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> I take magnesium because I am very active and have suffered for the last year or so from hypnic jerks, which are terrifying but have gone away since I started taking magnesium supplements before bed.

I'm guessing you're taking magnesium L-threonate (Sometimes goes by Magtein). If not, it's worth a try.

> I've also started cold showers when waking up (60 seconds of cold to end my shower, working towards 2 minutes).

I do something similar. 3-min cold showers in the morning, yoga to regain the heat, then meditation, then breakfast. I feel it's relevant to my struggles with attention (doesn't throw me off like adderall does)

Best I ever slept was when I was cycling 45 minutes to and from work every day. It looks like you're doing quite a lot (of the same things I do) but if you're interested in throwing more in there... there's soemthing magical about the kind of cardio that lets you explore your limits.

I discovered by accident that glycine (~3000 mg) + NAC (they also sell it combined as GlyNAC) before bed made my sleep noticeably deeper. I'm not taking it to cure sleep but the effect is strong enough that I have noticed change, quite big actually.

ps. NAC can have sulfury/rotten-egg like scent, don't throw it away thinking it's outdated or something, it's normal

> I am tempted to try a sleep study and see what I might learn.

I strongly recommend to get sleep study, they will help to find the root of the symptoms.

10 years ago, I have issues with my sleeping pattern, waking up tired and still tired during the day. After my sleep study, I discovered I have sleep apnea which affects how I breathe during my sleeping cycle. After the diagnosis, I got a CPAP from my insurance and been using it ever since. It improved my sleep quality and I am able to dream more often than before.

If you have the same diagnosis as mine in the future, it will take some time to get used to Bi/CPAP. It can take up to a year to get used to it, it took me two years get used to wearing a mask. I was horrified to learn from my Somnologist that 90% of his patients are not consistent with CPAP usage or don't bother to use them. I know a friend's husband, who is a Physician Assistant, have the same diagnosis and refused to use the CPAP. His wife been begging him to use it because she can hear how he sleep during the night. Still to this day, he refused to use it and still complaining about the sleep quality.

It's been well over a decade of CPAP usage every night for me, but I still haven't gotten used to the stupid mask. I fight with it literally every single night. I own about 4-5 different masks and have tried probably double that number of variants in an attempt to reduce my frustration with it. I can't sleep without out it though, so there's no other option. I wake up gasping for air within ~3 minutes of sleep. That makes me a 100% compliant user over many years. My sleep neurologist was blown away by that statistic, citing the same issues you described: most people do not consistently use their CPAP machines.

I’ve had two sleep studies. I have once been diagnosed with type 2 narcolepsy and then later as my sleep hygiene improved that was changed to idiopathic hypersomnia. I don’t have sleep apnea.

At any time I call basically fall asleep within 5 minutes and I’m always tired. Has anyone else dealt with this?

I tried modafinil but felt horrible for weeks as I hoped my body would adjust. I’ve also considered armodafinil, but I fear the same effects.

The doctor wants me to try xyrem but it scares me, doesn’t have a lot of studies on it, and it’s basically a nonstarter because I have young jerks and need to be able to wake up if needed.

So all of that to say, is dementia inevitable for me? My guess is that I just sleep terrible.

Any advice is welcome.

I'd at least try the xyrem. I've tried it - didn't work for me (my sleep issues are caused by something else), but it's not as incapacitating as it's made out to sound.

*young kids lol

Hell of a typo

Can you even be admitted to a sleep study with a complaint about the amount of deep sleep?

I believe you can. It couldn't hurt to ask.

“90% of his patients are not consistent with CPAP usage”

That’s high. Surely someone can post scientific evidence that cpap helps with sleep despite the fact there’s almost 100% non-compliance.

/s

I've had a long struggle with sleep. The most effective supplements are:

* magnesium (threonate form before bed)

* D3 BUT MUST BE TAKEN WITH magnesium. 5000IU + 500mg magnesium. These two are linked. Taking D3 without magnesium can make a magnesium deficiency worse. This made a monumental difference for me.

* B complex also very important

* Glycine improved my quality of sleep

The B-100 complex has helped me a lot. I have to use it twice a day to undo the damage done from drinking energy drinks that have high dosages of inactive B vitamins which compete with the active forms and was leading to deficiency and nerve issues.

Do you take the vitamin d daily at nighttime?

Vitamin D is fat soluble so it must be take with meals to be absorbed.

I take it after breakfast.

I'm not an expert and you should probably listen to the other comments but for me it turned out to be stress. I have been using a Garmin tracker extensively and when I go on a longer vacation and stop thinking about work my stress drops tremendously and correspondingly my deep sleep goes up. The Garmin is not super accurate, but I find it does a good job pointing out trends. Something to consider and it's a lot harder fix than just reducing caffeine consumption or stopping alcohol consumption.

I'm convinced that stress is the #1 killer of deep sleep.

Everyone: "you should be less stressed for better health"

Also everyone: "you should work more and take on more responsibilities at work"

At 41, all I want to do is take care of myself and my family well. Everything else in my life can fight over the remaining bits of time.

