How much do you sleep? Do you feel like you get enough sleep to be productive? Anyone have sleep issues?
My only issue is I feel like I can't get enough.
My only issue is I feel like I can't get enough.
Thread about sleeping...
- Thread starter chickenhunter
- Start date
15-20 years ago I would get at least 8 hours a night of deep sleep, and on the weekends I like to try for 10. These days I am lucky if I get a good 6 straight. What I do get is light to say the least. Its quite maddening. I take Melatonin and it works ok. I refuse to take a prescription though so maybe its on me. Every now and then my body will let me get 8 hours just to mess with me I believe. My grandmother used to tell me the older I got the less sleep I would require. Maybe she knew a lot more than I did after all.....
5 star thread
i have had trouble falling asleep ever since i was in college...possibly due to binge drinking thurs-mon, getting introduced to coffee, working out at 7pm, etc.
when i started f3 three years ago i thought it would help...well, that made it worse, actually...i would be awake at 1am knowing i had to get up at 5am.
the last two years i have done some things...first, no more coffee after 10am...second, started meditating regularly; mindfulness breathing, relaxing, being in a moment rather than thinking about the next project, a schedule, etc...third, started cbd before bedtime...it relaxes me, i go to sleep, and i feel completely rested at 6am...i don’t know what i owe it mostly to, but this version of me doesn’t want to try and figure it out...i also figured out how to take power naps for 10 minutes that refresh me when needed.
i have had trouble falling asleep ever since i was in college...possibly due to binge drinking thurs-mon, getting introduced to coffee, working out at 7pm, etc.
when i started f3 three years ago i thought it would help...well, that made it worse, actually...i would be awake at 1am knowing i had to get up at 5am.
the last two years i have done some things...first, no more coffee after 10am...second, started meditating regularly; mindfulness breathing, relaxing, being in a moment rather than thinking about the next project, a schedule, etc...third, started cbd before bedtime...it relaxes me, i go to sleep, and i feel completely rested at 6am...i don’t know what i owe it mostly to, but this version of me doesn’t want to try and figure it out...i also figured out how to take power naps for 10 minutes that refresh me when needed.
My first thought when I wake up every day is, "How long until I can go back to sleep?"
Some people would call that depression. They would be wrong.
My superpower is being able to fall asleep anywhere at any time in most any position. I do suffer restless leg syndrome at times though which can make for a miserable night of no sleep.
Oh man I get this sometimes and it drives me CRAZY. I usually get up and walk around the house awhile. Maybe sit in the living room and watch a few minutes of TV. Normally that works for me. When it doesnt, well it makes for a very long night....
Our run club had a sleep therapist come in and talk to us recently about things that people can try, to get better, longer sleep:
I know some of these are out there, and hard to achieve consistently. But just a list to consider. Some of these are pretty doable and make a lot of sense.
- Aim for 8 hours minimum - whihc means obviously you need to be in bed early enough to get 8 hours
- Try to have one hour minimum of "no screen time" (especially phone) before you go to bed (instead read a book)
- No alchohol, no food, 1-2 hours before bed
- Get rid of all light and noise in your bedroom
- Also consider ear plugs, background soft noise, eye mask
- No caffiene after 3 PM
- Even consider sleeping in different bed than your spouse
I know some of these are out there, and hard to achieve consistently. But just a list to consider. Some of these are pretty doable and make a lot of sense.
I decided to try something to help me get more restful sleep. Let me do a back story first.
All of my life, I have always like pressure on my body. I can vividly recall going to my Bigma's (my dad's mom) house during the winter. She would put all of us cousins to bed and would place these thick, heavy quilts over us and place a few towards the end of the bed. We all had to go to the bathroom before we went to bed because we knew getting out and back in was a chore. It felt like a sarcophagus...we could barely move!! I loved the feeling of that pressure on my body...especially my feet. Not sure why my feet are like that. When I was young, I used to pull my shoestrings really tight on my feet because I liked the feeling of the pressure. I used to ALWAYS wear high top sneakers. Just above the ankle. I would pull the shoestrings so tight I'd have to wrap them once around my ankle to keep them from dragging the ground. Don't know why but the feeling of pressure on me is rather soothing.
