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Why Can’t We Fall Asleep?

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Re: Why Can’t We Fall Asleep?

#41

Post by xsace »

dimitar wrote: post #27

But it may be that the most important aspect of sleep hygiene has to do with light I'm not convinced. The most important thing for sleep is your eating habits - if you want to wake up early eat very early dinners. If you want to wake up at 8 am, your last meal of the day should be at 6 pm ( 14 hours before that ). This works so well, that it overrides the effects of alcohol and caffeine and often even how tired you a…

if you want to wake up early eat very early dinners.

Have a full breakfast to avoid sleeping during the day

Those 2 facts seem conflicting to me. In one case food deprivation helps you wake up while the other case it would make you feel asleep?

Re: Why Can’t We Fall Asleep?

#42

Post by dimitar »

xsace wrote: post #41
dimitar wrote: post #27

But it may be that the most important aspect of sleep hygiene has to do with light I'm not convinced. The most important thing for sleep is your eating habits - if you want to wake up early eat very early dinners. If you want to wake up at 8 am, your last meal of the day should be at 6 pm ( 14 hours before that ). This works so well, that it overrides the effects of alcohol and caffeine and often even how tired you a…

if you want to wake up early eat very early dinners. Have a full breakfast to avoid sleeping during the day Those 2 facts seem conflicting to me. In one case food deprivation helps you wake up while the other case it would make you feel asleep?

It is an interesting question (so I up-voted it), but they are not conflicting since it doesn't happen at the some.

I don't think it is really food deprivation - any healthy human being should be able to go 16 hours between meals once in a while (assuming regular meals most of the time). When you wake up you do wake up hungry, but you don't feel impaired yet.

Food deprivation may start after that - so you might get lethargic and sleepy because of it.

Re: Why Can’t We Fall Asleep?

#43

Post by abstractbeliefs »

xsace wrote: post #41
dimitar wrote: post #27

But it may be that the most important aspect of sleep hygiene has to do with light I'm not convinced. The most important thing for sleep is your eating habits - if you want to wake up early eat very early dinners. If you want to wake up at 8 am, your last meal of the day should be at 6 pm ( 14 hours before that ). This works so well, that it overrides the effects of alcohol and caffeine and often even how tired you a…

if you want to wake up early eat very early dinners. Have a full breakfast to avoid sleeping during the day Those 2 facts seem conflicting to me. In one case food deprivation helps you wake up while the other case it would make you feel asleep?

It seems more like "Having food in you keeps you awake" - so a big breakfast will keep you running until the afternoon, and an early dinner will mean the tanks less full when you want to sleep.

Re: Why Can’t We Fall Asleep?

#44

Post by Ntrails »

dimitar wrote: post #27

But it may be that the most important aspect of sleep hygiene has to do with light I'm not convinced. The most important thing for sleep is your eating habits - if you want to wake up early eat very early dinners. If you want to wake up at 8 am, your last meal of the day should be at 6 pm ( 14 hours before that ). This works so well, that it overrides the effects of alcohol and caffeine and often even how tired you a…

The question is about falling asleep, rather than waking up early right? Waking up early is simply a question of alarms/light/whatever.

Eating early will have no measurable impact on the ability to "wind down" and sleep as far as I can see, nor does that link seem to support it?

I can pretty much always sleep (I'm lucky) and I go to bed late (I'm dumb and play too much dota) - so I struggle with the waking up thing. This is despite not really eating in the evenings. Anecdotally I'm just saying I don't think there's one most important thing - just a set of factors and decisions which have an impact.

Re: Why Can’t We Fall Asleep?

#45

Post by bmurphy1976 »

I have not read the article (yet).

I used to have trouble falling asleep, to the point where I was concerned enough to go to a doctor about it, but I never followed up after the first visit. Instead I not very intentionally made some adjustments on my own which resolved my situation:

1. No lights/noise. Get rid of all blinky things, particularly blue and green lights. Faint red lights are tolerable. Black electrical tape is a gift, use it! Noisy computer fans are bad! Turn off the computer or move it into a different room.

