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Comment by acron0 | Hacker News Reader

My thought exactly. For people who struggle with this, and conventional wisdom doesn't seem to stick, what are we supposed to do?

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Lifelong severe insomniac (sleep onset mostly) and cured myself pretty much entirely over the last year or so. My suggestions in order of what I perceived to be their cost vs effectiveness ratio:

1. The Sleep With Me podcast, especially if you struggle with racing thoughts (if you have a partner who can't stand hearing this, the Ozlo Sleepbuds are a good if imperfect solution)

2. Stellar Sleep, an app that delivers CBT-I, evidence-backed cognitive therapy for insomnia; this reset my sleep clock in about two months, which is now maintained by the other items on this list

3. Eight Sleep mattress pad to keep temperature low during sleep, especially on warmer nights

4. Manta Sleep Mask to get full light blackout

Also I've definitely just doxxed myself. But worth it to help some fellow insomniacs!

Thank you!

Don't watch any kind of screen in the evening. Read a book instead. You'll fall asleep sooner.

Isn't that "conventional wisdom"?

I do watch screens in the morning, but reading in bed (though still a screen, Kindle) still knocks me off in max 15 minutes. I would love to know why... I only know it works.

Could be related to the light spectrum. Kindles aren't really "screen" like the others; they do have background light but you can turn it off and use it with its paper-like screen (which is what I do and really like it). But traditional screens have blue light as part of the normal light they emit, which is known to disrupt sleeping patterns. When I am using my cell phone or computer right before sleeping, I usually turn on colour filtering to make my whole cell phone be tinted red. This helps wonders. I found this page that explains how this can be done: [0].

[0]: https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/keep-your-night-vision-sh...

With this [0] I find i read 2 pages and I fall asleep consistently and really with a will to sleep. My mind wanders into far away lands and empires and says, "I take it from here".

[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691134952

The only thing that worked for me was having a kid. He wakes up early every day, so I have no choice. Taking care of him is so taxing, being sleep deprived isn't on the table.

What's more, you have little difficulty falling asleep any time, any place!

Exercise, often, not too hard, over short time you'll get your personal level better than any coach could do. It will also prolong your life easily by 10 years and add tons of quality into it, will make you happier and more connected to your own body. All people I know also corrected their eating habits aggressively, its all connected.

If you dont have enough time get to the point when you can do HIIT safely, its literally 15-20 min max. If you have time, add long walks on rest days for example, or whatever is available to you nearby (ie swimming/surf if usable water body nearby).

Conventional wisdom does work for me but it is immensely difficult. I would say take the advice seriously but don't take the timeframe or problem difficulty assesment coming from other people.

It is only natural that it takes months to years to fix a problem if you had the problem for years.

Did you cut out all caffeine?

> conventional wisdom doesn't seem to stick

I wouldn’t say cutting out all caffeine is conventional wisdom. Every sleep specialist (sample size of 3) I have spoken to has basically said, while they don't recommend caffeine, if you only drink it early in the day it’s probably fine.

I’m asking a question to determine his view of “conventional wisdom,” which could be all kinds of things. Why would you assume that his view of “conventional wisdom” necessarily includes cutting all caffeine?

I think the question is fair. I don't tend to drink caffeine after about 5pm so had kinda written this off as a potential.

My follow-up: I'm grateful for the advice from commenters. I perhaps should have specified that my issue isn't insomnia, it's sleep procrastination, which gets a lot less sympathy.

Let's create a Discord/Signal/WhatsApp/mailing list group to help each other figure it out... it's time to end our sleep irregularity once and for all!

Would you actually be up for trying a one-week version of this? I'm building something rn that would let us run this in iMessage super easily!

Hard to answer precisely without knowing what conventional wisdom didn't stick.

The common levers I know and that worked at least a bit for me:

- start by having a fixed waking time, and get sunlight or bright light quickly after waking up. Normally relatively fixed sleep time is supposed to follow. For me waking up is the easy part, transforming that into getting up and going outside is harder. Another option here is a strong (like, really strong) lamp on a timer, or letting the morning light in your bedroom (this one is usually not recommended I think, most people seem to be blackout curtains style, but for me it gave me a nice 6am waking time with good sleep last summer).

- melatonin. Two main ways: using it as a kind of hypnotic, so ~30 minutes before sleep, experimenting with 0.3mg to ~2mg doses ; then using it as a circadian regulator, this is a good resource https://lorienpsych.com/2020/12/20/melatonin/, search for "TO TREAT" in the page.

- app timers, for me it was mostly no twitter and no youtube, or a very low time for each.

- light, ie reduc light before sleeping. Not just blue light and not just screens, if I'm on my phone in bed I'll reduce the luminosity a lot, same with computer, same with e-reader. I also try to avoid using too much the lights in my room. More light tend to make me feel more "wired" and less ready to sleep.

- "meditation" to cut rumination, by which I mean "lay down in my bed, gently try to find sensations in the body and to stay focused on them, by gently I mean it's a very low stakes game where the goal is to find sensations in the body and give them attention, but losing focus for a while is not a big deal".

- shower in the evening, as I don't like feeling dirty when I am in my bed, but also not just before bed as sometimes I don't really want to go take a shower and this delays my bedtime

- clean bedsheets, bedroom, stuff in/on your bed

- AC in the summer, I wouldn't be able to sleep properly without it

- sleeping mask. It helps going to sleep, but it falls of my head every night so it doesn't prevent waking up with light too.

- making getting good sleep the priority of the evening. This is easy/possible for me due to my circumstances (ie low responsibilities in the evening). The way I do it is that unless something is actually important, what I'm trying to accomplish in the evening is prepare myself for sleep and get good sleep. This can look like not starting a movie at 11pm, not booting up games, not eating a super heavy meal, not drinking too much water after 6pm to avoid waking up to pee, if I have things I want to do try to do them early so they're done earlier, move some stuff I want to do every day like spaced repetition in the morning.

"If I'm on my phone in bed" is throwing out a major, proven impactful piece of conventional wisdom.

Yeah, in an ideal world where I'm the ideal me I wouldn't use my phone in my bed, but I haven't found a way to stop doing that which I can stick with, so I try to limit the damage.

Part of what I wanted to say is, there is conventional wisdom, then there is how you actually put that wisdom in practice in a way you stick with. I've struggled a lot with the implementation, but sometimes by throwing lots of stuff at the wall I find something that brings me halfway there. It's not the "golden way" but it leaves me in a better place than before, with a bit better sleep, a bit more self knowledge, and a small victory.

That totally makes sense. Also, thanks for sharing your list! I'll see if I can try anything on it. :)

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