As many of you know, I am a Special Education teacher. About 9 years ago, I was working in a self-contained, students with autism class. One student had a vest that had small weights sewn into it. It was rather heavy but he wanted/needed it every day. As soon as we got in the classroom, he would walk to his storage bin, grab his vest and put it on. I saw it helped keep him "calm" and got to thinking about how the pressure always made me feel calm.
So, I decided that 1). I am not Autistic. However, I am using my experience working with student with autism to try something.
I bought a weighted blanket from Amazon a few weeks ago. It weighs 20Lbs and it made with little sand bags about the size of a Tide Pod. I used for about 20 days and I can tell you, it has made a difference. It took me some time to get accustomed to it but I absolutely love it. It feels wonderful. I know that sounds odd but it really make a difference for me so far. I'm buying another blanket of same size to place across the foot of my bed so I can place my feet under it too. I never really thought it would make a difference but I decided to give it a try.
Not you cared to know all that but there it is.
All of my life, I have always like pressure on my body. I can vividly recall going to my Bigma's (my dad's mom) house during the winter. She would put all of us cousins to bed and would place these thick, heavy quilts over us and place a few towards the end of the bed. We all had to go to the bathroom before we went to bed because we knew getting out and back in was a chore. It felt like a sarcophagus...we could barely move!! I loved the feeling of that pressure on my body...especially my feet. Not sure why my feet are like that. When I was young, I used to pull my shoestrings really tight on my feet because I liked the feeling of the pressure. I used to ALWAYS wear high top sneakers. Just above the ankle. I would pull the shoestrings so tight I'd have to wrap them once around my ankle to keep them from dragging the ground. Don't know why but the feeling of pressure on me is rather soothing.
As many of you know, I am a Special Education teacher. About 9 years ago, I was working in a self-contained, students with autism class. One student had a vest that had small weights sewn into it. It was rather heavy but he wanted/needed it every day. As soon as we got in the classroom, he would walk to his storage bin, grab his vest and put it on. I saw it helped keep him "calm" and got to thinking about how the pressure always made me feel calm.
So, I decided that 1). I am not Autistic. However, I am using my experience working with student with autism to try something.
I bought a weighted blanket from Amazon a few weeks ago. It weighs 20Lbs and it made with little sand bags about the size of a Tide Pod. I used for about 20 days and I can tell you, it has made a difference. It took me some time to get accustomed to it but I absolutely love it. It feels wonderful. I know that sounds odd but it really make a difference for me so far. I'm buying another blanket of same size to place across the foot of my bed so I can place my feet under it too. I never really thought it would make a difference but I decided to give it a try.
Not you cared to know all that but there it is.
I'm hearing more and more about the weighted blankets, and how some people are swearing by them. Sounds interesting, but I wish there was a way I could try one out without shelling out $100+
How hot does it get under that blanket? Is it significantly hotter?
How hot does it get under that blanket? Is it significantly hotter?
Try laying under a hooker. Some of those are cheaper.
I can't stand for the sheets to be tucked in so I don't think I could handle a weighted blanket. Heck, I can't handle it when the dogs jump on the bed and weigh the sheet down. I need freedom of movement.
It gets a little warmer but not like a regular blanket. I'm going to order another to place at foot of my bed so I can stick my feet under it.
Sounds like a Thundershirt for humans.
Drinking really effs up your sleeping. I can attest to that. I get about six a night...mostly straight through.
I fall asleep within 30 seconds of my head hitting the pillow and I rarely ever wake up before the alarm goes off. Whenever I do, I fall back to sleep quicker than I woke.up. If it wasn't for the alarm, I'm sure I probably wouldn't wake up until noon. I straight up get put in a coma when I get in the bed.
