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An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia

ilya.sukhar.com

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Re: An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia

#21

Post by 00N8 »

I used to have a lot of trouble with insomnia, but a few years ago I discovered Drachinifel's YouTube channel about naval history https://m.youtube.com/@Drachinifel

Now I fall asleep listening to his 'drydock' Q&A episodes or lectures on historical campaigns, technologies, etc. & it's not really a problem at all anymore. It's been amazingly helpful.

I find the content interesting enough that I don't feel bored & restless, but not so urgent or exciting that it keeps me up. And I get multiple nights out of each episode by falling asleep fairly quickly

Just thought I'd share in case it works for anyone else

Re: An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia

#22

Post by n8henrie »

pedalpete wrote: post #18

It's great the author found that CBT-I worked for them, but I'm amazed it took them that long to find out about sleep hygiene. As a life-long insomniac, I learned about sleep hygiene in the 80s. I don't think they called it CBT-I back then. I've done the sleep restriction, I've done it all. However, the author did pick up on something I've been speaking with a lot of people about more recently. Usually people associa…

What are you referring to as "sleep hygiene"?

It seems like that phrase usually refers to the things the author mentions as being "necessary but insufficient," not to the CBT-I components that they had newly discovered (which I sometimes summarize as "teach yourself that sleep is not as important as you think it is, and then maybe you'll be able to sleep").

Re: An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia

#23

Post by [deleted] »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #9

Melatonin. There's loads of wisdom about improving sleep. Exercise, wind down rituals, avoiding caffeine, various diet ideas. Changing bedtime, changing alarm time. Nothing made a perceptible difference. Dropping caffeine was especially useless advice as it has no impact on my sleep but made me much less effective. Melatonin tablets however are magic. My pet theory is the CYP1A2 genotype which is known to control how…

[deleted]

Re: An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia

#24

Post by ein0p »

I cured my insomnia with MJ brownies. Eat one, and in 1.5 hours you can turn off your brain like it has a switch. I’d take them daily for a period of about 2.5 months. You can fairly easily make brownies cheaply at home using the cheapest store bought MJ. YMMV, I’m not a doctor, etc. I know what I’ll do if my insomnia comes back though. If it’s due to an overly active mind, you can easily make it a lot less active

Re: An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia

#25

Post by richardw »

00N8 wrote: post #21

I used to have a lot of trouble with insomnia, but a few years ago I discovered Drachinifel's YouTube channel about naval history https://m.youtube.com/@Drachinifel Now I fall asleep listening to his 'drydock' Q&A episodes or lectures on historical campaigns, technologies, etc. & it's not really a problem at all anymore. It's been amazingly helpful. I find the content interesting enough that I don't feel bored & rest…

Mine is Mindscape podcast. The AMA episodes are multi hour and filled with intelligent information. I do worry that on bad nights I might not be getting the sleep my brain needs because there’s a feed of input unrelated to my life.

Re: An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia

#26

Post by n8henrie »

frankus wrote: post #11

A subtext here might be to try sleep restriction when you have a period of funemployment or PTO and can deal with the consequences of being sleep-deprived and/or can distract yourself from nodding off e.g. by going for a walk, and while you don't need to operate machinery, e.g. a car.

It's a double-edged sword in some regard, though, as for some (like myself) the stress of a high-stakes job and the potential consequences of poor sleep are exactly what is preventing sleep in the first place.

I feel very lucky that the sleep physician that ran my CBT-I course helped my realize that I was able to function just fine on less sleep than I wanted, and that I sometimes functioned suboptimally on a full night's rest. Good sleep was neither necessary nor sufficient for me to passably do my job.

Thankfully, this realization helped me make more progress on my insomnia than years of sleep hygiene, and I suspect this helps me do my high-stress job better than "passably."

Re: An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia

#27

Post by szvsw »

ein0p wrote: post #24

I cured my insomnia with MJ brownies. Eat one, and in 1.5 hours you can turn off your brain like it has a switch. I’d take them daily for a period of about 2.5 months. You can fairly easily make brownies cheaply at home using the cheapest store bought MJ. YMMV, I’m not a doctor, etc. I know what I’ll do if my insomnia comes back though. If it’s due to an overly active mind, you can easily make it a lot less active

Not really a good idea IMO to recommend psychoactive solutions without consulting with a dr. Obviously MJ is relatively tame and safe, but insomnia can have a lot of other underlying factors/comorbidities which can also elevate risk for substance abuse (eg depression, OCD, etc) or improper self-medication, and developing a dependence on MJ as a sleep aid in those cases isn’t great. Can also quickly develop a tolerance etc, so if you are just using it to knock yourself out and not putting in other work to improve your sleep, it can quickly lose its effectiveness. As tame as MJ is, it’s still worth treating it with at least some amount of caution and respect when it comes to using it medically in conjunction with anything that borders on the sphere of depression and mental health IMO. Dual diagnoses are a thing after all!

