No screens <i>and</i> no light brighter than single-digit candle power after sundown is a pretty good cure for, I suspect, a whole lot of modern cases of sleeplessness.<p>Light your whole house up brighter than the mirrored hall at Versailles and engage with devices that put entertainments better than a pre-modern emperor could command at the grandest, most expensive carnival he could assemble at your fingertips and sleep becomes elusive.<p>“The emperor’s having trouble sleeping! We lit up the palace with thousands of candles and invited over the greatest scientists and sages and show persons of all kinds (including the <i>naked</i> variety) and are holding a 24/7 carnival with all those folks just outside his bedroom and we just can’t figure out what might be the problem.” LOL, I mean, maybe there’s other stuff going on too, but I think I know where to start…
Obviously YMMV, but I've found having an exhausted body works wonders for falling to sleep. So, don't just exercise, do something physically tough that drains you. If you have to do that in the form of running/jogging/biking, fine. But you can also tend a garden. Clean the house. Organize something. Lots of things that are physically demanding.<p>I'm also skeptical of the advice to not nap. I'd go so far as to say that if you are avoiding naps, you are effectively teaching your body to avoid sleep. Don't do that. Try to move napping, sure, but don't be shocked if eliminating it has bad effects.
To further add on the recommended app, the VA department also has other fantastic applications such as the mindfulness one. Being government funded they have no tracking, no ads, no plans, and a clear and pragmatic UX.<p>As they should be, since the vast majority of useful apps aren't really anything that challenges the bleeding edge of software development
I like it! Reminds me of "The hacker's diet" [1] [2]. Hence, it could be even better to use a running average to keep the feedback cycle even tighter [1].<p>--<p>1: <a href="https://hackersdiet.org/hackdiet/e4/signalnoise.html#Fa78" rel="nofollow">https://hackersdiet.org/hackdiet/e4/signalnoise.html#Fa78</a><p>2: <a href="https://trendweight.com/" rel="nofollow">https://trendweight.com/</a>
I cured my insomnia with MJ brownies. Eat one, and in 1.5 hours you can turn off your brain like it has a switch. I’d take them daily for a period of about 2.5 months. You can fairly easily make brownies cheaply at home using the cheapest store bought MJ. YMMV, I’m not a doctor, etc. I know what I’ll do if my insomnia comes back though. If it’s due to an overly active mind, you can easily make it a lot less active
It's great the author found that CBT-I worked for them, but I'm amazed it took them that long to find out about sleep hygiene.<p>As a life-long insomniac, I learned about sleep hygiene in the 80s. I don't think they called it CBT-I back then. I've done the sleep restriction, I've done it all.<p>However, the author did pick up on something I've been speaking with a lot of people about more recently.<p>Usually people associate insomnia with stress. For non-chronic insomniacs, I can see how this would be the case, and seeing as only 10% of the population are chronic insomniacs, for most people, insomnia will be transient, and increased cortisol, and active mind during stressful times obviously creates the opportunity for this condition.<p>For many of the chronic insomniacs I've been speaking with, both onset and maintenance (wake up in the middle of the night), it seems many agree that our minds are just active at that time. Not stressed, sometimes not even that active. I can meditate in the middle of the night and still spend the next 45 minutes awake.<p>There is a part of our brains that kinda likes it.<p>I think calling this an "algorithmic solution to insomnia" is misleading.
I used to have a lot of trouble with insomnia, but a few years ago I discovered Drachinifel's YouTube channel about naval history <a href="https://m.youtube.com/@Drachinifel" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/@Drachinifel</a><p>Now I fall asleep listening to his 'drydock' Q&A episodes or lectures on historical campaigns, technologies, etc. & it's not really a problem at all anymore. It's been amazingly helpful.<p>I find the content interesting enough that I don't feel bored & restless, but not so urgent or exciting that it keeps me up. And I get multiple nights out of each episode by falling asleep fairly quickly<p>Just thought I'd share in case it works for anyone else
I agree with the 4 suggestions under "Unintuitive New Invariants" but add consider taking magnesium just before bed. My experience is that it helps the whole body relax, enabling sleep to be more easily achieved. Discuss it with your G.P first.