Really interesting topic, I have several friends that have severe sleep issues both getting to sleep as well as staying asleep. One of my best friends takes a lot of meds (legal hah ha), melatonin being 1, been thru sleep studies, has some diagnosed issues and is about to be given some new version of the sea pap (sp) that may help. I have tried to share with him something very personal to me but he thinks I am crazy, maybe I am? LOL
When I was a kid, I struggled getting to sleep, even to the point that I convinced myself that I had forgotten how to go to sleep. Many nights as a child, up to maybe 11-12, I would lay in bed for hours no TV or radio on, quiet but I just could not drop off to sleep, I mean 4 and 5 hours a night just laying there, at times crying because it was 3am I couldn't go to sleep like everyone else?
I can not tell you exactly when, maybe as I said around 10-12 yrs old something happened, I am not sure what but it has stayed with me for the rest of my life, I am 61 now. One night I closed my eyes, tried as best I could to not think about anything, did ya know when you try to think about nothing at all you end up thinking about everything, I needed something to focus on. You can actually focus on nothing at all, I discovered that that night. AS I tried to quiet my mind and focus on nothing, all of the sudden, almost out of no where, I started to see these (best way I can describe it) specs of red colored light, like little colored grains of sand. There were MILLIONS of them so I tried to focus on them, as I did all the sudden most of them became red and they were not still, they began darting randomly everywhere but all the sudden they began to flow in a wide stream like pattern?
Picture a TV screen, a panorama of all the dots that make up the color on your screen showing nothing but these little red dots flowing together, not all in the same direction but all flowing together, think multiple streams of these little red dots? Then all the sudden, all these multiple streams of red dots converged so that they seemed all to flow to the same direction and the direction they flowed was in to some kind of tunnel (best i can describe this). The most amazing thing was there were dots (maybe more like short lines of pure color) that made up this tunnel that the streams of red were flowing in to but those dots that made up the tunnel were all the colors of the rain bow and were totally random, meaning no individual color was flowing together other than the red that was leading me in to that tunnel of color?
Yaeh, I know, you think I am freakin insane, maybe I am but I swear this is absolutely 100% real. So I am following this stream of red dots, flowing thru what seems to be this endless tunnel of dots that are colored every color in the rain bow, telling you I am in this tunnel, it is as if I am moving thru this tunnel at warp speed, I actually had the feeling that I was moving at the speed of light, it was amazing!
Then, all the sudden, as if I had arrived some where, I began to watch these rain bow of colors that had made up the tunnel begin to form shapes and the more I watched the more clear the shape would become, there were multiple shapes forming at the same time but if I focused on 1 of them I could see it more clearly than the rest, it was totally random things. Like I may see an elephant in 1 shape, a tree in another, a face in another, nothing associated with each other or associated in any way with anything I may have been thinking about before going to bed, total random stuff. While the more I did try to focus on the shapes, they got more and more clear but before they could clear enough for me to see them as a picture, I would fall asleep and the show was over or at least as far as I knew, maybe it continued in my sleep but I would never remember anything past falling asleep.
So the next night, I tried doing the same thing and it happened again, it honestly got to the point that I did not even have to close my eyes to see this amazing show of colored lights, all I needed was a dark room and I could do it eyes open. To this very day, any time I close my eyes, I see this same light show and it is as amazing today as it was 50yrs ago and very shortly after, I am sleeping like a rock.
There have been very few I have mentioned this to, honestly I really believed for most of my life everyone saw this same thing when they shut their eyes but the few I have shared this experience with tell me when they shut their eyes all they see is darkness while I see everything but darkness?
I would really like to know if there are others that experience this or some similar version of it, it is not imagination, it is absolutely real and I never want it to go away.
When I was a kid, I struggled getting to sleep, even to the point that I convinced myself that I had forgotten how to go to sleep. Many nights as a child, up to maybe 11-12, I would lay in bed for hours no TV or radio on, quiet but I just could not drop off to sleep, I mean 4 and 5 hours a night just laying there, at times crying because it was 3am I couldn't go to sleep like everyone else?
