Sleep

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Norm Smith Medallist
Sep 9, 2014
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Are you a good sleeper? Bad sleeper? Share your experiences.

Reason why I make this thread is that for the better part of 3 months I've been a horrible sleeper. Some nights I sit up til 4am-5am and go to work off 2 hours of sleep. Recently I house sat for about 3 weeks, and for some reason started sleeping like a baby. Lights out by 10pm every night and sleeping all the way through.

I moved back home with the parents and the sleepless nights have started back again. I must associate my bed and bedroom as a sleepless place and work myself up over it. I have a great home, amazingly comfy bed but for some reason I stress out about sleep here. I know I'm not completely broken because I house sat for a month on my own and slept amazingly. I'm wondering what I can do to get these thoughts out of my head because some nights it literally breaks me and I'm an anxious mess.

I've been using Melatonin lately which has worked wonders.
 
I think I could sleep rather easily every night if I wanted to but I choose not to if that makes sense.

A lot of the time I will end up getting enthralled in a TV show, book or my phone and end up with only 3-4 hours sleep before a busy work day. There was a stage where it got really bad after finishing high school, I'd literally spend half the day asleep and be up all night.

Have gotten better recently but still don't have a proper pattern. I'm honestly looking forward to when I start full time work so I can get back into a proper pattern like I used to have when I was younger.
 
Anyone else twitch in their sleep? Not like as you’re falling to sleep, but constantly twitch your legs for extended periods throughout the night?
 

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I'm an average sleeper I reckon. Never used to sleep through the night but have done a fair bit lately. I take a while to actually fall asleep though
 
I'm a bad sleeper, but valerian works for me.

Tend to get into a bit of a vicious cycle with caffeine.

Valerian Forte? I've tried it and it doesn't work for me.

Melatonin is the only thing that somewhat works - but spins me out, I have crazy dreams and wake up 3-4 times a night.

I used to sleep right through. I miss those days :'(
 
bad sleeper. can take a very long time to fall asleep in general, then probably about once every two months i have a run of 3 or 4 nights where i will only get about 2 hours sleep. can be pretty hard to function when that happens.
got put on anti depressants about 4 months ago which help knock me out & i am getting ton more sleep now which is good, unsure how things will go when i'm off the meds which will be soon.
i have also been wearing a smart watch with sleep tracker in it, it says i'm getting enough hours sleep time now but nowhere near enough "deep sleep" which probably explains why i feel fatigued still. not sure what to do about it tbh
 
I'm a great sleeper. There are nights I can be in bed by 11pm without being flat-out tired and I can fall asleep within 15 minutes. I sleep right through the night and go through the usual phases of non-REM and REM sleep without interruptions and wakefulness. For me, having a routine has been key to getting consistently good sleep.

Trouble sleeping could be attributed to things you're doing before bed - like using your phone, watching TV or being near a very bright incandescent light, which suppresses the natural production of melatonin in your body.

I'd recommend reading Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. The book is written by a neuroscientist who has looked specifically into the topic of sleep. While it doesn't go deeply into providing solutions to get you to sleep per se, it does provide a lot of insight as to the benefits of sleep and the harms associated with the lack of it.
 
I stay up because it gives me more free time after work. Otherwise life would be, breakfast, work, get home, stress over work, dinner, read, bed..

If you stay up until 2am, you can read more, play a video game for a while, etc.

Why is the 40 hour week 5 days a week still a thing again?

Ever stayed up all night just to get the feeling of an extra day off?
 
Have never been a great sleeper and have survived off 4-5 hours tops most nights for the last 25-30 years. I have found that in the last few years as I’ve gotten older that I am able to drift off for an hour or two on a weekend during the day which is something new
 
Valerian Forte? I've tried it and it doesn't work for me.

Melatonin is the only thing that somewhat works - but spins me out, I have crazy dreams and wake up 3-4 times a night.

I used to sleep right through. I miss those days :'(
I used to have issues with getting to sleep and waking multiple times a night until I started taking Melatonin. Now I drop off quicker and often don't wake (or only once or twice) during the night. I've two boys who also had trouble getting to sleep, who similarly now fall asleep and sleep through much better. I'd agree on the dreams though, you dream more and more vividly when taking it.
 

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Up and down with sleeping for me. When I can't sleep I do basics maths in my head. Timestables etc. Works most times.
Have had some improvement with this sort of thing. Counting innocuous things/places visited - airports, islands, cars owned, places lived, pets. Nothing that draws on more intense memories.
 
Always been ridiculously light. Anything will wake me. Consequentlty lately I've been in bed by 8. Everything is catching up with me. Work/sleep/weekend sleep till 11.

I put it down to genetics (just not an early riser/suited to Melbs/get up with the sun), stress just leaves you rooted at the end of day and not happy with current living arrangements means you can't relax for a good shut eye/always some weird issue/noise/problem to rouse you.
 
Ordinary sleeper in many ways because I work rotating shifts. Can't get a consistent pattern of sleep times and hours from week to week. Training for marathons in many ways also contributes to this given I'll often struggle to get a few hours before having to wake up to train again. That said I'm usually organised enough to get reasonably good hours in bed before having to wake up on race day (if I'm asleep at 10PM for a 3:30 wake up on race morning I'm going well, although I'll generally need a nanny nap mid afternoon post race. That said it is better than what it was when at Uni when I often didn't trust myself to wake up when the alarm went off in order to get to classes on time, hence I often stayed awake or slept through the dead of Sunday Night and woke up reasonably early in the morning.
 
Some days it's just an absolute impossibility to get to bed after 16 hours of waking. 16/8 is a complete myth, everybody should know that by now but the world revolves around 9-5 so we have to make it work.

Some days after being awake 21 hours I'm not tired and some days after 13 hours my eyelids are struggling to hold against gravity.

It all depends on how much sleep I've had in the days before and how stimulated I might be from what I'm doing.

I have developed my own sort of rules regarding REM time. 2-4 hours skipping the later parts of REM sleep are ok but never 2 nights in a row. Try to get to bed early the next night and get a full sleep in. Skipping the later part of deep REM sleep 2 nights in a row *s me right up and I'm guessing it would for many people too.

Even a 1 hour microsleep is ok if it's only one night. Just hit the caffeine and go. Just don't try to think you can do zero sleep. That's dangerous. You'll be that idiot sleeping on the train missing his stop and getting kicked off at the end of the line.
 
good sleep is so underestimated
mental & physical health talkin
a few years ago this s**t head i knew sold me some stilnox
since i was a child i have had bad sleep....this pill and the sleep it gave me that night fukkkkk
future of human ambition will focus around gut health and sleep imo
 

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