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Comment by LanceH | Hacker News Reader

The military secret to falling asleep is to be exhausted.

Ever since I was 13 I've been unable to fall asleep quickly except when exhausted or reading anything by the Bronte sisters.

Possibly the most annoying thing about it is the absolute certainty in the presumption of the people making recommendations of how I'm doing it wrong. I've tried, thanks.

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I came to the comments to state exactly your first line. When I served in the German army, no combat involved, the amount of physical activity was at a very high level, so I was basically constantly tired and was able to fall asleep in under 30 seconds, even when sitting in the classroom.

I'm not sure it is enough to be exhausted. I recently spent the whole day doing some physical labour. I was exhausted by about 10pm. But I also received some news that day which had agitated me. I had a shower, I ate well and I was exhausted. But my mind wouldn't shutdown and I couldn't sleep.

It was only around 3:30am that I was able to get into some sort of delirious sleep and I woke up 3-4 hours later with my mind still screaming.

Maybe it needs practice to calm the mind. I'm not sure how soldiers in the battlefield who are exhausted can sleep when the possibility of death is always prevalent?

In general, the overactive mind is one that is unable to accept or process what has happened or is happening. It’s spinning it’s wheels trying to understand and control something that it fundamentally cannot at the time - and considers important/a threat to understand.

I’ve got a lot of combat veterans in my family. The ones who survived, say the way to survive and function is to accept that shit can and will happen, they have very little control over it (but they can control their little part of what they do), and they might not live through it.

One said ‘I accepted that I was going to die. If I didn’t today that was going to be a nice bonus. It got the worry out of my head and let me focus on doing things the best way, and the way I knew I wanted it to be done, and how I wanted to be remembered if I’m gone.’). He lost a lung in Vietnam, among other things, but is still kicking and enjoying life in his 80’s now. He has had, and still does have, many issues from the war, so don’t take this as a ‘and everything was fine’.

If you are at peace with, and have accepted the possible outcomes (including the horrific), and understand and accept how little control you actually have - the mind doesn’t spin. It truly knows the situation and can react appropriately, instead of a intellectual ‘knowing’ that it is struggling to integrate and process.

It frees you up to act, be present, and actually steer things in a better direction rather than spin/have the overactive mind. And sleep is necessary and helpful to actually doing better. And so they just do what they need to do. Which includes passing out and sleeping.

This makes a lot of sense, thank you for that insight. The news I received was about a business associate who is screwing me over. I knew (and I know) that there is very little I could do to stop him. And I could not accept it. The injustice of what he is trying to do kept me awake.

My wife suggested I find peace by thinking that by blindly trusting someone, I hadn't done everything I could to protect my interests. According to her, accepting that I could have done better will make it easier to accept the injustice. I'm trying, but it's hard to accept being cheated by someone you trusted.

There are techniques to help process what is happening in situations like this - CBT and/or mindfulness have both helped me in the past.

It is necessary to take risks to succeed - including trusting sometimes unknown parties. It is necessary to not trust more than you can afford to lose. It is also necessary to put trust and faith only in those that have earned it.

It’s a complex set of sometimes contradictory requirements. It is impossible to always have it perfectly under control. Sometimes that means learning painful lessons, sometimes that means getting into a fight to protect yourself as best as possible, sometimes it means writing it off - as the flip side of the good bets that pay off.

To know what is appropriate for you will require integrating the experiences and information you have, and calming evaluating for yourself your own values and your own plan, and what you want to do.

Easier said than done. I wish you luck!

I spoke to the doctor the 5th time today to discuss my inability to sleep until I have a headache and am about to passout from exhaustion.

They suggested getting up if I can't fall asleep.

No words

Do you do daily cardio? And/or weight lifting?

Also if I was in the physician cartel- That will be 220$.

I briskly walk the dog every day for 20-30 minutes.

I believe the theory behind this is that you don't want to associate your bed with not sleeping. If you body is not ready to sleep, don't bother trying. I got a similar suggestion after a spell of a week or two with 2 hours or less sleep a night. I was physically and mentally exhausted, but I could not sleep.

I understand the theory.