I can not tell you exactly when, maybe as I said around 10-12 yrs old something happened, I am not sure what but it has stayed with me for the rest of my life, I am 61 now. One night I closed my eyes, tried as best I could to not think about anything, did ya know when you try to think about nothing at all you end up thinking about everything, I needed something to focus on. You can actually focus on nothing at all, I discovered that that night. AS I tried to quiet my mind and focus on nothing, all of the sudden, almost out of no where, I started to see these (best way I can describe it) specs of red colored light, like little colored grains of sand. There were MILLIONS of them so I tried to focus on them, as I did all the sudden most of them became red and they were not still, they began darting randomly everywhere but all the sudden they began to flow in a wide stream like pattern?
Picture a TV screen, a panorama of all the dots that make up the color on your screen showing nothing but these little red dots flowing together, not all in the same direction but all flowing together, think multiple streams of these little red dots? Then all the sudden, all these multiple streams of red dots converged so that they seemed all to flow to the same direction and the direction they flowed was in to some kind of tunnel (best i can describe this). The most amazing thing was there were dots (maybe more like short lines of pure color) that made up this tunnel that the streams of red were flowing in to but those dots that made up the tunnel were all the colors of the rain bow and were totally random, meaning no individual color was flowing together other than the red that was leading me in to that tunnel of color?
Yaeh, I know, you think I am freakin insane, maybe I am but I swear this is absolutely 100% real. So I am following this stream of red dots, flowing thru what seems to be this endless tunnel of dots that are colored every color in the rain bow, telling you I am in this tunnel, it is as if I am moving thru this tunnel at warp speed, I actually had the feeling that I was moving at the speed of light, it was amazing!
Then, all the sudden, as if I had arrived some where, I began to watch these rain bow of colors that had made up the tunnel begin to form shapes and the more I watched the more clear the shape would become, there were multiple shapes forming at the same time but if I focused on 1 of them I could see it more clearly than the rest, it was totally random things. Like I may see an elephant in 1 shape, a tree in another, a face in another, nothing associated with each other or associated in any way with anything I may have been thinking about before going to bed, total random stuff. While the more I did try to focus on the shapes, they got more and more clear but before they could clear enough for me to see them as a picture, I would fall asleep and the show was over or at least as far as I knew, maybe it continued in my sleep but I would never remember anything past falling asleep.
So the next night, I tried doing the same thing and it happened again, it honestly got to the point that I did not even have to close my eyes to see this amazing show of colored lights, all I needed was a dark room and I could do it eyes open. To this very day, any time I close my eyes, I see this same light show and it is as amazing today as it was 50yrs ago and very shortly after, I am sleeping like a rock.
There have been very few I have mentioned this to, honestly I really believed for most of my life everyone saw this same thing when they shut their eyes but the few I have shared this experience with tell me when they shut their eyes all they see is darkness while I see everything but darkness?
I would really like to know if there are others that experience this or some similar version of it, it is not imagination, it is absolutely real and I never want it to go away.
Hey guys, I found a cure.
Since it becomes a joke for you, I decided to look in to it myself and found my answer...
https://scienceline.org/2014/12/why-do-we-see-colors-with-our-eyes-closed/
https://scienceline.org/2014/12/why-do-we-see-colors-with-our-eyes-closed/
You know I like it when you provide links.
LOL, but if you see what I do you know, it is pretty amazing, if it helps someone that struggles to sleep I would love to know that it did. Honestly, it is a bit like an acid trip but never a bad trip!
I've experienced this when I press against my eyes at night. It usually starts with what looks sort of like thorny branches pointing inward to a yellowish spot in the center of my vision. Then, it's a cross between a hyperspace effect and a kaleidoscope. If I can block outside noises, I focus enough to see real world objects in surreal clarity, but sort of floating in space.
