Insomnia

[Doofy]

Leading a stress-free (or close to it) life helps immensely with a good night's sleep.

 

[Jstpssng]

If I can't sleep I start listening to my dog, on his bed on the floor. He never has a problem sleeping so I just try to emulate him and next thing I know it's time to get up.

 

[Herness]

My sleep is really bad for the last couple of days and there is nothing i can do to make it better. So annoying.

 

[check]

Us a CPAP every night without fail. 3 AM is pee time, And if I have trouble falling to sleep after, I go on TractorByNet! Puts me right to sleep every time.

Surprised that no one has mentioned this yet, as the GM thread is great for taking your mind off of your projects and what not. And it does not stimulate my thoughts at all. I start reading it and then pretty soon…

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

Leading a stress-free (or close to it) life helps immensely with a good night's sleep.

Yes! And no drama. Older we get no one needs drama. Do the best you can, try doing the right things, eliminate stress and drama.
We're asleep when head hits the pillow.

 

[Doofy]

My sympathies to all the insomniacs out there. I'm asleep in less than 30 seconds after my head hits the pillow. Low stress, proper amounts of exercise and a good diet make all the difference for me.

 

[ROUSTABOUT]

Reading some of these posts, makes me grateful. I sleep extremely well. Most of my adult life I had a job where I worked 6-7 days a week. I would go to bed around 11 or midnight, get up at 6. I was asleep the whole 6 hours. I seldom turned over in the night. Now since I retired. I rarely get to bed before midnight, sometimes later. I sometimes drink coffee at midnight, I drink a lot of coffee. I go to bed when I get sleepy & usually, I am asleep in 5-10 minutes. I sleep 8 or more hours now and rarely turnover. Even sleeping that much, now if I sit down after lunch and watch TV, I will fall asleep & drop my coffee cup.

I have always been blessed with good sleep too. Nowadays I have to get up for a bathroom trip a few times each night.

 

[Cougsfan]

I have seen several studies saying melatonin has no effect, and is a pure placebo. If that is true, it is a very effective placebo for me. I don't use it often, but it seems to help.
I also listened to a podcast by a sleep 'expert' who said one of the major reasons many people have trouble sleeping is that they worry too much about not being able to sleep. (??) I dunno, maybe there is something to that. She also said another major reason for insomnia is that people take the events in their lives much too seriously and lay in bed and over-contemplate that. They need to lighten up and just let the world flow without continual judgement and the misconception they can control that flow more than they really can. I can definitely buy into that one.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

At 70 I used to get up to pee a few times but now don't drink anything a few hours before bed. About an hour before bed I start winding down, lights low, bedroom very dark. One TV in the house (can't imagine a bedroom TV), never ever go to bed angry. Never drink alcohol. I dream every night, people I know who smoke pot say that stops you from dreaming!

 

[Yander]

Diggin, You didn't ask, but I'll tell you what I've learned.
1. No alcohol. Not just sometimes, None - no more.
2. Drink 64 oz. water a day. Finish your drinking by 6 PM. Soda and coffee don't count.
3. No sweet food, no hard to digest (nuts, cheese, etc) after 6 PM
4. Spend time 9 -10 winding down. No exercise, no arguments, nothing exciting.
5. Go to bed at 10 PM. Don't read, no TV, just bed
6. Room to be cold. Open the windows and turn off the heat in the bedroom. 20 Degrees outside ? - open the windows. Wear warm PJ's, long sleeves, long legs. No more skivvies.
7. Heavy blankets. Use a skull cap if your head is cold
8. Think of the word "nothing" in all it's permutations.

Try it for 2 weeks and report back.

Pretty much everything he mentions here I do because I've had insomnia badly and I've done a lot of reading and watching things.

Go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every night it's important.

Without going into all the details of why the above works I 100% agree with him.

I have also found for me eating a couple of cups of popcorn and a ounce of turkey pepperoni before I go to bed helps me get into deep sleep.

But don't eat any kind of red meat anything hard to digest before bed.

