(and please don’t suggest I should gain 100 pounds!)
I am an extremely light sleeper - the tiniest thing will usually wake me up. Then I also normally have a tough time falling asleep again.
My S/O snores. Therefore, we cannot sleep together unless I wear earplugs, which sometimes help and sometimes don’t.
Other things that wake me up - the newspaper being delivered in the morning, the furnace turning on, S/O going from his room to the bathroom. It’s ridiculous!
Can I somehow “train” myself to become a less sensitive, more tolerant sleeper, or am I doomed to a life of sleeping alone …?
Heavy excercise during the day ( not evening) can help.
Melatonin works wonders to help me fall asleep, but I’m only a light sleeper for the first part of the night, after a few hours not even falling out of bed can wake me.
Heavy exercise, when I can’t sleep a couple sets of fifty push-ups and/or sit-ups and/or a 20 min jog helps alot. Also a good strong beer or two and I’m lucky if the alarm wakes me. But other than that I can’t help much. Just try to be more physicly active during the day.
Stainz - were you always a light sleeper, even as a child, or did this develop later? The distractions you’ve mentioned so far are aural. You might try sleeping with a white noise generator to mask other sounds. Or you could try sleeping while playing a cd with the sounds of the ocean or a woodland stream.
You (and/or your SO) may want to talk with your doctor about getting a sleep study to see if there are any issues with your sleep. I recently had one for my snoring, and I wrote about it in an MPSIMS Thread.
If you haven’t tried them already, get some “Breathe Right” nasal strips. Without them, I have similar sleep problems as what you describe. Could be that you aren’t breathing as well as you should be while sleeping. It wont cost much to try them and I hope it helps.
You might want to try making the room you sleep in colder (warm blankets are still OK). I know I sleep more solidly when the room is chilly, but I’ve got a good blanket.
Papermache Prince - Yes, I’ve been a light sleeper all my life. It’s quite a nuisance.
I don’t believe it’s a breathing problem or anything, because there is always a reason involving “noise” whenever I wake up through the night.
Exercising more may help me be more “tired”, but I’m usually quite exhausted by the time I go to bed, regardless of what has transpired during the day.
I guess what I’m wondering is can one TRAIN oneself to become a less fussy sleeper - should I be exposing myself to more noise & disruption, in order to hopefully become more tolerant?
Or will that only cause me many sleepless nights, to no avail?
Like you, I’ve been a very light sleeper all my life. Even the slightest noises will wake me up and I also take forever to get to sleep. Not to be a downer, but I really doubt you can do much about it, at least, non-medicated-wise.
As a student who has lived in dorms and private units, “disruption” has most definitely NOT improved my sleeping.
