Tell HN: my hack to beat insomnia | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: my hack to beat insomnia

56 pointsresdirector45 comments

Whenever I'm tired, but can't sleep, I take a cold shower. It snaps me awake. Then tiredness sets in quickly: such is the rate change of tiredness, I seem to go straight though the sleep barrier...usually in a few minutes (presumably).

It's not statistically significant yet, but it's worked about four out of four times now.

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Your mind is probably thinking about too many things. You can also try this trick.

I read about a simple technique in a meditation book (the purpose of this was not falling asleep, but it works for me). Close your eyes and start counting with a special technique to infinity.

The trick is to count one number while breathing in... slowly counting in your head until you are done breathing in and when your breath out immediately switch to the next number. There should basically be no moment where you have time to think about anything else besides the numbers. The switch from i to i+1 must be instant. Because if you are leaving gaps your mind starts wandering again.

If you find out that you got distracted start again at 1. Don't cheat.

Just run this JavaScript code in your head the next time (recognize that there are no calls to mind.thinkAboutSomethingElse()!):

___

var i = 1;

while(!body.isSleeping()) {

  body.startBreathingIn('slow');

  mind.thinkAbout(i++);

  body.startBreathingOut('slow');

  mind.thinkAbout(i++);

}

___

I can't believe (yet love) that you wrote code to demonstrate your point.

I'll second this. The method I use is to count to five, then return to 1. You can sort of gage where you're at, as you'll catch yourself hitting 6, 10, 12 before returning to one. This is a good sign, just don't get too excited about the fact that you're about to fall asleep...

(Also, recently I had only been awake 8h that "day", but needed to get to sleep "early" in order to get a full 8h of sleep before a client meeting the next morning. So, I made Mac&Cheese with an entire stick of butter (~1500cal + 90g fat). This seemed to slow my heart down and put me out like a light. Though this method has obvious health implications, I'd be lying if I said it didn't work like a charm... that one time.)

What book was this? I learned this same technique from Sekida's book called "Zen Training".

Interesting, will try it.

Yes, the shift in body temperature helps facilitate sleep. You don't necessarily even need to take a cold shower. Even a warm shower should do the trick just as well, since your body temperature will still be shifting from its natural state.

Interesting...perhaps I should have tried this first. I hate cold showers.

cold showers also trigger mammalian dive reflex. not sure how that would change your ability to sleep, though

An ice bath is one of the recommendations Tim Ferris gives in this* post.

A summary:

1. Consume 150-250 calories of low-glycemic index foods in small quantities (low glycemic load) prior to bed.

2. Use ice baths to provoke sleep.

3. Eating your meals at set times can be as important as sleeping on a schedule.

4. Embrace 20-minute caffeine naps and ultradian multiples.

5. Turn off preoccupation with afternoon closure and present-state training.

He says he has problems falling asleep too so what works for him may work for you.

*http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/01/27/relax-like-a...

Possibly related: swimming seems to do the trick reliably for me, although extremely inconvenient, time consuming and expensive if I did it regularly... (lets me fall asleep in 2-3 minutes vs tossing & turning until 2-4am)

Any chance this is related to the mammalian diving reflex?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_diving_reflex

    *Immediately upon facial contact with cold water, 
    the human heart rate slows down ten to twenty-five percent.*

Very interesting - the cold shower effect might be, but not the swimming. Call me a wuss but there's no way I'm swimming in water with less than 21°C voluntarily. :-)

Yup, rate of change, the same reason hot water freezes faster than cold water ... maybe http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/422/which-freezes-f...

It's not really rate of change... a better statement of this is that there exist some set ups in which a hotter sample of water will freeze faster than a cooler one, because more complex stuff goes on than simply "temperature--". It's not a general rule, and it doesn't rely on any kind of temperature-drop momentum.

I know your link doesn't exactly say that it does, but the summary felt kind of misleading.

Good effort. However, if you evaporate more of your water, then the remainder freezes faster.

I used to struggle with insomnia a lot, but for now I (knock on wood) have it under control. The trick is to have a routine. Simply having a routine is more important than the specifics, I think. Mine is:

- No caffeine after 3pm.

- Lower the lights as much as possible half an hour before bed.

- I have a playlist of Chopin nocturnes on my iPod I've been using for about 6 years now. I never listen to it except in bed. At this point my brain associates that music w/ sleep. Until I started doing this, I had a big problem with fast music getting stuck in my head and keeping me awake.

- Read in bed until I feel sleep coming on.

Again, routine is key. It especially helps when on the road, since your routine can help counteract the unfamiliarity of the surroundings.

  "Read in bed until I feel sleep coming on"

I have been doing this since I can remember and it works great for me too, but I have heard one theory that it is not optimal since you may start to associate bed with reading instead of sleeping. Theoretically you should read in a chair or something and then move to your bed when you are getting drowsy.

Not sure if there is any merit to that, but it may help.

It works for me, sometimes. But I hate having a wet pillow, something I can't seem to prevent. If you blow your hair afterwards the whole 'coldness/fresh up' is pretty much gone and a towel doesn't sleep that good.

I may be missing something, but: what about showering without washing your hair?

that doesn't wake me up/isn't that refreshing.

Even with a purely cold shower, ie, absolutely no hot water? I find those bracing to the point that I subconsciously baulk at doing it.

shower cap? That will allow you to get the full experience without getting the hair wet, I would think.

Shave your head. You can be instantly dry.

Not sure if anyone else has experienced this - but the bright light of the computer monitor does seem to affect it.

There is a good evidence for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_therapy

Basically, if you are using it late at night you are getting light therapy at the wrong time though.