> Also everyone: "you should work more and take on more responsibilities at work"

Eh this doesn't sound like something everyone says.

Stress is hard measure so I don't have a way to say I am more or less stressed than normal.

As another poster asked -- I have had tons of trauma but also put work in to overcome it. I have a great, healthy life.

I always work hard to quiet my mind but sometimes its hard to. I am an entrepreneur but rarely find myself ruminating late at night about it (these days). When I am stressed I find it harder to fall asleep for sure, but that isn't as often as it was when I was younger

As another poster linked, you may be a slow caffeine metabolizer. I am and avoiding caffeine entirely makes a big difference.

Another thing that might be making a difference is what you do in the hour to two hours before sleep. If I do anything exciting, like sports, suspenseful media & games, or anything analytical, then that will delay how quickly my body relaxes into later in the night, which messes up the beginning of the night when deep sleep mostly occurs.

Lastly, if you're measuring your deep sleep based off of a device that isn't on your head, then take that data with a huge grain of salt. I compared sleep data from an Oura ring with the Dreem 2 headband and the ring was consistently so wrong as to be useless for driving better sleep behavior.

My ring - thus far - has been extremely correct about my sleep, as far as my wife and I can tell.

However, its activity recording is extremely inaccurate. I get moderate/low activity scores every day despite engaging in intensive weightlifting sessions, riding bicycles, and going to jujutsu class. I lift till I cannot lift; I roll until I gas out... yet my ring tells me, day after day, I need to be more active.

This is a great recommendation -- I dont really need caffeine but its a ritual I adore. I can definitely give it up so I think its where I can start. Thank you!

See my comment above about using chocolate as a bridge to deal with caffeine withdrawal. For me the brain fog and headaches always made it hard to transition to getting off caffeine, but chocolate is a good methadone for a week.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38103097

Really disappointed to learn they took the Dreem 2 off the market, it looked very interesting!

Do you have any complaints about your sleeping other than being unhappy about this metric some app is reporting?

Not really. I feel tired during the day sometimes but way less than when I used to work in an office every day. Usually a quick walk shakes it off if I have no cardio planned.

I think I’m mostly trying to understand what I can and cannot control in my life as I age

Nothing has helped my sleep more than using 3M medical tape to tape my mouth shut during sleep. So I'm forced to breath through my noise when I sleep. (Or I wake up and remove the tape if I'm stuffed up.)

I had sleep issues all my life. My dentist said it looked like I had sleep issues (one side of my teether pushed on more than the others) and a surgeon recommended increasing the size of my nasal cavity. But I didn't want surgery. When the book "Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art" by James Nestor I saw several unrelated people report success with this. It's completely changed my life and I wish I had started this long ago.

(Obviously not medical advice, I'm not a doctor at all, do your own research etc.)

You’ve been very thorough with physical/biological variables which would suggest maybe psychological factors could be impacting you.

Do you have a high amount of ambient stress in your life? Existential fears? Past traumas? Unfulfilled responsibilities? Debt?

I don't see any mention of exercise in your post.

>However, we do know that moderate aerobic exercise increases the amount of slow wave sleep you get. Slow wave sleep refers to deep sleep, where the brain and body have a chance to rejuvenate.

Updated my post, I get 60-90 minutes of cardio a day and 30-60 of walking (zone 2)

Oh ok, maybe you are exhausted haha.

Having gone down this route recently, I can +1 the cooling pad. I used Ooler, there are many options now.

However also worth considering a better mattress, memory foam is really hot. I just upgraded to an innerspring base / latex & microcoil top, and my previous issues with overheating are gone. YMMV, there are arguments for cooling even if your passive situation isn’t too hot.

I avoid all "cooling foam" or "gel foam" as it has a relatively fixed capacity to absorb heat. In other words, it seems cold in the store and also for the first few hours of the night. But after it does its phase-change magic, it gets dramatically hotter and can wake you up around the time cortisol starts increasing like 3-4AM.

Can confirm... I have a foam mattress that claims to have the fancy cooling stuff built in. It's actually all-around fine in the summer when the temps are 75F inside and I can sleep with few/no blankets, but I live in the Midwest and the house thermostat is set to heat up to 65F for 2/3 of the year. For the first 15 minutes, it's like crawling into a very soft refrigerator. And a few hours later, I'll wake up dehydrated and soaked in sweat.

I've managed to mostly tame it by putting a quilt or two under the bottom sheet.

Have you ever tried a different sleep schedule? Or have you ever noticed a difference in a different timezone?

For me I get deep sleep best between around 8-10Pm and about 9Am-1pm. My sleep at night is fairly restless even if I try and do all the proper steps, but I can get great sleep pretty much no matter what during those hours.

Some ideas for things to try

1. Eat at the same time every day. When you eat impacts your circadian rhythm.

2. Sleep and wake up at the same time every day.

3. Exercise, fatigue from exercise is known to improve sleep.

4. Expose yourself to sunlight first thing in the morning.

5. Lose weight.

For a lot of people, zero caffeine is the only way to get proper sleep.

Maybe you should just not worry about it so much.