> As things are, if you can, it's just dumb luck.
Funny, I've gotten 8+ hours of sleep over 95% of nights in the past 5 years. I must have a string of very good luck. It probably isn't due to lifestyle choices.
Funny, I've gotten 8+ hours of sleep over 95% of nights in the past 5 years. I must have a string of very good luck. It probably isn't due to lifestyle choices.
Once you have a consistent schedule, barring medical issues, sleeping is easy. Simply pick a time 8+ hours before your routine for the day needs to begin, and get into bed at that time every day. Actually in bed! Not on your phone, not watching TV, lights off and eyes closed. Helps if your evening routine winds down in intensity, but won't matter much if you're already exhausted. You can't do anything about your mind racing some nights, but for the most part after a week of this schedule your body takes the hint and adjusts your rhythm accordingly. I've worked tons of odd night shifts this way; the consistency of routine seems to be far more important than the specific time.
Which block of time works for you is a matter of job, lifestyle, and a bunch of other factors that a lot of folks may not be in full control of. I think the real dumb luck here is having enough controllable factors that carving out the same 8+ hour block each night is possible. In my mind though, it is worth the effort. Good, consistent sleep quality has an absolutely massive impact on your willpower and general ability to focus.
I respect your personal experience, but you are coming on a little strong in terms of assuming everyone is just like yourself.
Something I've seen other people mention, and may have myself (although not formally diagnosed):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder
I have worked 8-5, 2-11, and 11-8, and no matter what my schedule was, I had the urge to stay up a little later, but needed at least 8 hours to feel adequately rested. So typically I would get 7 hours or so and feel exhausted every morning. Without work or appointments, I would rotate my schedule around the clock, day by day. It's as if I was tuned to a planet with a slightly longer day.
After many, many years, I found by accident that bupropion (aka Zyban aka Wellbutrin) fixed it, just like that. It was amazing. But I wasn't able to tolerate a full dosage, so that didn't last. It does point to some dysfunction of nicotinic receptors.
This was actually a significant point of contention between myself and my advisor, who interpreted my working late at the lab as though I was trying to cram extra time to make up for not being there otherwise, or something. Those are just my most productive hours ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but to him I was lazy and irresponsible.
My natural sleep period seems to be around 9 hours. I can make myself do 7 (I currently keep a ~1:30am-9am schedule, with some effort), but anything less has noticeable effects on my cognitive state, and I still start getting tired again around 5pm. If I do sleep at 5pm, I'll wake somewhere between 11pm and 2am, which is bad but in the other direction. So I have to fight through the late-afternoon slump. It's very easy to knock me off of this schedule, and I've been keeping it for two years since I left grad school.
Sleep disorders are real, and they are not simply symptoms of a poor work ethic.
You may want to look into Suvorexant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suvorexant). It's the one drug that I've found to be extremely effective without causing any sort of hangover in the morning. It really felt like a miracle drug as compared to things like zolpidem and antihistamines. YMMV but I'd say it's worth looking into if you're really struggling.
I should also mention that I've found a combination of exercise, time in the sun, and proper sleep hygiene to be the only viable long-term solution. But I do believe that sleep aids can be a useful bridge towards developing a consistent sleep schedule.
Can you expand on what you mean by this?
I found that 75 mg twice a day made me feel ready to wake in the morning like I basically never have been, but it also had intolerable side effects. Going back to 75 mg/day, halving it, is bearable, but also reverted my sleep pattern.
I am taking melatonin at the moment, because why not, but I don't notice much effect except an increase in dreaming (or remembering it).
It's easier to fall asleep sometimes, but I find sleep quality markedly worsened with cannabis, personally. I have to sleep an extra hour or two if I've consumed cannabis prior to sleep.
I buy melatonin that comes in 1mg pressed/powder pill form and just bite it to split it in half and toss the other half back in the bottle.
I've been doing this for 2 years now and have never had to change the dose. At one point I even considered seeing if .25mg would be sufficient but depending on the brand sometimes the pill crumbles up too much so I stick with .5mg. I've used Nature's Bounty and Webber Naturals and both brands seem to work the same for me.
I really wish I had figured this trick out a lot earlier in life as it would've saved me from missing out on a lot of opportunities in my career.
(more detail about my experimentation below)
Before I discovered this I tried everything from reducing screen time before bed, cranking up night mode in flux/redshift, abandoning coffee/caffeine entirely, working out earlier in the day instead of evenings, etc. _Nothing_ worked for me - my brain would remain wide awake and I would have to stay up until 5-7am before I even began to feel tired (where I would have to wake up between 10-11am for work).
I had even tried melatonin before too but it was a 3mg pill and it would produce very erratic results in my sleep quality. I'd sometimes wake up drenched in sweat or wake up feeling very groggy for hours so I figured melatonin just wasn't for me. It wasn't until I came across some advice on /r/n24 or /r/dspd to try .5-1mg of melatonin that I decided to try again (IIRC it was a post about how doses >=2mg can actually result in melatonin overdose and result in the types of symptoms I was observing - TBH I didn't really bother verifying that info and just figured I'd try .5mg and see what happened as I was desperate for a solution).
And for the record, with this approach I haven't had to make any other modifications to my daily routine. I continue to lift heavy in the evenings and drink 1-2 cups of drip/espresso every day.
