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Post by Don Cuevas on Mar 4, 2009 17:05:13 GMT
I bought some capsules of "Duerme Biem" (sic), which contain a medley of tranquilizing and soporific herbs. However, they smell like dried toe jam or $hit. I didn't save the box, so I can't tell you exactly what's in them. Haven't helped much. I'm considering switching to gin.
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Post by lagatta on May 5, 2010 9:59:25 GMT
I've been having a bout of the dread early morning insomnia - waking up in terror around 4am (it is still dark here then). Tonight I was in such a state that I got up and read both in print and online. Of course Renzo has gone to sleep on the warm spot I'd left ... they never have insomnia. Like many people, I have reasons to be anxious, but of course not getting enough sleep doesn't do them any good. I'm getting plenty of exercise.
The sun is up and the day looks beautiful, but I'm going to try to go back to bed for an hour or so to be ready to work by 8:30 or 9.
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Post by spindrift on May 5, 2010 12:37:47 GMT
Poor you, Lagatta....that's miserable. Just an idea, but if you wake up in the small hours, make a mug of hot chocolate, sip it in bed, don't engage your mind....and don't put on bright lights. Going on-line is the last thing you should do.
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Post by lagatta on May 5, 2010 13:14:37 GMT
I don't eat sugar, so hot chocolate is out (unless I make the ancient Mexican kind, which was bitter). Perhaps an herbal tea?
Hmm, I had to engage my mind to get out of the terror I was in.
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2010 13:19:37 GMT
Did you have a bad nightmare, lagatta?
I agree being on-line will just make you more awake. I try and find a good movie to watch, one that I haven't seen before, if I can't fall asleep.
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Post by spindrift on May 5, 2010 13:24:48 GMT
Lagatta - you could sip a glass of hot water instead of hot chocolate. Like you, I seem to have more nightmares these days. They can be terrifying.
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2010 13:32:22 GMT
Hot chocolate,the sugar and caffeine in it would keep me more awake...herbal tea,chamomile,melissa,passion flower,valerian,hops, all so much better. Hope this passes soon Lagatta.
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Post by lagatta on May 5, 2010 13:46:31 GMT
I did sip hot water (just warm from the tap, not from the kettle). Will see whether I have herbal tea that is relaxing, I might among all the teas and tisanes.
Yes, it really sucks. I slept in until 9 am. And I'm very disciplined about keeping office hours on my own.
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Post by Deleted on May 5, 2010 19:44:05 GMT
I sleep soundly but am sometimes awakened by weird unpleasant dreams that I don't want to continue and find out what happens next. I just hit the 59 minute button on the radio and it puts me to sleep in 3 minutes.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 2, 2010 14:14:09 GMT
Looking back at this thread, I see that melissa herb was mentioned and also lemon balm schnapps. Melissa and lemon balm are the same thing. As far as I know, it's okay to have a small amount of alchohol to make one feel sleepy, but that more will metabolize in the body in such a way to wake you up later in the night.
I don't know if this happens to other people, but even though I know I'll wake up around the same time every day, if I have any kind of morning appointment I set the alarm. That's because otherwise I tend to be wakeful all night long, sort of anxious about waking up on time. Of course that kind of non-restful sleep is the kind most likely to make me fall really asleep right before dawn and then not wake up on time.
The other thing I discovered about tricking myself out of insomnia was to get the clock out of the bedroom. I realized that I'd wake up, look at the clock, then think, 'If I can get back to sleep in a half hour, I'll have another three hours before I have to get up." This had the effect of setting up the same kind of wakeful anxiety about sleep as the no-alarm mentioned above.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 3, 2010 7:23:51 GMT
Whenever I have to get up super early, I wake up at least 90 minutes before the time I'm supposed to get up. If I have to get up at 6:00, I'm lucky if I can sleep past 4:00.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 3, 2010 10:52:44 GMT
Whenever I have to get up super early, I wake up at least 90 minutes before the time I'm supposed to get up. If I have to get up at 6:00, I'm lucky if I can sleep past 4:00. Likewise. And lately,I've been waking up in the middle of the night(well, my night anyway) at 2:30ish a.m. but,the cool part of it is,I see the Moon out in the back garden,right from my pillow. Seems to make everything all right,and I can usually drift off back to sleep for a few more hours. (If I had a decent camera,I would record...)