A lot of people wake up at 3 or 4am. This is typically stress related.<p>Possible solution:<p>1. Sit up or get up. If getting up, I usually get a mint tea.<p>2. Journal. Write down your thoughts. Very important: write down _what you are going to do tomorrow_, step by step. Usually the brain is worrying about something and by telling it what you’re going to do about it tomorrow it seems to calm down.<p>3. When you’ve gotten everything out, read. Just keep reading until you can’t keep your eyes open.<p>I’ve found this almost always works. Waking in the middle of the night is caused by stress around a problem. Your brain just wants to know the narrative around how that problem will get resolved or improved. Then it will fall sleep again.
Melatonin.<p>There's loads of wisdom about improving sleep. Exercise, wind down rituals, avoiding caffeine, various diet ideas. Changing bedtime, changing alarm time. Nothing made a perceptible difference. Dropping caffeine was especially useless advice as it has no impact on my sleep but made me much less effective.<p>Melatonin tablets however are magic. My pet theory is the CYP1A2 genotype which is known to control how effectively you eliminate caffeine also affects how effectively you eliminate melatonin. Being unusually efficient at metabolising melatonin seems likely to present as insomnia.
> My form of insomnia starts with an active mind some evening.<p>Not a doctor, but I’m very confident that this is ADHD. Sleep disorders are very common, ADHD is linked with a late melatonin onset and evening “buzz” or overexciting are almost textbook examples.<p>Treatments are there, but needs to be discussed with healthcare professionals.
And “don’t change schedule” is a harmful advice. Fatigued driving is as dangerous as driving intoxicated. Some professions and activities require heightened focus as they’re dangerous to themselves and others.
I struggled with bouts of insomnia, not quite as bad as author. I found taking sea kelp / Iodine has cured it, its a remarkable change, I feel tired after 20mins in bed and fall asleep, and I wake with the sun and don't feel tired when waking.
The Thyroid is the Master hormone.
My problem is that I wake up in the middle of the night after 3-4 hours. Vaping one puff of indica cannabis puts me back to sleep until the morning. And even if I don't go back to sleep right away I'm feeling so good that I don't mind.<p>Apparently it's genetic. My genome has 100% correlation with genetic variants associated with insomnia.
A subtext here might be to try sleep restriction when you have a period of funemployment or PTO and can deal with the consequences of being sleep-deprived and/or can distract yourself from nodding off e.g. by going for a walk, and while you don't need to operate machinery, e.g. a car.
How effective is cbti against the non-restful sleep component of chronic fatigue syndrome?<p>During these times I toss and turn all night and can't seem to fall asleep. I might also end up in some kind of near psychotic thought loops, where I tried to endlessly solve the current major stressors in my life. Or I may spend hours frantically and compulsively picking at acne on my face chest neck back and ass, in some kind of half asleep hell that I can barely escape. The affective experience is awful<p>Then after 8 hours of this finally I'm so exhausted that I can now sleep 8 hours. Hooray I just spent 16 hours in bed. Guess what I'm still f*** tired for the rest of the 8 hours I'm awake. And I spend those 8 hours in bed too sometimes because I'm too sick to actually leave the bed.<p>This idea that you can't stay in bed for longer than 20 minutes unless you can sleep is very challenging for someone who is already spending all day in bed because they're sick, and setting up this expectation, I've found, is a recipe for non-acceptance and self judgment.<p>Another thing that doesn't work so well about the cbti suggestions is that if I go to sleep only when I'm dying... I might not sleep for 2 days, because that can trigger a manic episode. I end up crashing after 48 hours or so - that's when I'm dying to sleep. Then I sleep 4 hours and do it again for 48 straight hours. A little bit terrifying right?<p>Instead the best thing I found was to accept that sometimes my sleep will be like this hellish nightmare, because of disabling chronic fatigue flare up and psychiatric issues. Giving myself permission to have awful hellish sleep nights seems like the honest best I can do - anything else seems to be gaslighting me and making me feel awful.<p>The problem with any kind of conscious cognitive technique, it seems, is that there are large stretches of time where I don't seem to have full conscious experience or control of my behavior. Given this and my propensity for mental OCD, I have had really negative effects from cognitive behavioral therapy in the past. Instead of letting me recognize and eliminate cognitive distortions, the CBT routines seem to add new forms of suffering rumination.<p>So I'm worried that cbti could have similarly aggravating effects for people who have underlying psychiatric issues. Note that the author did specify that the doctor worked to eliminate psychiatric issues from consideration before moving to CBTi. I don't think that will be enough to prevent people from trying to self help with cbti after reading this article... So I am noting here that if you have psychiatric stuff, your outcomes could be significantly improved - and potential dangerous bends in the road avoided - if you consult with a well-trained, well published, and highly experienced PhD in this field.