If you don't have, or don't think you have, a concrete reason for your insomnia then try this.<p>When you yawn or feel drained go to bed, take a nap, or find a quiet toilet cubicle and close your eyes for ten minutes. Don't ignore your body.<p>If your at home and have the option to sleep what I find works for me is lying flat on my back. Then relax, in sequence, your forehead, shoulders, upper arms, lower arms, fingers, chest, stomach, groin, upper legs, lower legs, toes. Take around 1 minute to relax your whole body. If you can't relax something tense it up, then release it.<p>Once your fully relaxed close your eyes and clear your thoughts. What works for me is trying to focus on a spot in the dark directly in front of me. As your mind wanders pull it back to focusing on the spot in the dark. Sometimes I need to repeatedly relax my forehead and eyes while doing this, just let your eye sockets go limp.<p>Occasionally when you are pulling yourself back from your thoughts to focusing on that spot in the dark it can be jarring. Just keep trying. Eventually I fall asleep.<p>I've noticed recently that this is meditation, except without the sleep part.
New Yorker has wised up to content blockers, and appears to be postfixing their class IDs with random gibberish. This is a common trend; I can't say I'm terribly surprised by it.<p>Fortunately their <i>prefixes</i> are relatively sane, and CSS supports wildcard matches. I like to block the sidebars on article sites like these because they usually contain the bulk of the distracting content, and this rule works wonderfully:<p><pre><code> www.newyorker.com##div[class*=ArticlePageSidebar]
</code></pre>
Just thought I'd share.
Man, this article really set me up for disappointment.<p>> It is a beguiling idea, that one might transform one’s sleep, and the rest of one’s life, with a few virtuous acts of renunciation—no electronics in the bedroom, no coffee after 2 P.M.—and a few dreamy self-care rituals involving baths and tea.<p>Okay, great. I'm ready to cut through the bullshit. Let's go.<p>> Aristotle called sleep “a privation of waking,” and a simultaneous longing for and resistance to that privation seems to lie at the heart of insomnia’s torment.<p>Oh.
I have seen many doctors, including sleep specialists, regarding insomnia. They all pointed to one source as the reason for the sleep issues: stress. And they all wanted to put me on prescription sleeping pills. I said no to that. Sleeping pills are addictive and you have to take them for the rest of your life. As a software engineer, I am used to finding and fixing the underlying problem as opposed to the quickfixes these doctors were offering me.<p>After much research I figured out the underlying problem, and the fix for it. The underlying problem is magnesium deficiency. As a software developer I am using my brain more intensely than most people. This is the stress the doctors are talking about. Stress depletes magnesium. The cells in our body depend on two essential minerals for normal function: Calcium and magnesium. Cells go into ON state when calcium goes in, and OFF state when calcium goes out. Calcium doesn't go out on its own: magnesium has to go in and displace the calcium. When you are low on magnesium, cells can't go into OFF state. When that happens your muscles become stiff and you need massages, and your brain can't turn off and you can't sleep. The solution is magnesium supplements. This fixed my muscle stiffness issues and my sleep issues. A special compound of magnesium called magnesium l-threonate is especially helpful for sleep because it can penetrate the "blood brain barrier".<p>Scientific sources for this are hard to come by. I had to piece together all this from multiple sources. Here are some:
<a href="https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of-nutrition/magnificent-magnesium/" rel="nofollow">https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of-nutrition...</a>
<a href="http://www.drsinatra.com/benefits-of-magnesium-supplements-for-heart-health/" rel="nofollow">http://www.drsinatra.com/benefits-of-magnesium-supplements-f...</a>
<a href="http://paleoforwomen.com/soul-crushing-stress-and-the-miracle-of-magnesium/" rel="nofollow">http://paleoforwomen.com/soul-crushing-stress-and-the-miracl...</a>
I've always said to insomniacs that they should read textbooks. They'll either end up geniuses or fall asleep like the rest of us.<p>Is it making light of what's probably a very serious issue, I suppose so.<p>This article makes me very glad that I can fall asleep easy at night. Just another thing to be thankful for. The few nights I can't fall asleep quickly are torture, I cannot imagine what it must be like for someone to suffer through that frequently.
I had medication-induced insomnia a few years ago due to some drugs I was on for another condition. It was horrible, I was so tired but wide awake and couldn't fall asleep. I would go multiple nights with zero sleep and my mind wouldn't function. I wouldn't even get close to sleeping. The doctors had to give me antipsychotics to get me to sleep since I wouldn't even react to sleeping pills.<p>I did learn a lot about myself and I now have amazing sleep hygiene. I don't do math or programming before bed but I will read books on the topics. Anything that makes me think too hard is gone. I've actually shifted my sleep routine to 8pm-4am so I can wake early and do programming.
If you are having trouble sleeping or want to improve your sleep, a sleep monitor may help your situation. While a 6-lead EEG that you would wear during a sleep study is the most accurate way to determine your quality and quantity of sleep, consumer-grade sleep trackers are accurate enough to give you ballpark numbers on your sleep.<p>You can start with a Fitbit (Apple Watch battery isn’t robust enough for monitoring all night). The best is to use a non-wearable sleep tracker so that you do not have to wear or remember to do anything.<p><a href="https://amp.businessinsider.com/best-sleep-tracker" rel="nofollow">https://amp.businessinsider.com/best-sleep-tracker</a><p><a href="https://www.nosleeplessnights.com/best-sleep-tracker/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nosleeplessnights.com/best-sleep-tracker/</a><p>I found that adjusting the thermostat down 5 degrees Fahrenheit at night helps from waking up in the middle of the night.<p>Also, if you want 8 hours of sleep, it means you need to be in bed for about 9 hours.
A little while ago I read that various historical records indicated that we would naturally sleep in two sessions overnight. This was changed by a combination of artificial light and also the industrial revolution giving us more regimented working hours.<p>"The myth of the eight-hour sleep" at <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783</a> is an interesting starting point.
I found CBT for sleep helped my insomnia. A good book on this is called Goodnight Mind. I also read Matthew Walkers book while I was going through insomnia as well, and I can say this book is likely to make your insomnia worse. Half of it is just telling you all the ways in which you're killing yourself by not sleeping. Not a great thing to read when you can't sleep.
Timely article, after listening to 4 hours of constant firecrackers in the neighborhood from 10pm-2am, I did not fall asleep until 6AM; thankfully today is not a workday. At least once a month, and in the past year more like once or twice a week, I can't fall asleep until right before I have to get up. Yet other nights I do exactly the same things and sleep 7 hours or so.<p>When my body is in the no sleep mode (which I presume is an excess of cortisol) no matter what I take nothing will put me to sleep until that wears off. Working in a high stress environment writing code and managing a team in something with CEO level visibility (in a big company) I am sure its stress related. I can see why Michael Jackson went to ridiculous extremes trying to sleep (and paradoxically not actually sleeping). It's a miserable experience to trying to function one hour of sleep and do anything complex.
This is how I fixed my insomnia. I changed three things:<p>1. Before going to bed I meditate (I usually listen to the app from Sam Harris)<p>2. No more caffeine after 11 in the morning<p>3. Strict "bed hygiene", meaning: when I go to bed I immediately switch off the lights and sleep. I do nothing else. Also, I try to always sleep around the same time, even on weekends.<p>I believe 3) has made the biggest difference. I used to read and even sometimes watch movies in bed. I miss reading in bed but since I stopped doing that and only focus on sleeping I have never had problems to fall asleep anymore, despite going through some stressful times.<p>I do sometimes still wake up during the night, but since I sleep well before I can handle those days pretty well. My life has changed a lot for the better, one of the best things I have done recently