1 minute 16 km/h, repeat)
- weightlifting for the rest 45 minutes - every day session
- meditation (stoping the mind, have a single thought, mandalas, matras, yantras ...)
- no lcd, led light before 23:00, no more tv before bed
- went back to the doctor, best clinic for this in Europe... got prescribed mirtazapine, anti-depresant, helps but the side effects are weired and dehumanizing(taking 1/4 of 30 mg pill, far below the reference amount that they say it has any effect)
- sleep settled to 5 h / d, not bad, but not perfect
- mirtazapine gave me a very long face in the morning, looking destroyed, feeling rested and calm, but face dropped, looking like droopy dog
- went back to doctor, started CBT, bought books on CBT, personal opinion: pile of crap(and I was very opened to them)
- f**k the doctor again(I trust doctors, not this one), he asked me money and go to have treatment at home, told me I am normal, not like the people in the waiting room
- tried melantonin, calming teas, etc etc, bullshit, money wates
- made a girlfriend, sex helps, but when you have it until 03:00 AM due to "crazy" girlfriend, prefer the pills
- broke up, back to 5 h sleep
- back to doctor
- recommended me THC, a liquid version, helped a bit but too expensive
- started smoking weed, cheaper, fuck lungs, need to sleep
- helped a lot for the first months until I became addicted without noticing(addiction is not easy to describe, that is why everybody seems to share a different opinion, bullshit, you become addicted of smoking to be normal, not for the high)
- had to unlearn the weed, waves of heat and cold and sleepless nights followed, catastrophic, need my freedom back, even with 4-5 h of sleep, don't want to depend on anything foreign of my body
- went back home, slept like a rock for the first days, next days awful, unstoppable mind
- back to computer programming until I get tired
- back to reading books until I collapse into sleep
- I collapse but then I wake up at 03:00 am if I start sleeping at 01:00
- change bed place/orientation(mythology of European people), helped a bit, but don't know if it is real or wishful thinking
- my mind still solves complex problems(I am a programmer), but the speed lacks to be desired
- entering the zone is almost impossible
- my hands feel like they have 3 tons when I lift them from desk
- I still love what I am doing
- If I find a challenge that is impossible to solve in one day work I get a bad mood
- bad mood gets solved upon second day
Guys, be grateful for your lives and go out and speak with people, one day this magic substance might be found, but I am more convinced that it will come from machine/human merger that from substances. Good or bad, that is the most likely future.
Melatonin, while not effective for everyone, should not be grouped together with "bullshit money wastes" in my opinion.
> Guys, be grateful for your lives and go out and speak with people, one day this magic substance might be found, but I am more convinced that it will come from machine/human merger that from substances. Good or bad, that is the most likely future.
This is a very positive outlook, but bear in mind how reality changes for people who are deprived of sleep. As I'm sure you know it becomes a state of desperation. So while you may not want foreign stuff / substances in your body, others are definitely willing to make the sacrifice, even if that doesn't mean good sleep indefinitely. Other people may be willing to be dependent on substances in order to feel rested, for example. Myself included.
> I am more convinced that it will come from machine/human merger that from substances. Good or bad, that is the most likely future.
Curious, what kind of machine/human concept are you thinking of?
How do you manage doing intense work for 2 hours? Professional hockey players don't even do that kind of work on game night.
Edit: I see a few people are asking the exact same question. Guess I should read first.
Also, see my follow-up comment about lifting for 2 hours. tl;dr is that I'm 39 and it takes 45 mins just to prehab/stretch/warmup for heavy squats. YMMV.
Personally, since I began a regular exercise program I need less sleep, I assume attributed to better quality sleep when I'm actually there.
Because the sun sets usually some time between 17 00 and 21 00 depending on the season, and we usually go to sleep between 22 00 and 24 00, we usually switch of the main lamps around 21 00 and maybe even switch from ambient lamps to candles later on.
My wife introduced this because it should help with natural melatonin release and strengthen the circadian rhythm, and based on my anecdotal experience, it does help.
This became even more important once our baby-girl has been born, because the difference with trying to put her to bed when the lights have been dim for an hour vs. when we just switched of the main lamp is really noticable :-)
Some other 'sleep favourites' of mine would be Skeptoid, Lore, Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, 99% invisible. Give it a try. I use the Stitcher app and set the timer to turn off streaming at the end of an episode. I'm usually asleep within 10-15 minutes or listening.
Edit: Also try f.lux on your computer and Twilight on your phone. They work for me, but I'm more than willing to accept that the effects my be purely placebo.