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Post by rikita on Dec 11, 2010 13:22:49 GMT
just wondering - how much sleep do you need?
because i need a lot. It used to be nine hours until a few years ago, now i can deal okay with eight hours usually. but when i for a while only got 6 or 7 hours per night, i started feeling always bad and negative, until i figured out it was due to lack of sleep. so even now, when i feel really down, often just sleeping will already help...
but a lot of people here seem to not only need very little sleep, but sometimes make remarks that indicate that i sleep too much. they of course don't call me lazy, after all i am their guest and all, but they have trouble understanding that if i don't sleep the night before our trip i will be in a horrible mood the next day (and thus prefer going to bed even if they stay up) - or that i would never manage to get up at five in the morning, at least not if i also have to stay up till 11 or 12 every evening...
even the kids of the family i am staying at sleep very little for their age. they go to bed sometime around 11 usually, and get up at around 7, which considering they are only 8 and 12 seems kind of little sleep to me (my parents would usually send us to bed at 7 or 8 at that age)... but maybe i am just from a very sleepy family?
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Post by onlymark on Dec 11, 2010 14:37:18 GMT
I don't think so. I need 8 hours to function properly and my wife needs 9 or more. It does seem there are many countries from the 'developing world' or whatever the PC name for them is now, whereby the kids stay up all hours. But I do know at the school of my kids there are problems with them falling asleep in the afternoons.
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Post by rikita on Dec 11, 2010 18:36:06 GMT
well in latin america kids stayed up later than in germany too, but there they more often napped in the afternoon. here the kids have school till four. and i doubt they'd fall asleep in school, i have never seen any of our kids do that, and in the school the children of the family go to, a cane is still in use to punish the children and i am sure sleeping would be a punishable offense. but i do wonder if their concentration doesn't suffer, anyway...
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2010 19:39:31 GMT
I usually sleep about six and a half hours, which is not quite enough for me. I regularly have sleepy moments during the day, which prove it. Nevertheless, I am rarely asleep before midnight and I infallibly wake up around 6:00-6:30.
It is interesting to note that my wake-up time is more important to me than my bedtime. I absolutely despise waking up after 7:00, but it doesn't bother me at all to go to bed early if I am sleepy -- at 23:00, 22:30... or even 21:30 (very rare).
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Post by rikita on Dec 12, 2010 3:54:54 GMT
for me it is kind of the other way around. i can sleep until very late if i have the chance, but find it diffiuclt to go to bed early. well okay, sometimes i do go to bed early, but in fact, even if i am sleepy all day, sometime in the evening i suddenly seem to wake up and do not feel the need to go to sleep...
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Post by tod2 on Dec 12, 2010 7:38:05 GMT
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Post by Jazz on Dec 12, 2010 8:21:31 GMT
for me it is kind of the other way around. i can sleep until very late if i have the chance, but find it diffiuclt to go to bed early. well okay, sometimes i do go to bed early, but in fact, even if i am sleepy all day, sometime in the evening i suddenly seem to wake up and do not feel the need to go to sleep... Agree, somehow I hate going to bed, but love it once I am there. Sleep fascinates me. Rikita, I don’t think that you are hedonistic and from a sleepy family. It sounds as though you pay attention to your body’s natural needs. My history is of erratic and little sleep with lovely intermissions. For about 25 years, I only slept about 2-5 hours a night. (because of work and schedules) Somehow I managed. As I got older, I managed less well. In the last 3 years, due to injuries, I could not work and didn’t have to get up at any specific time. Without an alarm clock, I found I naturally slept from 6-7 hours. The rare times that I was up for 24 hours, or had only 3-4 hours sleep, I was Clearly very affected emotionally and physically. Very depressed, edgy, volatile. Difficult to focus. I have always been a very deep sleeper and I think this is important. Unlike most people I know, when I need to sleep I can go to bed at any time of the day or night, and naturally wake up 6-7 hours later. Your body does its most valuable repair work when you are in the deepest phase of sleep. REM? Also, from my experience, I feel that your emotional well being depends on having 6-8 hours a night. I think that many people are sleep deprived. Another important thing about sleep that I have thought about over the years are the Circadian Rhythms and the biological clock. Somehow, it does seem that 6 hours of sleep from midnight to 6AM (in the dark) is more beneficial in all ways than 6 hours at any other period in the 24 hours. (from my experience) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm#DisruptionI love sleeping, especially in the colder months with my flannelette sheets and duvet.
