The million dollar question is though "How do we improve deep sleep?"
I have a sleep tracker at home and my weak point is always not getting enough deep sleep. I'm not sure there's a way to force deep sleep somehow...
I've also cut out coffee and that has helped my sinuses/upper throat a lot in the morning which were being irritated. I drink some varieties of tea instead.
I'll add that I take a small magnesium supplement mid to late afternoon as well which helps me relax and if dreams are any indication of deeper sleep I have many more memorable dreams when I'm taking magnesium.
I'll add, the mag oxide always prevents leg cramps when I take a full tablet (250mg) when I am working outside all day (and staying hydrated).
ETA: In my experience magnesium citrate is the one mostly likely to cause diarrhea though they all can.
I take about 150MG of magnesium and 100mg of potassium before bed. The magnesium is Chloride, but in liquid form and causes no laxative effect (but tastes terrible!). It is a product called ReMag. I am sure other forms will work just as well. The potassium is Gluconate as it is PH neutral. Potassium Citrate and Chloride would work just as well. I just get the Gluconate from Walmart as it is cheap and effective.
2. Might not have to be one or the other - just make sure caffeine consumption is very early in the day
You drink coffee because it makes you do more things at work / you are a slob without it because of addiction. You are not drinking it because it might make you better in bed or have less dementia in 50 years.
On the other hand we all need to sleep so doing it properly is a net positive
If you only shoot heroin once a week you will be perfectly fine
How many people resist the urge and only shoot heroin once a week?
We are humans, not perfectly diligent robots.
The first thing you say to a person with eating disorders is to throw all the junk food from their home. It’s close to impossible to resist even the “simple” temptation of food.
It’s much easier for a person to never start drinking coffee in the morning to “wake up” than starting and then quitting
Given your entire comment is one massive strawman argument I will ignore the rest of it.
Heroin has proven benefits, this is why they give it to you at the hospital.
Given your entire comment is a massive lie I will ignore the rest of your replies
If you want to have an honest discussion, stop using these terrible analogies and bring actual scientific evidence.
This mentality of finding these shallow similarities and drawing these insane conclusions indicates that someone has very low intelligence.
This is your "deep" thought process
1. Caffeine is a drug
2. Heroin is also a drug
3. Caffeine can have negative effects on people when used in excess
4. Heroin can also have negative effects on people when used in excess!
ergo, caffeine is as bad as heroin
Never said this.
Perhaps if you didn’t “ignore” the rest of my comment you would have understood the point :)
maybe ask the 100 years of scientific publications about human behavior and addiction?
According to whom? Data says otherwise
https://www.statista.com/chart/19524/cups-of-coffee-drunk-by...
I usually consume two double espressos per day (both before noon) and don't have trouble falling asleep afterwards.
That doesn’t sound very convincing.
- No exercise after 18:30/6:30pm
- Absolutely avoid Vitamin D and Vitamin B supplements in the evening. These will suppress deep and REM sleep and I'll sleep lightly all night long if I take them.
- Hot sauna, shower, or bath before bed.
- Anti-histamine (cetirizine hydrochloride aka Zyrtec) as needed - I'm allergic to my wife's dog and some nights I feel like I have bugs crawling on my skin. It can even wake me up.
Things that keep me from waking up at night:
- Gas X as needed to avoid acid reflux
- Anti Inflammatory helps keep me from having to use the bathroom when I know I'm inflamed (getting old sucks).
- No alcohol in the evening
- No videogames, interesting books, or French lessons right before bed, or I'll be sleeping lightly and find myself ruminating in light sleep over these mentally engaging topics.
You might also try no screens/TV/computers after dark. Keep interior lights at low levels and a warm color temperature after dark. Be intentional about doing calming, quiet things before bedtime.
I asked the pharmacist for a drowsy antihistamine the other day and they gave me something from behind the counter (no script required). No idea if it was anticholinergic: most drugs require compromises so if something works better for sleep for me I'll judge the risks for other side-effects.
Normally I use a loratidine if I wake in the early hours and that usually gets me back to sleep, even though it is non-drowsy.