I'm currently doing an experiment where I turn off the computer at 11pm to see if it makes it easier to fall asleep earlier. This is harder to stick to than it sounds at first glance though.

Try out http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/ - I don't know if it actually helps of if it's just a placebo, but it certainly seems to help my insomnia.

My insomnia is, annoyingly, pretty hard to beat. Part of it is genericly caused, and part of it is delayed sleep-phase syndrome, both of which can be helped by various well-known practises, many of which have already been mentioned here - however both my job and my life means I have days when I don't get to bed until 3/4am, which screws me up.

My bigger problem though, is that even if I can take care with the physical Insomnia, I also have mental insomnia. I find it impossible to clear my head, and that regularly keeps me up until a couple of hours before I wake up. I'm unable to sleep while my brain is thinking of something, regardless of how boring it is (until the point that my body is just so tired I can't stay awake, which is when I fall asleep), and if I manage to get my brain to a state when it could sleep, suddenly it instead thinks "but what about.." and returns to the topic that's interesting enough that it keeps my brain running in circles, unable to stop concentrating. Really annoying.

A slightly less harsh version I use is to remove my duvet and open the windows. Works in London where it's cold enough outside anyway.

I've struggled with insomnia since college... Here are the things that have worked.

- No computer before bed. TV shows and movies on my laptop are fine, but anything active and stimulating is really bad.

- No video games at all. Even if I play them hours before bed, I can correlate that with a shitty night of sleep.

- Cut back coffee to one cup early in the day. Even though they say caffeine stays in your system only for X hours, I find that any coffee after say 2pm will probably screw with my sleep.

- Exercise. Studies conflict on whether this works but I know it works for me to be in moderately good shape rather than terrible shape.

- Low volume music. Any kind is fine for me, I've fallen asleep to punk. The key is that it be low volume.

On stretches of days when I can convince myself to cut out caffeine entirely, I find that I can actually take naps, something I normally can't do.

I had trouble getting to sleep when I was younger and I was facing a test or something in the morning. Besides the usual no caffeine/moderate exercise/moderate eating etc good advice I came up with a "mind hack" inspired by Richard Feynman.

Summarizing: try to re-play or think about dreams that you had before. If you don't remember any, think of a story that looks like a dream (with impossible things happening etc).

The trick is that when we transition between awake and asleep we have a train of thought and suddenly there are dream-like things like surprising jumps in the thoughts, impossible occurrences etc (this is what Feynman remarked and I observed too), so I try to recreate that state.

It worked for me.

I fall asleep pretty easily when I read. Obviously something not too riveting! Takes my mind of my current focus and that's usually enough.

Also, I have some mp3's I bought from hypnosisdownloads.com. I think they have a few too many on there now (some look flaky), but there are a couple of really good ones. I'd never considered myself a candidate for hypnosis but have found they're able to knock me out for 15-20 min during the day, even when I'm filled with coffee! Works (for me) probably about 70% of the time - invaluable when deadlines are near.

[edit - at least one is specifically for insomnia]

I second the good bed idea. Haing a comfy bed helps tremendously.

I still play hockey and come home rather late. Because I'm wide awake when I get home, I do a few things which helps me fall asleep faster than tossing and turning for hours.

I take fairly hot shower and do some relaxation breathing in the shower. Afterwards, I stretch out for about 20 minutes. By the time I crawl into bed, my body is already slowing down and doze off quickly.

I think the shower loosens my muscles, and the breathing helps relax my brain. The stretching also helps my body transition to a more relaxed state.

To have deep sleep you have to lower your body temperature gradually. Use thinner blanket but not too thin.

Also tensing all muscles in your body for 10 seconds 3 times, will help you to get to some sort of physical equilibrium.

Thoughts running in your head on their own - unresolved issues from the day. Ask yourself what is in your head and visualize how you would deal with it. Just think of what you will be the next step and they will go away.

Failing all these things, calming overexciting nervous system - valerian root can do wonders for calming down.

A good run in the evening and making a point not to think about code/sales/marketing 1-2 hours before sleep seem to work well for me.

The cold shower trick and its physiological effects sound really interesting. I always take cold showers at night but since temperatures always hover around 26-32C with close to 90% humidity (being 1 degree north of the Equator), that doesn't always help.

I lie in bed, low lighting, and do a crossword puzzle, usually from the New York Mag. Snoozeland approaches within 15mins.

Interesting stuff. I just take melatonin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin) personally, but I might experiment with that approach sometime. Melatonin is supposedly pretty safe, but sometimes I still feel kinda groggy in the mornings after taking it.

Interesting that you post this at 2am Pacific. I'm falling asleep but had to write mail anyway.

To keep this on-topic: I (nearly) always have success with milk, cookies, quiet music, a fiction book, and a bed. Getting off the computer and into the bed can be trying at times however.

Yup, 7pm Australian Eastern Standard Time :).

Nice trick! I stick an earbud in and listen to a podcast. Shuts the mental voice off due to the distraction, but isn't usually interesting enough to keep me riveted. Done this every night for a years now - I'd be surprised if I could fall asleep in silence now.. :-)

I have no computers or books or even lights in my bedroom, that way I force myself to sleep.

Anyway, insomnia is like an illness, I can't sleep more than 6 hours.

Also, getting a super-confortable bed helped a lot!

To me, it's just being so much tired when I go to sleep that I simply cannot afford insomnia and I instantly sleep :-)

Lucky! This is the worst kind of insomnia for me: so tired but can't sleep. Perhaps this is why the cold-shower trick has worked so well for me: huge negative first derivative of awakeness.

Good idea. I will try it tonight.

Sounds easy enough to give it a shot. I also found that lifting weights has that effect.

Wish I'd read this 5 hours ago. (5am...)

It also works if you're depressed.

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