Why does it have to always hit me so randomly? Some nights I beg my brain to stay awake past 9 and then there’s nights like this where I’m wide awake for no reason
My rules to have a higher chance of falling asleep at 11-12
- always wake up early, even after I went to bed late, otherwise I won’t be able to fall asleep on time
- no active brain work (studying, working) after 8pm
- no food after 7-8pm
- no ceiling lights after 8-9 pm, only yellow dim lamps
- no staying in bed if I couldn’t fall asleep. get up, go to another room, try again in 15-20 minutes
To add:
- No visible clocks. If possible don’t check the time at all while trying to sleep. Doing math at night (aka “oh no only 4 hours left”) only makes you angry or sad.
- No alcohol. If unavoidable, try to be sober by the time you want to fall asleep. (Dring sooner, if at all.)
- No coffee after midday. Some bodies suck at metabolising it.
- Bedroom should be as dark and silent and comfy as possible. If there’s any way you can add comfort, do it.
- For persisting sleep problems: Change position or location. (E.g. turn completely around in your bed, feet at the headrest, or sleep on the couch if comfortable.) Brains are very good at linking a location with a state of mind, and changing things around can help if the thought of your bed stresses you out already.
For severe problems it’s probably always wise to check with a physician, or if there’s specific stuff in your head that keeps you awake to consider telling a friend or therapist about it. To distance yourself from your thoughts is something everybody can learn and it can be tremendously helpful with stuff like that.
I would also like to add:
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Cut down on blue light exposure (monitors, TV, mobile devices) as well as bright lights (ovehead white / fluorescent lights) after sunset. For digital devices, use a blue-light filter/night mode at the highest setting (takes a while to get used to it but your eyes will thank you for it). For overhead lighting, stop using white/fluorescent lights after sunset - preferably switch to LED lights which can change to a warmer color temperature and be dimmed, or switch to using desk lamps / night lamps instead of using your regular overhead lights. Smart lights have the added benefit of setting up a sleep routine, where you can simulate a sunrise, so you wake up naturally instead of relying on a harsh alarm.
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Speaking of alarms, avoid a them as far as possible. Use them only as a last resort, and don’t depend on them as a regular habit. Alarms don’t respect your circadian cycles and may just jolt you awake when you’re still in your deep/REM cycles, which leaves you feeling grumpy / cranky / tired. You should always aim to wake up naturally (body clock), or be aided by natural light (or a sunrise simulation) - which advances your melatonin phase, and starts production of cortisol.
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Make sure you’re getting enough magnesium. Usually eating a banana a day + a balanced diet does the trick. If you miss your daily banana by any chance, take a magnesium supplement. Or get a blood test done and consult a dietician if necessary to check your body is actually absorbing that magnesium.
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Also consider taking melatonin supplements. Again, check with your doctor first.
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Make sure you get enough exercise - at least 30 minutes a day, and don’t exercise too late in the day.
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Don’t eat a heavy dinner, and don’t eat too close to bedtime. Eating too early can also be bad if it makes you hungry before bedtime. Also, make sure you get some carbs in your dinner, because carbs make you sleepy. Maybe even add a bonus banana for extra magnesium.
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Maintain a consistent sleeping/workout/mealtime routine - even during weekends and holidays. Most people are tempted to sleep late on Fridays or weekends, but that just wreaks your cycle, and then you end up with Monday-itis - and it takes a full week for your body to recover the lost sleep, and just when your body is back to normal, you wreak your cycle again on the weekend - don’t do that.
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Personally, I would recommend avoiding caffeine completely, if you’re having trouble sleeping - at least until your circadian cycle is back to normal, and you’ve been getting consistently good sleep.
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Speaking of good sleep, I’d highly recommend getting a fitness tracker /smart watch to track your sleep quality and score. Generally you’d want to aim for a sleep score of over 80 (deep sleep 20-25% and REM sleep 20-25% of your total sleep cycle). Keeping a track of your sleep cycles / score is handy in understanding how your daily activities impact your sleep. Also tracking your sleep hours helps you keep track of your sleep deficit and let’s you plan your activities accordingly.