Dan Carlin is great, but way too intense and interesting for me to sleep to. I pay attention to the podcast and want to hear "just another 20 minutes" instead. 99% invisible is perfect in this regard. Roman has a great voice, good editing and nice, mellow music in his production. I listen to it a lot.
I also like to listen to The Moth, Hello Internet, Radiolab and Benjamin Walker's theory of everything when I go to sleep.
Edit: There are some amazing looking sleep-oriented playlists on Spotify.
- Whenever I'm in a relationship and sleep together with someone I have no sleeping issues at all.
- Having the pill Stilnoct prescribed helps immensely. I don't take them often. But just being aware that I have them reduces the stress around falling asleep.
- If I feel that it's one of those nights when I can't fall asleep I just treat it as any other sickness. I email my colleagues telling them that I'm working from home the next day and turn off my morning alarm.
- Journaling. Write down everything that has happened to you during the day before you go to bed. A lot of timea I can't fall asleep because my mind is obsessing/processing recent events. Spend 10 minutes to write them down. It's like running a database drop script.
- Get a spike mat. It'll be uncomfortable in the beginning but you'll slowly get used to lying on it. This has worked wonders for my friend and I was thinking of getting one, but that was before my sleep problems just disappeared.
* Melatonin -- get the low dose chewable kind from Trader Joes and take 30 minutes before you go to bed
* Keep the bedroom cool and completely dark -- there is research the connects insomnia with warm body temperatures in some people (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18603220)
Source: http://examine.com/supplements/Melatonin/#summary15-1
It appears that there's not much of a tolerance effect when taking melatonin. This is unusual, our experience tells us that most drugs have a tolerance effect. Extended use of caffeine causes the body to make more adenosine receptors, meaning that it takes a higher dose to have the same effect.
This does not appear to happen with melatonin. Less science and more anecdote from a lot of users: melatonin also has an amount where it is less effective. You'll find several reports of people that see no effect at the higher doses (10mg), yet a lower dose (3mg) has a good effect.
This is all moot if you're in the UK or Australia, since melatonin is a prescription drug.
Unfortunately whenever i get too hot, my body's way of self regulating is apparently to wake me up with a nightmare. Happens consistently in fact.
My problem was thinking/working while trying to sleep, too much internal monologue. I also realized I am unable to have an internal monologue/actively "think" while listening to other people speaking (I'm a verbal thinker). So I started listening to audiobooks while trying to fall asleep. Now I'm off in about 5-10 minutes every night and take a couple of months to make it through a book.
That means both physically and mentally. It's crazy how much even 1 hour of intense workout per day helps you sleep. And challenging your mind enough to actually run out of steam by the end of the day helps a lot too.
The implied trick is to arrange your life so it supports your natural rhythm. For me that means being at office no earlier than 10am and living so close that I can roll out of bed as late as 9:30am if needed.
Trade sleep-in days on the weekend.
A combination of luck (definitely) and technique (maybe) can have 'em sleeping through the night in 2-3 months, so it's not necessarily a long-term problem.
Sometimes getting up so early makes me tired during the day (I'm not a natural morning person) so I'll take micro naps to mitigate.
And getting an early start to my day is fantastic. I can run, read, meditate, etc before I start my work day.
I'm at the gym by 5am for an hour or so for weights abd running.
There are no cool white fluoros or CFLs in my house, nor outside.
I find this regime thoroughly exhausts me physically and mentally, and I have no trouble falling asleep and staying alseep unless I get cold.
Macworld wrote a decent breakdown of the Night Shift quackery when it was introduced:
http://www.macworld.com/article/3047121/iphone-ipad/ios-93-t...
A better analogy would be artisanal water: the touted benefits of their particular magical bottle of H₂0 may be quackery, but the benefits of hydration are irrefutable.
Anecdotal, yes, but it worked for me.
Might be this minimized blue light effect as they suggest, or could just be a sort of recognized pattern/habit my brain now associates with bed. I don't know why, but it works for me. I'm getting sleepy now just thinking of it..
it's mostly mental, not physical. Hence a placebo is precisely what we need.
I have found that I sleep much much better with a total absence of noise and light, so I now use ear plugs and an eye mask. This has improved the quality of my sleep a lot.
Also, we all have a cycle that lasts approx. 90 minutes; you will fall asleep more easily at the end of that cycle; the time window is around 10 minutes. You need to be prepared to go to bed when that window starts; if you start preparing to go to bed when you feel sleepy, by the time you're in bed the moment's passed and you need to wait another 90 minutes.
Physical exercises and outdoor activities are very helpful with sleep and overall well being.
