Brain "wakes up" more than 100 times each night – that's normal | Hacker News Reader

Brain "wakes up" more than 100 times each night – that's normal

bigthink.com

13 pointsBrajeshwar12 comments

Does anyone have an explanation for brain that doesn’t understand it’s time to sleep? I often lose around 2 hours of my nights because at 11pm I get sleepy but it doesn’t even occur to me that I need to sleep. The result is that I go to bed when I’m completely exhausted at +1am.

Try this as I am the same YMMV: get an eye mask and do 4-10 mins of deep “belly” breathing (5s inhale through the nose, 10s exhale through the mouth, though I prefer exhale through the nose.

Probably doing something that is too stimulating. Watching TV, reading, playing games, etc.

Brain did not evolve in an environment with lightbulbs to extend daylight hours.

The human brain also didn't evolve in an environment with computers to have really cool ideas around, which you must try to implement the moment the idea occurs to you... at 2AM.

> I go to bed when I’m completely exhausted at +1am

is that bad? the time of sleep I 'need' seems to correlate with the amount of work I did that day

when i'm truly relaxing/vacationing i can even hit 5 hrs of sleep and wake up without an alarm, but after a particularly difficult work day, i may even need 8 hours to feel like i've slept that night

Bedtime procrastination has been a fan of me for as long as I can remember

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

I wish any of the suggestions in the sibling comments worked haha. I could quite happily lie in pitch darkness with my eyes closed and still not fall asleep till 2am.

Unfortunately for anyone looking for solutions I never did find one that synced me to the rest of the world, instead I went freelance so I can just sleep from 2am until I wake up naturally.

I'm also diagnosed ADHD but unsure if that's directly related, it probably factors in somewhere I imagine - It's usually the guy under the mask when I dig deep enough into my quirks

My problem is that my electric toothbrush makes me less sleepy.

So I have to brush my teeth 1+ hours before actually going to bed.

I feel dumb that it's never occurred to me... But I should really try this. I can spend the whole evening feeling sleepy and avoiding a nap because I don't want to mess up my sleep, only to get ready for bed and suddenly be wide awake and ready to go. Very annoying.

Do you expect your brain to do everything for you? If you're tired, go to sleep.

In mice. Maybe we could add that to the title of postings of such articles.

I usually enjoy these. My bed is so comfy, and I like spending more time conscious to enjoy the comfort. Sometimes I wish I could have slept longer before needing to (bathroom/food/etc). Sometimes I do those things and then immediately go back to sleep.

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