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Dealing with Insomnia

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Re: Dealing with Insomnia

#91

Post by mike_h »

manmal wrote: post #77

For some people, improving (reducing) CO2 levels in the bedroom might be low hanging fruit. Ever since moving to a new place with a controlled ventilation system, I had no dream recall, and often suffered from incredible fatigue and tiredness. I suspect that I was low on REM phases, but never got a sleep study done. Finally, I started opening the sleeping room window ever so slightly, by turning the window handle a b…

If you’re curious about CO2, there are a number of home CO2 monitors available these days. It was really enlightening to me to see the levels rise well above optimal within just a few hours of sleeping with the room sealed.

Re: Dealing with Insomnia

#92

Post by andrewaylett »

jedberg wrote: post #7

Ironically I'm reading this as the clock reads 5:23am and I'm just winding down for the night. Out my office window I can see the sun rising. I've broken this habit in the past. When my wife was working as a teacher and I dropped her off at work every morning, I was up and out every weekday at 7:30am, and at work by 7:50. I got a ton of stuff done in the morning because no one else started showing up until 9am at lea…

When I had flu before Christmas, I found it really difficult to sleep and breathe. Wound up going to bed later and later until I wrapped around.

Similar to https://xkcd.com/320/ but not deliberately.

Re: Dealing with Insomnia

#93

Post by Barrin92 »

I used to have bad anxiety and panic attacks when I was in my early 20s and in university and also dealt with insomnia a lot. Exercise and the other tips in the thread can help if people can't sleep due to bad sleep hygiene or just the problems of modern lifestyles, but when the reason are mental issues or stress and anxiety which seems to affect a lot of people during the pandemic it might not always help.

What helped me a lot was to pick up an advice I got on fear during panic attacks from a psychologist, which is to let go of control. If one tries to control panic and can't then it's easy to develop a 'fear of fear' when you fail, as it's ultimately simply not possible to control these things always.

Same helped with insomnia for me. It's very easy to be worried of going to sleep if all you think about is how long you're going to lie awake, how good your quality of sleep is and so on and you end up wired the moment you go to bed and it becomes its own mental thing. While it sounds dumb and trivial to simply stop worrying about it, it's actually a relatively hard thing to do.

It didn't solve sleep problems for me completely, which isn't the point, but it's made me sleep a lot better, and most importantly made me less judgemental about being tired a day. Mechanical solutions like forcing myself into a rythm with discipline never tended to work for me well.

Re: Dealing with Insomnia

#94

Post by flowerlad »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #63
flowerlad wrote: post #46

Try magnesium. Stress depletes magnesium. The cells in our body need magnesium and calcium for their operation. When you're low on magnesium your cells can't go into off state. When that happens your muscles become stiffer and you can't sleep. Magnesium supplementation is the solution. "Supplementation of 500 mg of Mg has been associated with significant improvement in the insomnia severity index, sleep time, sleep e…

Thanks for providing the links on the benefits of sleep linked to magnesium, but can you provide a link for this: > Stress depletes magnesium.

Just found this:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507250/

"extended periods of stress result in progressive Mg deficit"

Re: Dealing with Insomnia

#95

Post by joegahona »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #20

If you suffer particularly bad insomnia, I encourage you to do a sleep study. It was life-changing for me. I was able to discover that I suffer from narcolepsy, a rare but nonetheless real condition. It's not at all like most people think: you don't randomly fall asleep during the day. But your sleep schedule isn't really a schedule so much as a stochastic random walk. Even if you don't have a rare disorder, there's…

I just had a sleep study, but because of snorting, not insomnia. I was playing around with one of the many snoring apps available now and was mortified at how I sound all night! They gave me a take-home apparatus to wear one night an then I had a call with a doctor who interpreted the results to me. He said I wasn't a horrible case but recommended I try a CPAP for a few months, which I'm now in the process of getting.

Re: Dealing with Insomnia

#96

Post by vl »

caymanjim wrote: post #29

I think my biggest problem is that I don't exhaust myself physically. Humans are built for constant labor. We're the endurance-running champions of the animal kingdom. As recently as last century, almost all jobs were physically exhausting. Mind work is exhausting as well, but in a different way. At the end of a strenuous day of coding, and endless meetings, I'm drained. Completely wiped out. I feel physically exhaus…

It's an individual journey for everyone. For me it's:

  * Regular exercise

  * Earplugs (at night)

  * Light control - dim lights and no computer use before bed.