It's pretty cool. Wish I was good at lucid dreaming though.
there’s is no doubt alcohol negativity affects sleep...it’s a myth that people need to drink to sleep...now, to get to sleep, sure, but as soon as the buzz is gone, your body will awake.
example, i have purposely stopped for many reasons, mainly to check my constitution and also because of being sick with flu or strep, etc.
each time i have stopped, my relaxation and sleep patterns are nuts the first two days...there’s sweat, there’s restlessness, and there’s minimal sleep...the positive is, because i didn’t drink, i didn’t need as much sleep...my doc says it’s because i’m healthy, but who knows.
so, i tested my constitution again...i had minor surgery monday morning...was given percocet and told take immediately following, was also told not to drink...decided to defy and just freakin wing it...went four days, no pain meds, no drinking either, and feel great...sleeping has been interrupted, but i’m rested...now the pain meds was more of accomplishment for me, mostly because i despise it, but also to see if my mind has moved past taking something for pain, and as of consequence, could help me sleep.
example, i have purposely stopped for many reasons, mainly to check my constitution and also because of being sick with flu or strep, etc.
each time i have stopped, my relaxation and sleep patterns are nuts the first two days...there’s sweat, there’s restlessness, and there’s minimal sleep...the positive is, because i didn’t drink, i didn’t need as much sleep...my doc says it’s because i’m healthy, but who knows.
so, i tested my constitution again...i had minor surgery monday morning...was given percocet and told take immediately following, was also told not to drink...decided to defy and just freakin wing it...went four days, no pain meds, no drinking either, and feel great...sleeping has been interrupted, but i’m rested...now the pain meds was more of accomplishment for me, mostly because i despise it, but also to see if my mind has moved past taking something for pain, and as of consequence, could help me sleep.
Got any more of those pills left?
One thing we found out raising kids and its the only unsolicited advice we offer to new parents as often as possible
Sleep is a learned behavior. How you fall asleep, when, how long etc
Is all learned. plus your sleep goes in cycles thru the night. Normally you wake numerous times. So what happens with a baby is that if you train it to fall asleep in yur arms in a rocking chair then thats what you’ll be doing several times a night to get him back to sleep. Same goes with riding in a car or letting them fall asleep with a bottle. We have friends who literally take their kid for a ride in the middle of the night cause thats how th kid learned to fall asleep. So pay close attention to how you train your baby to fall asleep. We dropped ours in the crib same time every night still awake and it sucked for about a week hearing them cry. But then they learned to fall asleep on their own and it was glorious cause when they woke in the middle of the night they didnt need us to help them get back to sleep. Both slept all through the nights from very early on.
Theres your free parenting advice. Carry on.
Sleep is a learned behavior. How you fall asleep, when, how long etc
Is all learned. plus your sleep goes in cycles thru the night. Normally you wake numerous times. So what happens with a baby is that if you train it to fall asleep in yur arms in a rocking chair then thats what you’ll be doing several times a night to get him back to sleep. Same goes with riding in a car or letting them fall asleep with a bottle. We have friends who literally take their kid for a ride in the middle of the night cause thats how th kid learned to fall asleep. So pay close attention to how you train your baby to fall asleep. We dropped ours in the crib same time every night still awake and it sucked for about a week hearing them cry. But then they learned to fall asleep on their own and it was glorious cause when they woke in the middle of the night they didnt need us to help them get back to sleep. Both slept all through the nights from very early on.
Theres your free parenting advice. Carry on.
Dude...I know what you mean with RLS. I'm starting to get symptoms of it. My dad had it before I knew of RLS. This was back in the 70's-80's. I can remember my dad's legs jerking and shaking while he was sleeping. They would jerk so hard sometimes he would wake up.
I can/will fall asleep anywhere. I've gone to sleep at stoplights. Very, very quick nap...like 3-5 seconds. Never had anyone to have to blow the horn at me, though. It scared the shit outta me each time.
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