2. Take better care of yourself! Eat better, get more exercise, and get up at a consistent time every morning. A healthy routine is important.

3. Don't worry about it! If you lay awake all night worrying about the sleep you are "missing" you are only making the problem worse. You don't need to worry about it, you will be fine. We miss sleep ALL THE TIME and are still functional members of society.

Once I stopped worrying, even the rare nights where I can't sleep go faster because I'm not focused on the clock. I use the time to think about more interesting and less worrisome things or get out of bed and do something productive.

Also, as others have said, Flux is great! I also have Twilight on my Android phone! I love them both.

Re: Why Can’t We Fall Asleep?

#46

Post by m_fayer »

ionised wrote: post #19
m_fayer wrote: post #10

I'm surprised the article mentions the blue light problem and devices but does not talk about flux, it's a little app that shifts the color temperature of your display to match what you're supposed to see at your location given the time of day. So, after sunset your screen basically turns orange. Although it's a bit annoying and takes some getting used to, I've tried it on and off and whenever I'm using it I fall asl…

F.lux is great. I agree that the shift towards red light on your monitor is weird at first but after a short while you get used to it, and your monitor starts to look very weird without it.

Now non-fluxed monitors at night somehow feel rude to me. Like someone waving a flashlight in my face.

Re: Why Can’t We Fall Asleep?

#47

Post by restalis »

Something I noticed in my falling asleep pattern (and did not found in the article yet) is the relation with the air I breathe. It's very easy for me to fall asleep somewhere in the middle of green forest and the other way around - I noticed that I sleep badly in a medium that for some reasons had insufficient aeration. Is it possible for the loss of sleep across the century to have something to do with the quality of our air?

Re: Why Can’t We Fall Asleep?

#48

Post by m_fayer »

alandarev wrote: post #34
m_fayer wrote: post #10

I'm surprised the article mentions the blue light problem and devices but does not talk about flux, it's a little app that shifts the color temperature of your display to match what you're supposed to see at your location given the time of day. So, after sunset your screen basically turns orange. Although it's a bit annoying and takes some getting used to, I've tried it on and off and whenever I'm using it I fall asl…

That would become advertising of a product then... Also, one can easily reduce/remove Blue from any monitor using hardware settings alone.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with saying something like "there are now several projects/products that aim to alleviate this problem, such as ProjectA and ProjectB." Also f.lux is freeware.

These apps are also a lot more feature rich than twiddling with display settings - you can customize their aggressiveness, set times, set timed breaks for color-sensitive work, sync to the sunset in your location, etc. You could do this all manually but I doubt anyone actually would.

Re: Why Can’t We Fall Asleep?

#49

Post by cafard »

dimitar wrote: post #27

But it may be that the most important aspect of sleep hygiene has to do with light I'm not convinced. The most important thing for sleep is your eating habits - if you want to wake up early eat very early dinners. If you want to wake up at 8 am, your last meal of the day should be at 6 pm ( 14 hours before that ). This works so well, that it overrides the effects of alcohol and caffeine and often even how tired you a…

If only.

I long to be able to turn in at 10 pm, but our household has for many years tended toward late dinner times (8:30 or 9 pm). But once it is daylight, I wake up. On weekends I might be able to manage an extra hour or two of interrupted sleep.

Re: Why Can’t We Fall Asleep?

#50

Post by restalis »

dimitar wrote: post #27

But it may be that the most important aspect of sleep hygiene has to do with light I'm not convinced. The most important thing for sleep is your eating habits - if you want to wake up early eat very early dinners. If you want to wake up at 8 am, your last meal of the day should be at 6 pm ( 14 hours before that ). This works so well, that it overrides the effects of alcohol and caffeine and often even how tired you a…

Having 5 meals per day, eating at 6 means for me falling asleep at 9, because at 10 I get hungry again and due to that hunger going to sleep afterwards becomes a nightmare. It's hard for me to imagine getting myself to fall asleep at 3 am in this condition!
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