I wanted to try a different antihistamine to see if it worked better: jury's out on that at the moment.
Personally I think it is very important to experiment on yourself, and test a variety of solutions. I will even test alternative medicine for important problems. I strongly avoid dangerous solutions. I am fairly conservative and I especially dislike taking pills, but I believe in the value of trying a bit of science on your problems.
If you need something for sleep I highly suggest you either try melatonin if you want something OTC or talk to your doctor for something that requires a prescription.
Aside from melatonin, pretty much every OTC sleeping drug you can get is an anticholinergic drug which is better to avoid.
Yes Promethazine (the anti-histamine I'm using) is a moderate anticholinergic.
AFAIK Melatonin needs a doctor's prescription in New Zealand.
I will balance the risks as best I can (lack of sleep is also very unhealthy!!), and keep scientifically trying softer alternatives.
What does this sentence mean?
I thought he was feeling any kind of inflammation in his body.
Actually, more accurately, gas-x has an enzyme that helps break down oligosaccharides. The mechanism may be more complex than above if your acid reflux is somehow related to microbiome stuff (oligos are favorite food for all kinds of gut bacteria).
Antihistamines are associated with increased dementia if you take the wrong ones, so it's not a good way to get more sleep. Melatonin, trazodone or a newer sleep drug is safer.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/common-anticholinergic-d...
which is sometimes used for it's drowsy effect. cetirizine/loratidine are non-drowsy and I don't see any association known with dementia
Huh, interesting. I find that I sometimes force myself to think on mentally engaging topics as it helps quiet the other, more negative things I might instead be ruminating on. It's counting sheep for me, really.
I just can’t get good consistent deep sleep. I will say one thing that did help was i use to live in the city and after i moved outside of it and it was much much quieter at night (no trucks driving through or random sounds or honking in the middle of the night) i did notice an improvement.
The fan for me doubles as a way of getting air circulation. I keep windows open in other rooms, but not the bedroom - due to street noises. Having a CO2 monitor may give you some insights into another key factor impacting your sleep quality.
getting a cpap can be a life changer.
Also really darkening the bedroom and keeping the temperature as low as possible.
Now if there only were a consistent solution for energetic "night owl" toddlers to go with that ever more optimized regimen :D
- no alcohol after dinner (none at all is better) - eat dinner as early as possible (before 7pm, even earlier is better) - turn off screens after 9pm (Kindle doesn't seem to impact, but phone/tablet/TV do) - exercise regularly, but not too close to bedtime - regular bed time and wake time (we go to bedroom 9:30-10, lights out 10:30, alarm at 6am).
Meditation and breathing exercise can help too, but I haven't had to try those much.
Are you sure the latter improved deep sleep? Alcohol is known to interfere with REM sleep, but I've actually found it lengthens the amount of time I spend in deep sleep if I have a single beer or something at dinner. I tracked this over months with a sleep tracker.
Do yourself a favor. Take off the nightcap, put on the striped pajamas and the old-timey candle holder, and book out a full 10 hours for a few weeks. Make it non-negotiable. Full darkness, clean air, quiet, the works. Maybe even get tested for sleep apnea if you're overweight.
If you go through that for 3 weeks religiously and return to the nightcap I'll eat my words and consider you a medical anomaly. But I think you'll come out of it convinced it's worth the sacrifice.
I wonder if they could design an interventional study in which people who are predisposed to dementia are given more sleep or melatonin, and then demonstrate whether it protects against the disease.
Sorry for the rant: we should not share university press release articles, they are always clickbait. Just share the research directly.
Which is fine, but in general I'd think having the luxury of being in a calm, comfortable and unworried state of mind is the most beneficial.
I don't travel without these now and they have been great, but after several successive nights of use I find my ear starts to get sore and sensitive to them.
The best thing, of course, is to live somewhere actually quiet. Most noise is from cars. But failing that I have to sleep with some white noise source like a fan.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0051U7W32
I re-use the same set, washing them when I take a shower. I bought the above set of 50 years ago and still have many left.