It also might be totally fine and work out well for a lot of people (and possibly even better than other pharmacological solutions like ambien), but IMO you should probably not recommend MJ as a self-medicated sleep aid. If you are having serious sleep issues, see a doctor, and they may very well recommend trying out MJ, in which case go for it! Not trying to be a downer (ha) or anything, just trying to be realistic and at least ask people to be self-critical before adopting a self-administered psycho-active solution to a medical problem.

Re: An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia

#28

Post by pedalpete »

n8henrie wrote: post #22
pedalpete wrote: post #18

It's great the author found that CBT-I worked for them, but I'm amazed it took them that long to find out about sleep hygiene. As a life-long insomniac, I learned about sleep hygiene in the 80s. I don't think they called it CBT-I back then. I've done the sleep restriction, I've done it all. However, the author did pick up on something I've been speaking with a lot of people about more recently. Usually people associa…

What are you referring to as "sleep hygiene"? It seems like that phrase usually refers to the things the author mentions as being "necessary but insufficient," not to the CBT-I components that they had newly discovered (which I sometimes summarize as "teach yourself that sleep is not as important as you think it is, and then maybe you'll be able to sleep").

Sleep hygiene includes things like not staying in bed if you're not sleeping, keeping a sleep schedule, get out of bed and do something else, etc. These are the things listed as "unintuitive new variants", but they aren't new, or maybe they are new to them.

Re: An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia

#29

Post by ein0p »

szvsw wrote: post #27
ein0p wrote: post #24

I cured my insomnia with MJ brownies. Eat one, and in 1.5 hours you can turn off your brain like it has a switch. I’d take them daily for a period of about 2.5 months. You can fairly easily make brownies cheaply at home using the cheapest store bought MJ. YMMV, I’m not a doctor, etc. I know what I’ll do if my insomnia comes back though. If it’s due to an overly active mind, you can easily make it a lot less active

Not really a good idea IMO to recommend psychoactive solutions without consulting with a dr. Obviously MJ is relatively tame and safe, but insomnia can have a lot of other underlying factors/comorbidities which can also elevate risk for substance abuse (eg depression, OCD, etc) or improper self-medication, and developing a dependence on MJ as a sleep aid in those cases isn’t great. Can also quickly develop a toleranc…

Hence the disclaimer. All I can say is it worked for me. I make no further claims. I’ve also found doctors to be borderline useless for stuff like this. You might even get a prescription for addictive (and psychoactive) sleeping pills which you’ll then be taking for years. At least with MJ you can just stop taking it.

Re: An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia

#30

Post by WalterSear »

barfbagginus wrote: post #19

How effective is cbti against the non-restful sleep component of chronic fatigue syndrome? During these times I toss and turn all night and can't seem to fall asleep. I might also end up in some kind of near psychotic thought loops, where I tried to endlessly solve the current major stressors in my life. Or I may spend hours frantically and compulsively picking at acne on my face chest neck back and ass, in some kind…

> This idea that you can't stay in bed for longer than 20 minutes unless you can sleep is very challenging for someone who is already spending all day in bed because they're sick, and setting up this expectation, I've found, is a recipe for non-acceptance and self judgment.

That sucks, but tbh, it doesn't sound related to CFS (the sleep disturbances certainly do, but not the fugue-state rumination). Certainly sounds like it would exacerbate it though. I was dealing with a similar sounding cycles of 48 hr wakefulness. Awful, awful.

Regardless, may I suggest moving to a chair next to your bed? It's still getting out of bed, but maybe not so debilitating?

> I have had really negative effects from cognitive behavioral therapy in the past. Instead of letting me recognize and eliminate cognitive distortions, the CBT routines seem to add new forms of suffering rumination.

I would hazard that whoever taught them to you was not entirely competent, particularly since it sounds like they should have been known enough not to make you think that noticing one's distortions and dysphoria is all one needs to resolve them would make

If this was significantly in the past, things are quite different now. The last 20 years of mental health treatment are light years more effective than what came before, which was, IMHE mostly useless and often deleterious.

Moreover there are better ways to approach issues like the ones you describe, specifically DBT and its combination of distress tolerance skills, mindfulness and self-compassion. Of the three, it really sounds like what you are going through needs a whole lot of compassion.

https://www.amazon.com/Self-Compassion-Proven-Power-Being-Yo...

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