Don't eat a lot of high carb foods before bed because they all convert to sugar which can cause your sugar to spike and wake you up. Your last meal of the day is the most important one for sleep. No potato chips pretzels sweets. Something with a low glycemic load like whole wheat, nuts, fish, turkey, chicken are good last meal food.

Also, you have to experiment with what works for you because everyone is different get yourself a Fitbit inspire some cheap Fitbit that does sleep monitoring. This is how you can tell what works and that was a game changer for me.

If you're heavy or if you suspect sleep apnea go see a sleep doctor and get a sleep study done

I stopped drinking completely if you can't give up drinking don't drink after 6:00 pm.

I also gave up caffeine I drink very little caffeinated anything on rare occasions.

If you're in a high stress job that's my biggest cause for sleepless nights.

A cold bedroom wearing long sleeves and socks is important. You want to keep your torso cool but your arms legs and feet warm. Lots of studies have been done about this.

I also have 100 mg of trazodone that I take every night. Eventually I want to get off of it because I don't think it's good for you but sleep is pretty important.

 

[Oaktree]

A cold bedroom wearing long sleeves and socks is important. You want to keep your torso cool but your arms legs and feet warm. Lots of studies have been done about this.

Agree on the cool bedroom, but I don't think I could sleep in long sleeves and/or socks. For one thing, I'd roast. For another I've slept in my birthday suit for the last 50+ years that wearing any sort of clothing to bed is just going to bunch up and be uncomfortable. Well, maybe if you mean below-freezing bedroom temperatures, but no way no how is Mrs. Oak going to go along with that!!

 

[tradosaurus]

If you can't sleep after drinking alcohol, you aren't drinking enough.

 

[masscity]

It's OK with me too. I cannot understand those who want to change their natural body rhythm/clock/DNA/whatever. Enjoy the short time we have.

Many thanks for posting the article - pretty much a re-run of what my wife read quite a while ago - guessing pre 2003 when we moved to Portugal. Unlikely to have come across an old magazine in English after that. Again, why do people stuff their bodies with all these drugs that "Big Pharma" pays their doctors to prescribe? Live with what we are given. I do a lot of planning when awake. Never get up unless I must and have no problem with lying awake and snug for an hour or more. It is surprising how much a planned work day or project can be improved when there is nothing else to think about. Everybody also sleeps more than they claim. Sleep tests prove this. I remember a thread on here with somebody even claiming the sleep tests must be wrong because he never slept at all when he was in hospital for such a test, despite the test showing otherwise.

It depends entirely on what I have for dinner. We have a proper cooked meal every night. A main course, followed by cheese, fruit (fresh or dry) and nuts (still eating our own almonds brought from Portugal). Tonight we had an Italian style mince and pasta, then grapes. Did not bother with either cheese or nuts although they were on the table. I think my wife might have had some cheese. We buy our meat locally, an Orkney Aberdeen Angus breeder also runs the butcher's shop in the village only 3 miles away and I was in there this morning, picking up mince, beef sausage meat and a leg of lamb. Kept out part of the mince, froze the rest. We opened and finished a bottle of cheapish Spanish red - a Tempranillo in Spain and known as Tinta Roriz in Portugal.

I have farmed in wine growing areas for more than 30 years of my life and grown grapes on a small scale, so am accustomed to drinking wine, and most days between one and two glasses with lunch. Today I had milk with lunch. My intake is less than many other old peasants of my acquaintance. In Portugal I soon learned that anybody we used as contractors, or tradesmen, consumed about a bottle a head with lunch. An aquardente (Brandy) with morning coffee was normal for them too, but not me. Once accustomed to drinking wine with meals, probably from childhood, it seems not to do any harm, and I am sure is much better, being a natural product, than all the pills other posters say they take. I knew people in Portugal considerably older than me and still working their land.

On other nights we will have one and a half bottles or even more, and on others less than a bottle, but average a bit more than a bottle long term. At maybe 3 times the strength of beer, 375mls of wine is not a lot of alcohol - and free from chemicals. When in Portugal we did also have some Ruby Port after the main course. It was cheap there, but far too expensive in the UK.