I doubt 'mosquito screen' would be unclear to any English speaker so it's fine to say.
If a screen is on a door you call it a 'screen door' if you have a full enclosurer to protect you from bugs it's a 'screen house.'
I should really get automated curtain opening. Surely there are some programmable/wireless buttons these days.
Also, you might consider getting some real data on your sleep and try to correlate that with your daily activities. I've used the Ōura ring for that to discover what helps me sleep better.
Yes! Magnesium changed my life!
I was certain that I was living with a hard depression... until I read somewhere that lactose intolerance can lead to magnesium deficiency.
I started taking Magnesium and felt the effect immediately. All of my body is physically relaxed. I struggled with muscle cramps and spasms, they are gone thanks to increasing my magnesium intake.
The body truly is a machine... !
At first I selected wrong product at the store and purchased homeopathy magnesium supplements. Suffice to says that those didn't work.
I recommend:
The History of Rome by Mike Duncan
Revolutions (also by Mike)
The History of Philosophy without any Gaps
The British History Podcast
It took a few months to train my body and mind, but now I fall asleep in under 5 minutes after I go to bed.
1) I lie on the side and cover both ears, one with the cushion and one with the blanket.
2) I imagine a story I made up once and go trough it in my mind. It's always the same story, only a little different each time.
Then I fall asleep.
Apparently it can be quite calming.
Another thing I have not see you mention is diet. Lots of factors there. All anecdotal but i've tried raw paleo diet in the past and eating raw meat has usually given me a happy buzz during sleep while eating fruits in the evening has usually caused me issues. Everyone is different so I can't say what will work for you but it should be something you experiment with a lot.
So after work is done, I love going on some kind of cardio adventure for 30-60 minutes. Running is my favorite but biking also works.
When I get home, all steam is blown off, and I manage to fall asleep in most cases.
Naturally, I am not really a great sleeper. Cardio helps a lot.
I might try this again soon, but I am and addict!
Edit: I will add that I have found vitamin B6, zinc and melatonin to have significant effects as well. (Deep sleep and intense dreams)
What is your screen usage (phone, computer, tv, tablet etc) like in the hour or two before going to sleep?
Have you tried reducing or eliminating it?
2. video games
Also can attest through personal experience that the caffeine + power nap works wonders (I usually use my espresso machine)
I also have random sudden panic attacks. I stopped drinking coffee (which helped a lot) and I would only drink 1 cup of green tea once a day in the morning. Instead, I take modafinil during the day to try to stay awake. The daytime tiredness has nothing to do with sleep or my food intake (I have done extensive research on nutrition), I am fairly physically active, currently training for my first 10k. If I drink coffee I will be fine in terms of alertness but it will make my anxiety crazy (not always but a lot more than not drinking any coffee). So I started taking modafinil which works great without making my anxiety/panic attack any worse.
Even with no coffee and good nights of sleep and being fairly physically active, and trying out all the self-help methods I could get my hands on in the last couple of years, I still couldn't fix my anxiety/panic attack issues. The only thing that works is benzo (clonazepam 0.5mg once a day). It works amazing - not only I am happiest when I am on it I am also the most productive (because of less anxiety and panic attack). I have been taking it for the last 3 months regularly (prescribed) and I am already addicted to it. If I try not to take a benzo for one day my anxiety is off the roof - the feeling is horrible and I can't get anything done the whole day.
At the moment I am trying to find the best way I can get off my dependencies on benzo but still keep my sanity.
The point of my post is that sometimes life is not as simple as "getting a good night's sleep" because even something as simple as "getting a good nights sleep" can be quite a bit struggle for some of us.
I have them, and they're amazing. I have pretty cool LED lighting in my apartment and can make my whole living room any color I want at night. If I set in to pure blue and put on the glasses, it's like being in pitch blackness (except a couple of items glow brightly).
It's not like looking at things with an orange tint at all, even though the glasses are obviously orange.
That being said - the benefits I get by using them is amazing. It's weird how much of a difference it can make, I get tired quickly after putting them on in the evening. If I forget to put them on I usually end up staying up too late, getting too little sleep and often ruining the next day. Personally I find it way more effective than flux.
By the way - blue light isn't just a negative thing, but also a huge positive. In the morning I use a Philips goLITE BLU HF3332, and it really improves both my energy and mood quickly after just a few minutes of usage.
Those two simple items, a blue light and a pair of blue-blocking glasses, have improved my life significantly. Try it out (especially the glasses, it's just $9).
It has made a noticeable difference!
Personally I can't stand Flux. I hate the false colors it creates.
Well - nobody mentioned weed yet. Give that a try - slows down your mind, relaxes your body - you'll sleep in no time.