The only situations I've noticed where this trick falls apart for me are:
1) if I ever try to push past that 20-40min period where I start to get drowsy, it results in me being awake again. This rarely ever happens and I usually just end up sleeping about an hour later. I make sure to take the melatonin just before I begin flossing+brushing and get in bed right after
2) for some reason drinking a can of coke/pepsi in the evening will keep me wired awake all night. I've had cups of coffee in the evening rarely which never had the same effect, but coke/pepsi will...
Anyway, just thought I'd share since this made a huge difference in my life - maybe worth trying/experimenting.
One of the problems of melatonin is that in some countries it's sold as a supplement not a medication, so the regulation is much less strict.
The dosing varies so much, even in product labelled as 1 mg.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5263069/
> In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, Erland and Saxena systematically analyzed the actual melatonin content (and presence of contaminants) in 31 melatonin supplements purchased from groceries and pharmacies in one city in Canada (before countrywide OTC use of it in Canada was banned). Their findings herald what may also be true in OTC melatonin supplements marketed in the United States. Melatonin content varied from an egregious −83% to +478% of labeled melatonin and 70% had melatonin concentration ≤ 10% of what was claimed. Worse yet, the content of melatonin between lots of the same product varied by as much as 465%.3
> The most variable sample was a chewable tablet (and most likely to be used by children). It contained almost 9 mg of melatonin when it was supposed to contain 1.5 mg and also exhibited the greatest variability between lots (465% difference). The lowest melatonin content was −83% compared to its labeled value in a capsule that also contained lavender, chamomile, and lemon balm. Capsules showed the greatest variability between lots. Liquid supplements surprisingly showed generally high to median stability with low lot-to-lot stability. The least variable products were those that contained the simplest mix of ingredients, generally oral or sublingual tablets with melatonin added to a filler of silica or cellulose derivatives and were the most reproducible. The last disturbing finding was more than a quarter of melatonin products contained serotonin, some at potentially significant doses. Serotonin is a breakdown product of melatonin metabolism but could have medicinal effects and should be taken without oversight. In short, there was no guarantee of the strength or purity of OTC melatonin.
Forcing yourself to get in bed even when you're not sleepy can potentially lead to just lying there thinking, conditioning yourself negatively, especially if the character of those thoughts is "argh I should be asleep why am I not sleepy I'm going to be so tired in the morning what's wrong with me..."
- people need between 7-10 hours of sleep depending on age - most people don't fall asleep instantly - sleep deprivation is a pervasive problem with significant health implication.
If we (again, forgetting circadian rythm as it makes things more nuanced) move things to start at 5am that's fine, but then things have to stop much, MUCH earlier (they wouldn't).
I don't know you, where you live, what you do for work. I don't know which ones of these apply to you. Maybe none d, but then something else does. Yes, you're lucky.
I had to move 3 times in 2 years because I wasn't so lucky, and I'm still not lucky so I'm throwing enormous amounts of money at the problem (money most people wouldn't have, because they're not as lucky as I am). And no amount of money will fix my biology.
I personally think these society-wide policies should reflect the realities of the population. Which often means reviewing them every once in a while to see if it still makes sense.
Far too much gov policy is fire-and-forget and obsessed with forever adding new things.
In my perfect world at least 50% of time should be spent reviewing and tweaking existing policy.
People need showing how to wear them properly, really just read the instructions on the packet but so many people insert them haphazardly then say they don’t work or they fall out.
This is an interesting comment to me. San Francisco is really, really loud -- the biggest offender, when I was there, was near-daily sirens from (I believe) fire trucks.
But this is not a necessary aspect of living in a city. I often did wake up early in Shanghai, but that was because the sun came up at 4 am. Noise wasn't much of an issue during the ambiguous times. (Before firecrackers/fireworks were outlawed, they were common, but they were more of an afternoon thing.)
Ding ding, we have a winner.
Around here, if you complain about noise, you'll just be told "It's a city, it's noisy, deal with it! If you don't like it, move to the suburbs!". Which is kind of a silly suggestion: I've lived in the suburbs and kids having pool parties were a lot noisier than anything I've seen in a city. You'd have to be in the middle of a forest or something to not have to worry about human noise. In cities, suburbs, whatever, noise is a lot more cultural, and what people consider okay or not.
Sure, some level of cars/traffic will just happen. Other things like construction can be done in a lot of ways (some cities require plans on how they will minimize inconvenience to neighbors. Others are free for all). Backup alarms seem like a necessary evil, but I'm told in London they're not really a thing. People screaming at 2am is just about enforcement and cultural norms.
Some cities are loud. Other, bigger cities aren't.
You must live in a different west than I do, because although there are sometimes noisy works in my cities (I've mostly lived in France and Belgium, but my year in Montreal wasn't different on this aspect actually) these are only punctual occurrences, and even in my latest house, where there have been buildings being built in my street for two years, it's only been noisy in the morning a couple weeks at most over this time.
I'm more inconvenienced by regular automobile traffic, which isn't limited to special hours, motorcycles can speed down the street and wake us up at any time of the night.
There's been construction around me for the last decade. Most of the projects have been fine. The current one is managed by the devil himself and making everyone miserable. It's just luck. That's the problem.