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Missed sleep isn’t easy to make up for. You accumulate sleep deficit over time and this takes a toll on your health. Most people think that getting a good 8hrs of sleep the next day would be enough to make up for one night of bad/missed sleep, but it’s not that simple - you not only need to make up your missed hours, you also need to get consistently good sleep for at least a week - sometimes even a couple of weeks, to make up for your deficit. See: https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/sleep-debt-and-catch-up-sleep
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Consider taking up meditation. Studies have shown that mindful meditation can significantly improve sleep quality.
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Other things/activities that calm your mind also help, such as taking chamomile tea and decaffinated green tea (or an L-theanine supplement), or listening to relaxing music. But be sure to set a timer on your music listening though, you want to make sure your auditory system gets a rest overnight. So don’t be tempted to leave on the TV overnight or use a white-noise generator - white noise may do more harm than good!
Speaking of alarms, avoid a them as far as possible. Use them only as a last resort, and don’t depend on them as a regular habit. Alarms don’t respect your circadian cycles and may just jolt you awake when you’re still in your deep/REM cycles, which leaves you feeling grumpy / cranky / tired. You should always aim to wake up naturally (body clock), or be aided by natural light by (or a sunrise simulation) - which advances your melatonin phase, and starts production of cortisol.
Okay I get where you’re coming from, but unless you’re retired or self-employed this is horrible advice. It’d be better to make sure you wake up at the same time every single day and hope your body naturally adjusts than be regularly late to your job or school and get fired or fail.
I disagree. If you go to sleep early and at a regular time and maintain a regular routine, then you’ll wake up at the same every day. Also, I didn’t say to avoid alarms completely I said use them as a last resort, in case you don’t naturally wake up in time.
As an example, I work 9-5 and wake up naturally anytime between 6:30 - 7:30 AM. My last resort alarm is set to 8:15AM, but I almost never enable it because I wake up well before that time. I only enable it incase my routine messed up for that day and I ended up sleeping late for whatever reason.
Okay, but what about people who have jobs where you really cannot tolerate a 1 hour wake up window? I hope you can realize you are in a privileged position to be able to have this kind of schedule and that this is really not possible for the vast majority of people.
As I said before, just sleep early if you want to wake up early. If you’re unable to wake up early naturally, that means you’re either sleep deprived and/or having poor quality sleep, or there are other factors affecting your sleep, as highlighted in my original comment and the parent comment.
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yes, all of that are very important as well. Sometimes I think about how exhausting it is to follow all these, and try my best to forget about the fear of not falling asleep when going to bed. I’ve noticed that overcoming that psychological “surrender” had a big impact on nights where I experience some problems - it’s important to keep calm and not spiral. But damn, it’s hard living like this.
one more thing: I have to limit the amount of stress inducing activities throughout a day/days so my brain is not in alert mode for too long. I have social anxiety so this mostly means spending enough time at home, not going to more than 2 different places during one day, etc.
I feel like the same thing happens to me. I tend to relate it to stress - whether it’s realized or not - so I call it stressed based insomnia, my mind just turns on things, big or small, and it’s random and I will not be able to sleep. Not that it helps, but I can relate
I never did work it out myself. Sometimes I was fine. Other times I didn’t sleep for 3 days. Was “sort of” independent of stress and so on, although higher average stress levels made it a little worse. Or maybe stress just feels worse combined with sleep deprivation. I tried various changes to my habits over the next few years, none of which made any difference – although some were good for other reasons (e.g. getting into better shape, eating better, and so on).
Went to go see a doctor. They brushed it off, so I went to go see another doctor. They prescribed a low dose of a sleeping pill.
Problem solved forever with no noticeable side effects. I think I’m on 1/2 the pediatric dose or something. Amazing how so little of something can make such a big difference in my life. Wish I had gone to see 2 doctors earlier.
Trazadone?
No, although I’m outside the US and not familiar with their medication names or medical system.
You ever get it in weird way that you are just lying in bed, tired but awake, waiting for your body to go sleep, and you start dreaming before actually falling asleep? This happens to me from time to time
Have you ever been evaluated by a psychiatrist? I used to have issues with insomnia and it turns out I’m neurodivergent (bi-polar). I was seeking sleeping pills and ended up entering treatment before I reached the point where it gets really messy (late 20s-early 30s). It’s manageable in part via a very rigid sleep-routine that only deviates if I go out with friends or go to a show / concert. And sleeping pills, but nothing like what I used to need to knock me out.
