sleep and lack of sleep

[bjd]

I tend to wake very early and can't go back to sleep. My husband says, "Just roll over and go back to sleep!" as though I were doing it on purpose. Actually, I prefer waking at 5 or 5:30 and lying there for a while before I get up to waking at 2 or 3 and not being able to go back to sleep for a few hours. But I am far from the 8 hours sleep we are "supposed" to get.

[bixaorellana]

I'm up right now because of waking at an inappropriately early time. Got up to make some herbal tea with a view to going back to bed & reading, but turned on the computer instead.

The other day I met a couple of men, one my age & the other @ten years older, who'd practically done a study of conquering sleeplessness. They offered to describe what works for them out in an email. The younger one wrote:

I have had sleep challenges for years. My current options at bedtime include:

SLEEP THRU by Gaia - available on the internet at Pharmaca. This sleep remedy is primarily Ashwaganda Root, an Ayurvedic herb. When it works, it works well for me. But it does not do the trick all the time.}

MELATONIN by Source Naturals. I get orange flavored lozenges @ 2.5 mgs, and I cut them in half. The total pill is way too much for me.

TEMAZEPAM by perscription. I get 15 mg capsules and cut them in half. The total cap is too much for me.

[The other man] uses:

MEDICAL MARIJUANA. He gets a product that has in it something called Indica. This has changed his life for the better re sleep.

Both of these men are steady individuals who obviously take care of themselves. Even so, I'm still resistant to the idea of "taking something", although I suppose the herbal tea I'm drinking even as I type is in fact "taking something.

Apparently the last product in the list, Indica, uses non-psychoactive CBD, which is the ingredient in marijuana which treats pain without an attendant high. Coincidentally, yesterday I read about another use of it as a proposed ingredient in Coca-Cola. Since, like most southerners, I subscribe to the belief that Coca-Cola is a flu and hangover cure, I have to assume that the pain-killing additive would be received with joy. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-17/coca-cola-eyes-cannabis-market-in-push-beyond-sluggish-sodas

But as far as sleep goes, the caffeine in Coke would be contraindicated, right?

[patricklondon]

By coincidence, this filled up a recent dead hour between waking and starting the day

Finally, a cure for insomnia?

www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/14/finally-a-cure-for-insomnia

My blog | My photos | My video clips | My Librivox recordings
"too literate to be spam"

[bjd]

Bixa, I thought the worst thing to do in the night is look at a screen?

I don't feel my lack of sleep is doing me much harm since I can function all day without taking naps. And I really do not plan to take anything, particularly no sleeping pills. From what I have read, pills are a short-term remedy (a couple of weeks at most) that end up being used for years.

[bjd]

I was just looking for that article, Patrick!

[mich64]

Since my brain injury I have a difficult time going to sleep. The first few years I would be fortunate if I got 4 hours of sleep. Last night I was up past midnight and was awake at 5:20 this morning. However, this past year, a couple of times a month now I am surprised to have gotten about 8 hours, the only change is that I now go for a long walk every day.

At the beginning my doctor was very concerned and prescribed a sleeping pill which I have only taken a few. I do not like how I feel when I wake up, feel drowsy all day and have a worse night sleep the next night.

When my husband is working I am often still up at 3:00 a.m.

[huckle]

As I suffer from restless legs, my standby sleep inducers are the marvelous songs of Schubert, part songs as sung by the Arnold Schoenburg choir, song cycles by DFD, Fritz Wunderlich, Hermann Prey and Jonas Kaufmann and hundreds of "loose" songs not included in any cycles. Following a musical line keeps stray thoughts away and I go to sleep with a smile on my face.

Recently I found this website with free downloads of Schubert Lieder. Haven't tried any but it looks interesting.

www.schubertlied.de/index.php/en/the-lied

[lagatta]

Huckle, thanks for that.


As you can see, bout of insomnia here. I've been on high stress doing bureaucratic stuff.

I should be able to get that cannaboid, which is supposed to be good arthritis pain relief. I'm specifically looking for something that does NOT make me high. Medical cannabis has been legal here for a while, but when the substance is legalised soon overall, this will be much easier. I do NOT want to smoke anything. I took 2 ibuprofen.

[kerouac2]

Nothing can keep me awake. I used to have a television in my room. I would set the timer on 60 minutes and be asleep in 5 minutes. Now I just use my clock radio when I'm in bed... and I'm still asleep within 5 minutes. What is funny is that I wake up a number of times during the night -- sometimes 5 times, sometimes 2 times -- and I always turn on the radio for the 60 minute setting. Often I might wake up at something like 3:57 and I think, "oh, I'll hear the news bulletin in 3 minutes in case it is the end of the world or something." Wrong -- I am always asleep before then.