The problem is I don't associate bed with anything other than sleep, I implemented that practice years ago.

Now I'm actually questioning it, I did a lot better when I could fall asleep watching boring documentaries on YouTube.

Now I watch documentaries until I get tired, but after getting up, going to the toilet, having a drink of water, brushing my teeth, all before hitting bed I'm wide awake again.

Had this problem myself, was never able to just fall asleep at night, it was always a struggle. Napping, never, that made no sense. I would usually fall asleep around 2AM, struggle to get up at 9AM, and would do catchup sleep until noon on the weekends. And this was with daily exercise, I was always very active.

About 10 years ago (mid 30s) I moved to a new city and pretty much had an empty apartment and nothing to do in the evening. Most importantly no TV or internet. I decided to just goto bed around ~9:30PM. I think because of the lack of stimuli or something, this stuck and I then found myself in a bedtime routine of falling asleep around 10PM and waking up around 6AM. I guess the key isn't to slip back into the old routine.

Fast forward many years and now I have a family. Not only am I passing out immediately at night, I also can take naps. Yes, im completely exhausted every night.

I wanted to give you kudos for bringing up the Brontes. For several years I like to read in bed, and the more boring the better if sleep is the aim. Boring reading plus getting up early to work out means I usually only get a few pages per night before I can't keep my eyes open.

As a side note, when I was in high school I threatened to hire my Chemistry teacher to read me bedtime stories, though I never followed through, and alas she is likely no longer living. Always had a hard time staying awake while listening to her.

Yeah was about to say the same. In my life the only occasions that I got good sleep were due to exhaustion. But in today's world it's kind of difficult to reach that point physically. I got knee and ankle issues from overweight so the only feasible solution to reach exhaustion is swimming.

Or rowing?

Yeah rowing and cycling also works to some extent. Rowing seems to be a little better but I can still feel the drag on my knees.

I'm in the middle of reducing 20-30lbs and see if it helps.

Glucosamine supplements have enough data for doctors to say "might work, won't hurt".

Chinese martial arts guys recommend eating chicken cartilage.

Look into "continuous passive motion" for joint repair. If you aren't in pain from walking - walk, walk a lot. Otherwise, back to CPM.

Diet to reduce inflammation, or cartilage can't repair itself.

Correct postural imbalances. Look into tight hip flexors / weak glutes to take pressure off of knees.

Rant, but might be useful, I looked into this stuff a lot.

Thanks. I'll look into it, the first line is especially interesting but I'll have to double check.

I do get pain after walking for say more than an hour so I'll refrain from that. I'll do a check to make sure it's not gout.

Thanks again for the tips!

Weight lifting might help, since it doesn't have to include your body weight. I remember being an unfit, overweight teenager who would stay up late on the computer. One summer my brother was home from college and we would go weight lift at the public gym in our civic center at 9 PM. I would end up asleep by 10:30, which was very unusual for me.

Thanks, yeah I'm also doing that a bit since I just started. My knees don't feel it because it's mostly dumbbells within 25 lbs. I heard that to lose weight it's best to combine cardio (which I can't do much) and weight lifting.

Best way to lose weight IMO is to restrict eating to an 8 hour (or less) window, eliminate carbs (sugar, bread, grains, beans, potatoes) and reduce fat intake so your body has to burn the fat you already have. After you have lost the weight, increase fat intake to get enough calories. You can go back to carbs after losing weight, but be mindful that they will cause insulin fluctuations that might give you cravings. If you can't manage the cravings, cut back again on the carbs.

Best sleep I had was on board ship. I think it was a matter of sleeping in a sleeping back in cot on a rocking ship that really did it. This was followed by 2 weeks of full blown insomnia after I got ashore where I experienced little to no sleep (max 1 hour a day) until it just went away. Maybe I just need to be exhausted, at sea and miserable all day long so I can sleep well.

I'm not sure if you were being flippant about the book comment, but reading any astrophysics text (even readable ones that popularize/dumb it down) literally inject 10mg of melatonin into my system.

Doesn't work if I'm agitated/worried, but it does help if my mind is racing after a day of problem solving.

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