I struggled with this for decades and ended up noticing a pattern with the food I ate for dinners that were high in glutamates. Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter and thus if you are sensitive it will put your brain into overdrive and sleep is just not possible as basically you are drugged. Only effects a small portion of the population but I can tell you, I sleep very well now that I avoid high glutamate foods past 5pm as they tend to not make my mind race until several hours after consumption and once the effect kicks in, it does not wain off until 3-5am which kills my sleep. Avoiding glutamate has been the single biggest quality of life improvement along with focusing on my gut biome which when out of balance can make it harder to fall asleep as believe it or not, out guts make a lot of the neurotransmitters we need to function including melatonin which is the sleep neurotransmitters.
I wish you luck no matter the root cause. Feel free to ask me more about this.
Even though you’re right in that glutamate is a neurotransmitter, eating it doesn’t affect our brain chemistry at all. It can’t pass the blood-brain-barrier. Which is relieving since basically every food group contains it and flooding our brain with that would lead to violent epileptic seizures and certain death. Not insomnia.
And melatonin isn’t a neurotransmitter but a hormone.
So maybe you do in fact sleep better when avoiding specific food groups in the evening, but your explanation certainly isn’t correct.
Just putting this out there since glutamate is such a highly misunderstood molecule surrounded by many misconceptions, this one being a very common one.
I think the issue is that there are conflicting studies. Some like this one that has found some people to be glutamate sensitive.
https://myacare.com/blog/part-1-glutamate-sensitivity-real-myths-about-glutamate-msg-and-more
You can also find studies that say there is zero effect. Don’t doubt their results as they never tested me because if they did, they would have a different result. Plenty of other studies have also found some to be sensitive to glutamate so downplaying here might lead someone to dismiss my suggestion which is a real shame as there is Zero harm to cut out high glutamate foods for a period and see how sleep goes.
For me, I absolutely assure you that high glutamate foods really make me hyper. Like zero doubt here as I have experimented a lot with this right down to a teaspoon of MSG with non glutamate dinner that I know has no effect on my sleep to end up absolutely wired for 12hrs as if I slammed 5 cans of red bull and more. It is really awful and while you clearly do not have this issue, I kindly request you do more research before sharing as it is not as black and white as you just presented.
No what I’m saying is maybe you are sensitive (for whatever reason - from a exceptional metabolism to placebo, over other sensitivities/allergies, complex psychological effects, etc everything is possible) but it’s certainly not because glutamate is a neurotransmitter.
Neurotransmitters and the stuff in our bloodstreams (nutrients, hormones and so on) are two very different systems. Think of it as a river and a power grid. We all have this massive stream of different molecules in our bodies, and we have an elaborate information system made from electric and chemical signaling, like cables and batteries, working right beside it. The batteries might happen to utilize the same molecules that swim around in the river, but they still have nothing to do with each other. The river doesn’t touch the batteries, and your body very carefully decides which part it takes out of the water and into the batteries. Highly simplified of course, but that’s kinda how you can imagine why one doesn’t hurt the other.
If you have vitamin deficiencies, fortified food can also cause you to run at 120%. In some countries (e.g. US) Noodles and flour are fortified with B-vitamins. Maybe that’s what you’re experiencing? It happened to me a few times.
I should also add that many food additives also can ruin my sleep, although not nearly as much as high glutamate. Red dye no 40 is particularly bad but so are many other additives with names few can pronounce.
Maybe diary a bit, logging different aspects consistently for a couple weeks, and keeping a sleep log in the morning to see how well you did, if you continue to insomnia without correlation to anyone you’re tracking in your diary, change what you log.
I suggest food, social contacts, feelings during commute, future scheduling, hobby tracking.
You might not come up with the exact stressor at first, but if you find a pattern in something you’re tracking you may be able to determine what’s causing the pattern and be able to take corrective action.
If nothing else journaling can be fun!
I take melatonin daily, it works for me.
Try weed.
Try therapy
Why not both?
Weed therapy