I have shared hotel rooms with friends and they have always complained. If they want to say something to me after the light has been turned out, it is too late -- I am already asleep.

What I find interesting is that when I was still working, I would wake up/get up by 6:00 or 6:30 even though I could easily have stayed in bed until 7:30. Now that I am not working, I get up generally around 5:00/5:30 -- just because I no longer have any constraints and can get up whenever I feel like it. I go to bed usually somewhere between 23:00 and midnight... And of course I hear about 13 minutes of radio during the night.

[fumobici]

Sept 19, 2018 5:34:00 GMT lagatta said:

Huckle, thanks for that.


As you can see, bout of insomnia here. I've been on high stress doing bureaucratic stuff.

I should be able to get that cannaboid, which is supposed to be good arthritis pain relief. I'm specifically looking for something that does NOT make me high. Medical cannabis has been legal here for a while, but when the substance is legalised soon overall, this will be much easier. I do NOT want to smoke anything. I took 2 ibuprofen.

I have a friend who swears by some topical salve she buys at one of the cannabis shops here to treat her arthritic knee. It isn't just CBD/cannabidiol, there is also a significant portion of THC in it, unlike most topical salves. Her doctor thinks there's enough anecdotal evidence that the THC somehow helps it work. It is not intoxicating at all as long as you don't ingest it.

[lagatta]

Very interesting! Nothing against toking; that is not hard to find, even on my street. But I need pain relief and anti-inflammatories that don't prevent me from working with a clear head.

[rikita]

my problem these last few days is interrupted sleep. there's a. turning around in her bed constantly banging into the sides, and i always jump and turn around to make sure she hasn't fallen out of bed (she has a very high loft bed, so though it has high railings and been sleeping in there almost a year now, i always fear something might happen), there's her tendency to wake up much too early and ask me (every five minutes) if she can get up yet, there's all the noise from the street, which usually doesn't bother me, but lately there were things that did wake me up. getting kind of tired ...

[Kimby]

If a routinely wakes up too early, perhaps it would help to let her stay up a bit later at night. Or prevent her from napping....

[rikita]

ah, she dropped naps at 2 1/2 - and she often falls asleep pretty late (though recently she had a phase of falling asleep by about 9 p.m. - seemed to be over today, she fell asleep at 10 p.m.) ... the thing is, i wouldn't mind her waking up early if she fell asleep early, i am more concerned about overall sleep, and in that she always stayed below whatever is recommended for her age ... they say kids sleep more, everall, if they go to bed earlier, but in her case, you never know, really. and sometimes she seems fine with the amount of sleeps she gets, other times, she doesn't. i was never a good sleeper either - except when i got into the age where you are expected to sleep less and work and study more, then i suddenly could sleep without any problems ...

[Kimby]

Perhaps a “memory foam” mattress topper would cradle a. And reduce the tossing and turning - and risk of falling out of her loft bed.

[whatagain]

Hi Rikita.
What worked for us was
1. a protective barrier
www.allobebe.fr/barriere-de-lit-140cm-rabattable-aJN071422501.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIv-acnoPZ3QIVRoXVCh3yLQliEAQYBSABEgKDJfD_BwE
2. a clock
We would tell our kid NOT to wake us up before the needle (do you say needle ? ) points towards the ... (8 for us)
3. we didn't put her too early to bed
4. we forced us to ignore her : we'd tell her to go back to sleep and would ignore her and remain in our bed. (not easy)

But ok, we never follwoed the good advice given in the books. For instance Marie is now 8 and she went to bed half of the summer after midnight. Problem of young children with old parents ;-)

[rikita]

hm, gotta look at these ... though in reality i don't think there is a risk of her falling out - it's just that when i wake up from her tossing and turning at night, i think there is ...

she has the clock though - supposed to stay in bed until seven. for quite a while she would wake me to say "the short hand points to this number and the long one to this number - can i get up yet?" even though in theory, she knows to read the time (well, at least half hours and full hours, the rest she knows sometimes). this week though she changed her sleep pattern and started falling asleep very late but then sleeping until well after seven.

[mossie]

As I tell young mothers with small children "You have 50 years of worry"

[lagatta]

Less for old mums? Mine was 42. She lived to be 98, so...

[kerouac2]

I am happy to be sleeping less as I age. After all, time is running out.

[cheerypeabrain]

Despite the fact that I've been retired for two years my sleep patterns haven't really settled after almost 30 years of shifts. Last night for the first time in months I slept straight through..mega. I was knackered tho...