I still try various 'stacks' that people suggest (often Tim Ferriss), and am currently on Ubiquinol, Creatine and Policosanol before bed.
If I don't perceive any benefit after a month or two though, I tend to move on, as there's a huge commercial market wrapped around all of this, so evidence is required for me to keep spending.
1) now through 8hours from now
2) every SMTWRarsday from 11:30pm-8:30am
The issue is that I want to block only the main, 'browsing' pages while allowing deep links to that same site. For example, I want to block reddit, when googling some question turns out an answer that's on a niche subreddit I've never seen, I need to be able to read it. However, the site blockers I've tried require me to unblock the whole site or turn them off, and thus become pointless.
https://(www|np).reddit.com/?$
https://(www|np).reddit.com/r/[^/]+/?$
https://(www|np).reddit.com/user/[^/]+/m/[^/]+/?$I'm rather going for the reading vs scanning distinction - even there I would want the particular subreddit main page to remain blocked to prevent the procrastinating pattern of checking an interesting place to see if there's something new interesting. Similarly, the main news.ycombinator.com should be blocked but visiting particular pages from e.g. a weekly digest email would be useful.
As a side note, I also think MJ counts as a nootropic when used properly, and I often think about Carl Sagans Mr. X article about it in this light, in the sense that a different perspective can help you solve issues or think about issues in a different way than you might have otherwise. This is why I highly suggest that people trying MJ try to be productive while on it instead of just (read: only) vegging.
When I was a kid I could just barely hear my parents decompressing by watching Barney Miller and All in the Family (yes I am older) and that helped me sleep.
P.S. No one will do it for you. (Not even your parents.)
And anyways, why not both?
Here's a concise definition[0]:
"(of a drug) used to enhance memory or other cognitive functions"
There are other definitions. All the ones I've seen have exogenous substances as a common denominator, however.
It's a figurative usage. The OP is not suggesting sleep is literally a nootropic, but that it is something that performs the same function. Like "the best defence is a good offence".
And I don't think it's derailing the topic to talk about relevant alternatives.
The above is a direct quote from OP. Where's the metaphor? You're grossly mistaken!
> but that it is something that performs the same function
Can sleep gives one supranormal cognition? No.
Does sleep perform the same function as modafinil (a drug which gives you more time to work since you need less sleep)? They're nearly opposites.
Does sleep perform the same function as melatonin? A hormone that allows greater sleep "efficiency" than normal sleep. No.
You're grossly incorrect again.
> And I don't think it's derailing the topic to talk about relevant alternatives.
It's a category error.
The sleep conversation is above everything else. It takes focus from the subject at hand.
It happens a lot with noobs. They don't know anything about noots, but know something about sleep/exercise/whatever and decide that's a good topic to talk about.
It's like a conversation about Tesla, and then someone talking about walking—because it's an alternative. OK, the subject may be interesting per se, but it is of little relevance.
I interpret that as I would my example "the best defence is a good offence". It's an out-of-category example given for rhetorical effect.
Perhaps I'm mistaken and that's not what OP meant, but I don't see why you're so certain about it.
>Can sleep gives one supranormal cognition?
Yes if you define "normal" as not getting enough sleep, which is the relevant reference point in this context.
>The sleep conversation is above everything else. It takes focus from the subject at hand.
So collapse that thread and move on. Apparently other people are interested in talking about sleep though.
Melatonin is the hormone that regulates sleep normally. You're taking additional sleep hormone by taking it orally. So sleep is melatonin.
It's the hormone that is theorized to be involved in the "blue light" sleep effect. When the high-wavelength cones are stimulated, melatonin release is reduced, according to current theory. [0]
"You're taking additional sleep hormone by taking it orally. So sleep is melatonin."
Sleep, and sleep with additional sleep hormone aren't the same thing by definition.
> So sleep is melatonin.
By taking melatonin orally you can get levels which aren't possible endogenously. So melatonin supplements != "vanilla" sleep.
Melatonin is also a mitochondrial anti-oxidant, so may benefit people with "brain fog". Such people may well have to take a supplement to get the maximum benefit. A benefit which can't be reached with natural (what is natural?) sleep.
In older individuals, the endogenous production of melatonin is reduced (happens when people get older). They may also benefit for supplementation. A benefit they couldn't get without it! No matter if they wear blue light blocking glasses, or have f.lux on all their machines.
Sometimes people have to do things at night. Where there's light. It's modern life. They can't go back in time and not be exposed to that light. They may also benefit from supplementation.
One could describe it as enhanced sleep.