I try:
meditiating in a dark room with only a single candle lit
reading
listening to peaceful music in the dark
sleep aids
All of these have worked for me on different days with varying degrees of effectiveness.
What are know effective methods?
total darkness
Earplugs
a cold room, thick blankets
No caffeine or other stimulants after six
No computer 2 hours before bed
Melatonin
Going to bed the sametime every night
No sleeping in on weekends,
If I do everthing on this list it will take me 1- 2 hours to fall asleep, if I don’t I wont sleep that night
Here’s my suggestions, and yes, I have used all of them successfully myself.
[ul]
[li]Eat a filling meal of low-carb vegetables 4-6 hours before you sleep, and have no protein eight hours or more before.[/li][li]Install this on your computer. It reduces the amount of melatonin-supressing blue light your computer emits in the evening.[/li][li]No caffeine after lunch.[/li][li]Go to bed at a regular time each day.[/li][li]Earplugs.[/li][li]Thick eyemasks, don’t rely on those flimsy airline ones.[/li][li]Minimise your exposure to light in the evening.[/li][li]Wear sunglasses at night.[/li][li]Look at the sky for ten minutes soon after you get up.[/li][li]**Don’t **wear sunglasses during the day.[/li][li]Avoid lieing on your bed except when you need to sleep, or shag[/li][li]Don’t deal with emotionally stressful or intellectually straining things late at night, if you can’t get them out of your head, then write them down and leave them for the morning.[/li][/ul]
If you do all of them, then I’m sure you’ll get to sleep far quicker.
i’ve always wondered if it would be as simple as letting insomnia win the first night, that is - don’t sleep, then you’ll have to fight sleep instead, until it is the correct time to do so.
Insomnia can be a symptom of a medical problem. In such cases the best hope of finding an effective solution is to diagnose the underlying problem first.
I am a chronic insomniac. Have been since I was a kiddle.
My problem was not getting to sleep - that would always be achieved within 10 minutes of bed. My problem was staying asleep. I’d usually wake up three hours after I fell asleep, then after that I might lie awake for an hour or two then sleep again but wake again after an hour and need to pee, etc. All through the night. (shijinn, insomnia won every night but it didn’t help. I once went three months on less than three hours a night. Nightmare.)
In the last few months I have been sleeping straight through the night, up to 9 hours, every night. It’s a revelation. I wake up feeling refreshed!
What has changed? I am living somewhere very quiet. I don’t drink coffee after 18.00. I have stopped drinking beer. And I have taped up my bedroom windows with cardboard.
Of the four changes, the beer is the biggie. The few times I’ve drunk recently I’ve had shitty sleep, even in my new environment.
that one is very Important too, a lot of it is conditioning your body when to sleep
No one here has mentioned exercise. Exercise not only physically exhausts you it alleviates psychological stress, a major factor in insomnia.
Exercise also stimulates you so it will need to be done a few hours before sleep, but overall I always find a physically active day results in a good sleep.
Good one, sometimes this works for me during a bout of insomnia–I will get zero to one hour of sleep one night, then “crash” and get five hours the next, but then “yo-yo” back to zero to one the next.
Lather, rinse and repeat.
You are so right but regretably in my case, me team of doctors is unable to diagnose the problem and/or suggest reliable remedies, so I turn to you, the SDMB for ideas.
Thanks
Great ideas, guys–I’ll try them all.
be carefull,
this is how I lived up to a few years ago,
when you do this it becomes hard for the body to get into a sleep wake rhythm
Remember: Being tired is not the same as being sleepy.
I’ve had bouts of insomnia all my life. My mother tells me she would check in on me as a baby and I’d be wide awake in my crib. Scared her to death.
I’ve learned to live with it.
I’m a lifelong insomniac. I’ve tried schedules, rituals, exercise, etc. I’ve tried every OTC sleep aide known to man. I’ve tried most of the prescriptions, too.
I’m finally–in the last 4-5 months found a cocktail that works for me. I take 10mg melatonin, 2 Valerian root capsules (man do they stink!), 60 mg temazepam (Restoril), and 300mg Seroquel (also treats my bipolar disorder). If I take all of that, I will fall asleep about 3 hours later. If I don’t take it–as I discovered this weekend when I spent the night at a friend’s house in Boston without bringing my meds with me–I will not sleep a wink. It’s miserable. At least I finally have something that works for me.
I do not suffer from insomnia.
I sleep very little at times often waking in the night and sometimes I go to sleep very late or not at all. I do not diagnose my self as an insomniac even if my sleep patterns seem insomnia like as It does not bother me. If I wake at night I get up and do something make a snack or read or whatever. I never look at the clock and do not know how much I sleep.I have recently taken up a significant exercise regime and it seems to make me sleep more and better. I did not do it to help my sleep.
People that I know that suffer from it let me know precisely when they fell asleep how long it took and when they woke and for how many hours and such.
Pardon my ignorance but I have always wanted to say, Get rid of the damn clock! If you wake up get up! Dont busy yourself staring at the clock and logging your sleep or lack of it. It seems so painful.
Has any insomniacs tried this method? Does it help? Does exercise help?
The melatonin/valerian root combo has been the best thing I have ever found. I take a 3mg melatonin and 3 valerian root capsules. Thanks Opal, I believe I got this from one of your posts a while back. I recommend it to everyone, and I don’t usually try herbal remedies.
Liquor. Pills. Exercise daily. Good nutrition. Good sleeping environment. See if there’s something wrong medically with you. That’s all I got. I go for pills – can’t do doxylamine anymore, started making me groggy, but I’ll have a few mgs of Xanax if it gets late and I’m wound up in the brain.
There’s always varm milch. Or OVALTINE???!!!
OpalCat PLEASE be very careful with drugs like that! They can work great when they work, but when they fail you will know Hell. My own bad experience has been with a benzo, and you mentioned temazepam, so I would worry about that. (Same with you, Jaledin with the xanax.) These drugs are seriously addictive. They can be safe and helpful for short-term use but they can snare you! You may find that you need increasingly larger doses just to get the same effect, and if you miss a dose you won’t sleep at all – or worse, you could start of have withdrawal symptoms – even between regularly schedules doses! If you simply stick with the same dose you are using, you could begin to have withdrawal. If you’ve been using for 4-5 months, I’m not sure if that would be long enough to start having these problems. (YMMV)
I don’t know how all those other drugs (especially Seroquel) play. However much they may be helpful to you now, you need to worry what price you will pay in the not-so-distant future. I found out.
I’ve been on 60mg of temazepam every night for the last…5 years? Sometimes I don’t take it for one reason or another and I’ve never felt any withdrawal. I know there is a danger and my doctor is aware as well. I also take Xanax as needed for anxiety, but I’m very careful with it.
Wow. Neat. I installed this in the early evening today. When the screen color automatically adjusted to my current location and time of day, I could feel my eyeballs relax during the transition.