  * Schedule
Night is definitely better than day in all aspects, but the price of staying awake is too high. I can't stand noise-canceling headphones, but lucky enough regular over-the-ear headphones with Pink Floyd work well enough for me.

Modern offices suck big time (penny-wise pound-foolish), but it looks like in many cases office workers are going to be put out to work "from home". In OP's case specifically he works from home, so if worse comes to worse, at the end of the day he can move to quieter, more rural part of Netherlands.

Re: Dealing with Insomnia

#97

Post by beeman »

I have rarely felt so identified with a blog, for a huge part it's like I'm reading my own story. Thanks a lot for sharing!

I'm going to read the book you mentioned and I'll consider taking magnesium as suggested here.

Thanks!

Re: Dealing with Insomnia

#98

Post by PragmaticPulp »

flowerlad wrote: post #46

Try magnesium. Stress depletes magnesium. The cells in our body need magnesium and calcium for their operation. When you're low on magnesium your cells can't go into off state. When that happens your muscles become stiffer and you can't sleep. Magnesium supplementation is the solution. "Supplementation of 500 mg of Mg has been associated with significant improvement in the insomnia severity index, sleep time, sleep e…

Magnesium had zero noticeable effect for me until I tried Magnesium Glycinate. I later tried pure Glycine without magnesium and realized that it was the Glycine that helped my insomnia, not the magnesium component. There are several studies showing positive effects of Glycine on sleep induction.

Magnesium is harmless to try at low doses, but be warned that there is a substantial amount of low quality information about Magnesium on the Internet lately. Despite what you might read, it is possible to consume too much magnesium. Magnesium accumulates in the body with a very long elimination time (days or weeks) which means overdose can occur after months of supplementing at the same level. Anecdotally, Gwern recorded a subtle downward trend of cognitive test scores over time during both of his Magnesium trials.

If you choose to supplement with magnesium, keep the doses low. Don’t escalate dosing in an attempt to capture greater effects. The high doses used in studies are for proving a point on a short duration study, so long-term dosing is likely lower than clinical study dosing. Also be careful to note the difference between magnesium salt content and pure elemental magnesium content of the supplements you’re taking, because the two measurements shouldn’t be confused with each other.

Re: Dealing with Insomnia

#99

Post by joveian »

flowerlad wrote: post #46

Try magnesium. Stress depletes magnesium. The cells in our body need magnesium and calcium for their operation. When you're low on magnesium your cells can't go into off state. When that happens your muscles become stiffer and you can't sleep. Magnesium supplementation is the solution. "Supplementation of 500 mg of Mg has been associated with significant improvement in the insomnia severity index, sleep time, sleep e…

I have found that 500mg Magnesium helps me stay asleep as much as anything and maybe helps get to sleep a bit earlier, however it also leaves me much more tired than usual the next day. I get a fair amount of magnesium in my diet so I think it might be too much for me, however less doesn't seem to help me sleep. OTOH, I have unusually sever sleep issues so it may be more helpful for many people.

Re: Dealing with Insomnia

#100

Post by lr4444lr »

caymanjim wrote: post #29

I think my biggest problem is that I don't exhaust myself physically. Humans are built for constant labor. We're the endurance-running champions of the animal kingdom. As recently as last century, almost all jobs were physically exhausting. Mind work is exhausting as well, but in a different way. At the end of a strenuous day of coding, and endless meetings, I'm drained. Completely wiped out. I feel physically exhaus…

> Humans are built for constant labor. We're the endurance-running champions of the animal kingdom

That is a contentious assertion. Yes, perhaps we can go for longer distances than other primates, but it doesn't mean that this has anything to do with our ideal exhaustion, nor that it was something we did regularly, nor that it is free of negative side effects, nor that other primates couldn't do it if we could design some (very unethical) experiments.

Experiments on the health effects of high intensity short duration exercise are very compelling.

I agree with you that we are not generally adapted to modern lifestyles, but there are a whole host of other factors to insomnia in that grab bag (terrible diets eaten year round, artificial light, social isolation).

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