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Post by myrt on Dec 12, 2010 9:16:29 GMT
I homed in on this thread as sleep is a slight issue for me - I have dodgy lungs and wake up regularly through most nights. I did the test in the link and scored 65% - whatever that means! But I am apparently a morning person and I am doing all the right things to facilitate sleep so I guess I just have to carry on feeling slightly tired most of the time and doing my best to sleep more efficiently.. Actually I think many women find sleeping more problematic after they have had children - you expect to be sleep deprived for the first few years but it can easily become a habit that's hard to overcome.
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Post by onlymark on Dec 12, 2010 10:26:41 GMT
Jazz, off the top of my head I don't think the deepest period of sleep is REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. But I could be wrong.
One thing I try and stick to is that an hour before midnight is worth two after. This is just my personal thing. What it means is that if I go to bed at 11 instead of 12 I get the same benefit from the sleep than if I'd gone at 12 but stayed in bed two hours longer the next day. So, say 11pm to 6am is the same as 12 midnight to 8am as regards how rested I feel.
I worked shifts for ten years, 6am till 2, 2 till 10pm and 10 till 6am (mornings, afters and nights), a week of each more or less. That played havoc with me and I never got used to it.
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Post by Jazz on Dec 12, 2010 12:04:51 GMT
You're right Mark, but I don't know the name of the deepest and most valuable period. But I think this is where the healing takes place. I fought this 'before midnight' sleep for years, but I think now it's true.
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Post by rikita on Dec 12, 2010 15:22:50 GMT
got only 49 % in that test- though i might have been kind of off with some things i clicked as some of it was guessing (and every person's definition of likely or unlikely is kind of different)... however, they tell me i should use my bedroom only for sleeping - yeah, if we had more than one room that'd be good...
well as to before midnight sleep, i still think it depends on the person... if i got o bed too early i have trouble falling asleep (though that is a lot better now, as a child i could never fall asleep quickly...)
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Post by fumobici on Dec 12, 2010 16:14:22 GMT
77% on the test for me. I sleep great though and only use an alarm a few times a year.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 12, 2010 16:30:42 GMT
I got 77% too and have absolutely no trouble sleeping. I think some of the attitudes of the test are old fashioned, as though you should never watch TV or listen to the radio in bed.
And the questions were somewhat skewed. Rather than certain things being used to "help" you to sleep, I think that they should accept that you can do certain things and no matter what, you are going to quickly fall asleep. Absolutely nothing can keep me awake once I am in bed unless the temperature is above 30°.
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 12, 2010 16:31:22 GMT
I got 69%. However, there was something wrong with the test. Every time I entered weight, it popped up a window telling me to put in a value of between 0 and 13 pounds. ~?~
I finally entered 13 pounds so I could complete the test. The next question was neck size "if you know it". Of course I didn't know it. The test results said my neck size probably makes me snore and wake myself up. I suspect it used 13 as the neck size, rather than the real size, since my neck is normal-sized.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 12, 2010 16:35:57 GMT
13 would be a very small neck.
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 12, 2010 16:40:43 GMT
Really? Maybe for a man. Mine is smaller than that, and I'm not pencil-necked, or even swan-like.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 12, 2010 16:44:56 GMT
I think that shirt collars for men start at 14.
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Post by fumobici on Dec 13, 2010 1:43:47 GMT
I had the same trouble entering my weight in pounds, but it let me enter in stone so that's what I did. I think I was penalized on the score mostly for liking coffee and also having a TV in the bedroom, even though it is very seldom turned on. The jackbooted sleep patrol can have my espresso maker when they pry my dead cold hands from the lever.
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