Answer for question 4489.

[pameladean]

Edited to Add: Wow, I thought I was commenting on a friend's journal; I had no idea this would happen. I guess I'll leave it up. I didn't get into cats and how they can enhance or interrupt sleep, sometimes both in the same night.

Anyway, anecdotes about sleep or the lack thereof are welcome. However, please, please, please do not recommend sleep hygiene to me, not even just to note that it works for you. I don't want to hear about it. That kind of fanatical regimentation is absolutely guaranteed to stress me out and make whatever I am trying to accomplish much more difficult, maybe impossible.


[Error: unknown template qotd]Yes, I have trouble getting to sleep and also, no matter how easily I fell asleep earlier, I wake up five or six hours in and am awake for one to three hours; then, if there's time, I can go back to sleep and get a reasonable amount.

I have found ways to make falling asleep harder, so I avoid them. If I avoid caffeine within 8 hours of bedtime, using a computer or phone or watching TV within in an hour of bedtime, and eating within three hours of bedtime, I can go to sleep much more easily. I don't have any solution for the waking up and being restless for a while. Valerian, chamomile, melatonin, none of them works for that, and the people who say melatonin causes weird dreams are entirely right. I'd rather be awake, honestly.

Pamela

Comments

[inlaterdays.livejournal.com]

I'm on depression/anxiety meds which also help to regulate sleep, so that is not much help. But I find reading for an hour before bed relaxes me. If I watch tv (sometimes I do anyway) right before bed I have more trouble falling asleep.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

I cannot, of course, remember the name of the sleep pattern, but there's been some recent discussion of that sleep, wake, sleep pattern as entirely typical prior to good artificial light. Everybody slept like that. (At least in the northern hemisphere in winter. All that dark...)

Chamomile and I don't get on whatsoever.

Happy is the headweasel that can keep the brain from sleep, seems to be my primary experience of the subject.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

there's been some recent discussion of that sleep, wake, sleep pattern as entirely typical prior to good artificial light

That was my immediate thought, too. (I wish I'd known about that pattern sooner: I would have put it into the historical fantasy series.)

If it's possible to arrange your life to get enough sleep while still accommodating the wakeful period halfway through, I don't think there's anything to worry about.

[kakiphony.livejournal.com]

I have been thoroughly enjoying the (exceptionally) vivid dreams that has Singulair given me this allergy season. My dream journal is basically a short story book. Aside from being more vivid, it seems to have dream plots more coherent and less jumpy. I know it's considered an adverse side effect, but I think it's a huge bonus -- even when the dream contain zombies!

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of sleep hygiene. It sounds like an early 20th century pseudomedical fad.

Honestly, the only thing that helps me get to sleep is reading in bed, and if what I'm reading is too interesting it just backfires anyway. I get terrible insomnia from time to time and I've never been able to do much about it besides ride it out until I get exhausted enough for my body to reset itself.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Here's a NYT piece on first and second sleep. Plenty of others on teh internets.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/rethinking-sleep.html?_r=0

I personally embraced the hours of wakefulness when I had them. These days, I only wake up enough to take care of Nature's call.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there a character in Catch-22 who was mortally afraid that a cat would sleep on his face while he was asleep and suffocate him?

[rolypolypony.livejournal.com]

no matter how easily I fell asleep earlier, I wake up five or six hours in and am awake for one to three hours; then, if there's time, I can go back to sleep and get a reasonable amount. - that's me, this. I fall asleep without problems - well I do if DH reads to me! Falling asleep without the reading is more difficult, but still within the realm of ok. It's the waking up 5 hours later and then just being up for hours that kills me. Everyone's always "oh, maybe that means you just need 5 hours of sleep!!" Um, NO. I am exhausted all the blasted time! The only thing that seems to help even a bit - meaning I'm only awake for an hour in the middle of the night - is like your eating w/in 3 hours of bed - I have a spoon of honey right before bed. Hmm, maybe if I have like half the jar I won't wake up at 2am? Hmmm.

For something so necessary, why is sleep so difficult??

[pameladean]

Oh, yes, sometimes I do all those things right before bed -- have a snack, look at my phone or stay on the computer, whatever. But yes, there have been some studies about the effect of looking at electronic devices too close to when you want to sleep. I do read for an hour or so before bedtime, though I have to choose my material carefully. Some things are like caffeine -- I have to eschew them after five o'clock so I don't have nightmares.

P.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

I think I grok what you mean about how cats can enhance and interrupt sleep. I can't sleep without a cat, and sometimes I can't sleep with a cat.

