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I've tried so many things to go sleep

- warm milk

- meditation

- room for sleep only

- go to bed only when sleepy( I am not sleepy anymore once i get into bed)

- melatonin

- counting sheep

- sleep sounds, sleep talking youtube videos

- ambien ( sigh)

- clean sheets

- low room temperature

- body pillows, weighted blankets

- daily excersise / yoga

- Ice cold showers/ hot showers / no shower

- no food after 8 pm, no coffee after 12 pm

- no alarms/alarms

- no screens

None of these had any consistent results, you simply cannot "trick" your brain. Then I observed my (then new) girlfriend how she would fall asleep in < 2 mins. I realised I had strained relationship with sleep at some point in my life and never corrected that relationship. My problems started when I was teenager in residential school where you had to wake up at 5 am.

My girlfriend associated sleep with cozy, warm, relaxing happy space,I associated it with stressful battle. I've had good success trying to mend my relationship with sleep. Ironically the thing that worked the best for me is 'sleep restriction', sleeping less and less everyday till my brain associated sleep with something it needs to chill, not something foisted on it by a strict schedule.

The hardest time I have getting to sleep is when I know I have to get to sleep because I have to get up early the next morning for an important meeting or to catch a plane. Ironic.

Same here and I tend to sleep for long stretches if I can (this usually ends in me getting up barely rested after a 10h night).

I'm planning on moving my wakeup time to some super early hour like 6am so that I'll have more time after work.

The hardest thing when I try to fall asleep is to stop thinking. My SO also falls asleep in 2m where it takes me well over 30m unless I'm listening to an audiobook or music that I know well, then it's closer to 10m.

I tried a mostly similar list, with little success. I've since found some success (not perfect, but much better), so if you are still willing to experiment ...

- 10,000 IU of Vitamin D3 before 10am

- 400-1000 daily milligrams of Magnesium chelate (or magnesium citrate, if you are ok with liquid stool for a while until you adapt)

- Make sure you have sufficient protein in your diet - rule of thumb is 1gr protein for 1kg of body weight (or 0.5gr per 1lb). That's often more than non-athletes are getting.

Do your own research about D3 and Mg - both are way above the RDA, and some people will tell you that D3 in this amount is bad for you (and they'd be wrong unless you spend all day in the sun, but don't trust me on that - do your own research)

I still have the occasional 3-4 day streak of unable-to-fall-a-sleep a month, but this combination has reduced it from 25-30 days a month ...

I think you might have scrambled up your protein recommendation of 0.5/g/lb. The RDA for protein is 0.8g/kg of body weight. Maybe you meant 1g/lb?

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-much-protein-do-you-...

A 100kg person (so 220lb) would require 80gr protein with this RDA; so 1gr/lb would be 3 times RDA (whereas 0.5g would be 110g protein so only 1.4 RDA)

The 1g/kg is easy to remember, as is 0.5g/lb ; they are 120-140% of recommended for a sedantry lifestyle, but only 60-80% of what’s recommended for an athlete - so I use them as an easy to remember back-of-the-envelope numbers.

RDA is much less precise and scientific than one would think; it basically means “we know there are no serious defincies or overdoses if you keep this forever” - but they are not optimized for anything else; e.g. higher dose vitamin C was shown to shorten common cold recovery, and higher dose vitamin D with generally better everything.

I'll second getting your vitamin D levels checked and some sun exposure.

Your list is missing one crucial item:

- listen to a (i.e. scientific, technical) podcast

Just go to bed and start a podcast. Turn the volume down, use a sleep timer so that the podcast will not run for 2 hours and close your eyes. Listening to people talking will clear your brain of trying to wander around.

I have had some luck with this method [0]: "The trick is reportedly used by the US army to help them fall asleep when in situations that are less than peaceful, such as on battlefields." It has some similarities to yours, but some interesting differences as well. I've modified it a bit to say “don’t think, don’t think, don’t think” to myself over and over for a minute or two instead of 10 seconds

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fall-asleep-two-min...

The thing I've found works to calm me down when I'm trying to sleep is to take a series of deep breaths. Long and slow in and out, but not awkwardly so. Usually on about the 5th breath the nature of it changes quite a bit and I can feel the tension drain out of me. From there, falling asleep is usually not far off.

>If your at home and have the option to sleep what I find works for me is lying flat on my back. Then relax, in sequence, your forehead, shoulders, upper arms, lower arms, fingers, chest, stomach, groin, upper legs, lower legs, toes. Take around 1 minute to relax your whole body. If you can't relax something tense it up, then release it.

This sounds like shavasana, a yoga asana (pose) normally done at the end of a yoga session, after various other yoga asanas (including active and passive) have been done - at least in Hatha Yoga.

>I've noticed recently that this is meditation, except without the sleep part.

About the rest of your comment, yes, it is similar to a meditation technique.

Interestingly, the Wikipedia article about shavasana:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavasana

says:

[ After so much time being bound to the actions of the body, the practitioner's awareness is hopefully turned inwards and purified of sensory distraction. Shavasana then becomes the beginning of deeper, meditative yogic practices. In a state of sensory withdrawal, it becomes easier to be aware of the breath and the state of the mind itself.

Though not the best position for prolonged meditative contemplation, Shavasana dulls the mind enough that the discernment necessary to achieve deeper meditative states becomes more difficult. This reclination can be a successful introductory practice for those practitioners who are not yet ready for formal meditation. ]

Short naps generally don't affect nighttime sleep quality for most people.

However, if you experience insomnia or poor sleep quality at night, napping might worsen these problems.

What you are describing is effectively two aspects of the first step of traditional buddhist meditation Shamatha - awareness on chosen object and awareness on present signals of the body, so yes, meditation is is.

I can vouch for this method; when I remember to use it, it works.

I do that now. Deep and quick. A decisive mindset to follow some needs unless it's unnecessary (munchies between meals)