A couple of tricks I use with these:
- I cut about 1/4" off the small end. If I don't, the earplug starts to hurt my ear if I wear it a lot, I think because it goes too far into my ear.
- before using a new earplug, I wash it several times with bar soap. There is something in a new ear plug that makes it stay mashed. Maybe it suppresses more noise with that, but it also makes it hard to fit for me. I keep washing it until it is springy. This is a one-time thing with a new ear plug.
But this is, of course, to ensure protection in the case of dangerously high sound pressure levels. Cutting them would also compromise them in this regard. Perhaps different if you are using them to block out low noises for sleep.
1. They're noticeably "there" in my ears, or even mildly uncomfortable
2. I'm nervous about missing important sounds (family telephone emergencies, emergency door knocks, etc)
https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/22/23837206/ozlo-sleepbuds-b...
used to buy these but not in stock:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008MCTXJC
so now I got these:
I'm not fully back into it yet mind you, but I'm running 20 miles a week and lifting weights 6 days a week. A lot of my workouts are zone 2. I sleep at least 8 hours and I get roughly 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight from my diet (i also make sure all my other macro and micro nutrient needs are met).
The excessive fatigue goes away if you are meeting your nutrient and sleep requirements and not consuming drugs or alcohol. Look up the "repeated bout effect". I feel like a teenager again after getting my exercise, nutrition, and sleep routine locked in.
edit: To clarify what I mean about "the excessive fatigue goes away", when I first started running there would be mornings where I would wake up and have significant mental and physical fatigue and the very thought of going to exercise was repulsive to me. That goes away with time, it's also a signal to maybe take it easy for the day and do zone 2 cardio instead.
Running has been the goto for me. Can push myself on a 5k run in the evening (6pm) and when 10pm hits, I'm 2x more tired than normal.
I find it interesting that it is never addressed in these common list of what to try to improve sleep. It's not rocket science managing it, just a matter of avoiding high histamine food after 5pm or so. Good sleep might be worth it.
As for how to improve sleep, there are plenty of advise, many of them commonsense (see in this thread). But I think that unless you are actually followed by a healthcare professional, in which case he would probably give better advise than random people on HN, how well you feel the next day is probably a better metric than some number on a smartwatch. And if the answer is "fine", I don't think there is a reason to worry much.
- Japan has these drinks with 200mg of GABA, I don't know if it was the 20,000 steps we were doing every day or the drinks but on the days I had it deep sleep was often (not always) closer to an hour. Strangely enough GABA is illegal here in NZ so I'm trying L-Theanine with less obvious effects.
- Exercise (even 2h+ moderate) doesn't have any effect, adjusting caffeine doesn't seem to either
- A warm shower immediately before bed strangely did seem to have a considerable although not perfectly consistent effect
- Just got put on Concerta for ADHD and although im getting less sleep i'm also getting 40+ minutes of deep sleep. After recently doing research into GABA + Dopamine + etc it seems to be a bit of a brain circuit thing for me.
Edit: am i wrong, who doesn't sleep better and easier with that outcome in-hand?
Quite a few sleep supplements have started adding it to their formulas recently, using melatonin to initiate sleep and lavender oil to sustain it. It remains to be seen what side effects it has taken long term - there aren't any studies about this available as far as I could tell.
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/lavender-tea-t...
> Cannabis users demonstrated significantly longer sleep latency and less REM sleep overall; no other differences occurred in objective sleep measures between groups.
There is a large body of research supporting this, a selection of which you can find on our website at https://soundmind.co
We don't alter the amount of time you sleep, we increase the synchronous firing of neurons, which is the hallmark of deep sleep.
I got helped by the usual suspects like avoiding caffeine after 14-15, earplugs, thick curtains and light cover over the eyes as well as cool temperatures in the sleeping room, but the big improvement came after I stopped eating after 20 in the night, and preferably earlier than that.
Is it "real" improved deep sleep? No idea.
I do blood tests for Magnesium (and D3, B12, etc) every so often to make sure I'm not poisoning myself.
by far the most important thing you CAN do is have a consistent sleep schedule (every day! Including weekends!) and make your bed for sleeping and sex only.