I am likely to have a Crabbie's Green Ginger wine before bed tonight. Last night I had a Glenmorangie, my second favourite malt. Dalmore is Nº1 in case anybody wonders. I have had the bottle since early December and it is more than half full.

I liked Sherry when I was in the Air Force stationed near Sevilla, Spain in 1967-68. Other wines were good too, also some beer.

I don't know what the costs are now, but at that time it was really cheap. 30 shorties beer was a dollar and their shorties were much
bigger that ours.

 

[Yander]

There is a lot of information out there that I did not get from my doctor and they are very helpful

I have had three different sleep doctors in the past 15 years. They didn't tell me a lot of the things that I use now I had to learn them on my own from reading and watching YouTube.

The thing I am not doing that I know would help me and I need to start is exercising in the mornings.

Getting out of the house in the sunlight in the morning is supposedly very helpful too.

For us what works is 65° in the winter 68° in the summer for the bedroom. We both sleep in very thin long sleeve shirts and very thin athletic pants. Nothing heavy cuz it's too hot. In fact, unless our grandkids are there, we keep our house at 65 all the time in the winter.

 

[kenmbz]

I do, it seems to help, but not a lot.

 

[WinterDeere]

Diggin, You didn't ask, but I'll tell you what I've learned.
1. No alcohol. Not just sometimes, None - no more.
2. Drink 64 oz. water a day. Finish your drinking by 6 PM. Soda and coffee don't count.
3. No sweet food, no hard to digest (nuts, cheese, etc) after 6 PM
4. Spend time 9 -10 winding down. No exercise, no arguments, nothing exciting.
5. Go to bed at 10 PM. Don't read, no TV, just bed
6. Room to be cold. Open the windows and turn off the heat in the bedroom. 20 Degrees outside ? - open the windows. Wear warm PJ's, long sleeves, long legs. No more skivvies.
7. Heavy blankets. Use a skull cap if your head is cold
8. Think of the word "nothing" in all it's permutations.

Try it for 2 weeks and report back.

Damn... I'd rather just not sleep!

I rarely sleep through the night, but it's been that way since I was in my 20's, and it's at least partially self-inflicted.

 

[masscity]

I think I already posted about this. I don't know why, but I started having chronic insomnia when I moved back to the Detroit area and went back into construction. It lasted from November 1990 until September 2005 when I went to the U of M Hospital.

They diagnosed me with chronic pancreatitis and gave me Elavil, I've been sleeping like a baby since. I found out years later I had Colisistitis and had my Gall Bladder removed.

My brother went to the VA and he asked them for a prescription for Elavil, the Doctor told him that she was glad he asked for that, instead of sleeping pills etc.

 

[kenmbz]

I have Pancreatic insufficiency and have to be careful with serotonin.
I need to take enzymes in order to eat and digest food.
I get nauseous all the time and need to take anti-nausea pills, Which mess around (block) with serotonin to stop the episodes.
Since this started I usually get 6 hours or less sleep vs the 7-8 I got before my pancreas stopped working correctly.
It's been a huge adjustment, but not much choice.

 

[masscity]

I have Pancreatic insufficiency and have to be careful with serotonin.
I need to take enzymes in order to eat and digest food.
I get nauseous all the time and need to take anti-nausea pills, Which mess around (block) with serotonin to stop the episodes.
Since this started I usually get 6 hours or less sleep vs the 7-8 I got before my pancreas stopped working correctly.
It's been a huge adjustment, but not much choice.

I've been taking enzymes since September 2005 (Zenpep). I have the same problem with my pancreas.

Elavil is not a sleeping pill. Read about it, they use it for many things, including sleep problems.

 

[kenmbz]

I've been taking enzymes since September 2005 (Zenpep). I have the same problem with my pancreas.

Elavil is not a sleeping pill. Read about it, they use it for many things, including sleep problems.

How do you balance food against enzymes?
I find it difficult and end up just not eating when I have to travel somewhere.
I took zenpep and now am using creon, which seems to work better for me. I did hear that for some people one or the other works better and they have no idea why.

I am kinda scared of taking any more pills, as it seems my pancreas fail was due to a medicine I was taking to lower my cholesterol. An unlisted side affect which has led to permanent damage.