Oh, kitty, be fuzzy and purring and warm my feet, or come stand on my bladder demanding to be pet. Either one.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Segmented sleep. I read Roger Ekirch's book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past some years back, and found his argument persuasive. Not that I went out of my way to look for anything criticizing it, mind you.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think it's more that following a routine consistently, especially one that avoids stimulating activity, before bed will cue your brain to start releasing sleep hormones and help you sleep better.

Much the same thing occurs to people who marvel at how much I read and say "I can't read. It makes me fall asleep." I say "You usually read right before bed, right?" and they say "How did you know?" Well...duh. You've trained yourself to fall asleep once you open a book. Whereas those of us who happily read at any time don't develop that association.

[prettymuchpeggy.livejournal.com]

My un-diagnosed severe sleep apnea gave me a bad habit of insomnia. While not diagnosed, I believe the insomnia was my sub-conscious' way of protecting me from ...well...brain death. Now, it is just a bad habit.

I find doing Sudoku helps....something about counting to nine over and over again.

[pameladean]

I imagine the kinds of dreams vary with the dreamer, and of course so does the tolerance for zombies. Melatonin made me have a lot of stressful but essentially boring anxiety dreams about lost luggage, the inability to close windows when a thunderstorm was coming, the inability to get a cat in a carrier, things like that. Really just no.

P.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

I find I sleep best with a loaded German Shepherd under my pillow.

I kid, but only kind of. It seems to be a PTSD thing. I can't sleep well or on a schedule unless I feel safe. During the Pook years, I had a sleep pattern similar to yours, although my breaks were different. Went to bed around midnight (since I worked a night shift), got up promptly at 2:30 to let the dog out, crawled back into bed to listen to the story in my head a while, fall asleep, get up around 8.

After the Pook passed, I was lucky to get three or four consecutive hours. Fortunately, my tiny pocket dragon puppy has stepped up and is Doing Good Work in the sleep department, and I'm slowly regaining some reliable sleep once more.

When I was abroad with my family this summer, I brought sleeping pills from my doctor. Between the jet lag and the strange places, it was the only way I'd have managed some real Zzzzzzzzs.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I downloaded apps to both my computer (f.lux) and my tablet (Twilight) that color-shift the screens away from blue light after the sun sets, which, at least according to the stuff I've read, is a large component of why screens mess with your sleep cycle -- the blue-shifted light registers on your brain as sunlight. I think it helps, but mostly I just like the mellow color, which feels much less glaring.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I remember being on one of the older tricyclics once, when I ended up sleeping way too much. After even dexedrine* couldn't keep the naps away, it was clear I had to try something else. (Me: Yeah, I took the dexedrine and still had to nap two hours later. Dr: Yeah, that's not supposed to happen. NEXT!)

* Prescribed! for real! (part of the '60s that I did NOT ever expect to visit)

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Cats have Needs, you know. NEEDS.

Signed,
Sleep interrupted frequently between 5 and 9 a.m. by someone who shall remain nameless but who strongly resembles A CAT

[cat-sanctuary.livejournal.com]

I'm a six-hour sleeper (and have been since age fourteen, so I had a long experience with "insomnia" before I accepted who I am). If I sleep less than six hours, either I'm ill (rarely) or I'm not feeling sick but am failing to digest something I ate (occasionally) or I've not been getting enough exercise (actually that's easy for me to do--I love exercising my body, but love exercising my brain even more).

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

This is one of my sleep patterns, too. I like it--it gives me a sense of experiencing a complete 24 hours (if in bits and pieces).

When you get up for the day, do you feel rested? I do, more or less, and I think that fact makes it easier for me to like this sleep pattern. If I felt exhausted, things would be different...

[alexfandra.livejournal.com]

I've heard it called "second sleep" and the historical basis is discussed in a fabulous book called "At Day's Close: Night in Times Past" by Roger Ekirch. Apparently in times past it was relatively common for people to go to sleep at sunset, sleep until midnight or 1 or so, wake up for 2-3 hours, then go back to sleep until dawn. And some people today still do this (my mother is one of them).

[intelligentrix.livejournal.com]

I have had terrible insomnia all my life, even as a small child. When I was living in NOLA, one of my neighbors got a dog which they put out into the yard at stupid-early in the morning whereupon it would whine constantly. On the advice of a friend I started wearing earplugs and discovered that I was able to fall asleep in a reasonable amount of time! It's been like a miracle cure and I've worn them every night since. YMMV of course, but I think that in my case I was highly sensitive to any little ambient sound which kept me from dropping off.