Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I want to improve my sleep quality. Here are some ways I go about getting a good night's rest:

- I use blue blocking glasses at night to stimulate melatonin production
- I rarely drink caffeine after 1 PM
- I will take 1mg of melatonin when I am traveling or when I feel like my sleep cycle gets off track (which is probably more than it should...) This is a good explanation of why more people should consider using low dose melatonin.
- I track my sleep via the "Sleep Cycle" app on my phone. I have 808 nights of data, and I average 8:29 minutes in bed each night.
- I use blackout shades
- If I read in bed, I use a nightlight that does not emit blue light
- I wear a sleep mask and ear plugs

I want to open this up by first asking if anyone else sleeps with ear plugs. I started using them when I first moved into an apartment with roommates who would watch loud TV shows after I went to bed. Now, I am hopelessly addicted. Really. I have a very hard time falling and staying asleep if I don't use ear plugs. I am very sensitive to loud noises in general, so maybe that plays a role.

Despite all my efforts, I am still not the best sleeper. I feel like there are only 1 to 2 nights per week where I wake up thinking "Ahh, my brain detritus has been fully cleaned away and I am 100% refreshed." Maybe my standards are too high?

Anyway, I would love to know if anyone else geeks out over sleep and what your best practices are. Maybe if I stop trying to optimize and chill out a bit that will solve all my issues

does Smashter fall asleep and wake up at the desirable times? if not, light therapy might help.

I do some of what you do (blackout shades, melatonin if I travel across timezones, etc.).

Two additional things:
- Instead of ear plugs I use a fan every night. Great white noise.
- I love it cold. 65 or so.

Get a cuddle buddy who is a good sleeper.

I don't wear earplugs, but have considered -- we have a dog that snores sometimes. Otherwise, I like it dark and cool. I sleep better if I have had sunlight and physical activity the previous day.

If you are sleeping more than 8 hours on average, it might be too much.

I would not read in bed. Only use it for sleeping and "cuddling".

You might try lithium orotate if you think your sleep issues are anxiety-related or you are having circadian rhythm issues.

My wife sleeps with one earplug in.

White noise generator, pick a setting, leave it.

The bedroom is for sleep and play. If you aren't ready for either, stay out of bed.

I also believe that a cold room makes for good sleep. I compromise with my wife, cool bedroom, preheated bed. Electric blankets are cheap and efficient. But it has to be turned off at bedtime. Otherwise she would bask in a 95 degree bed, and conduct that heat to me.

I sleep with a cpap, and I'm usually out in less than 5 minutes. Routine is key.

This is because sleeping is a skill. It should be developed like one.

Thanks for the tips, all.

@everyone -- I have a fiance to cuddle with. It is of no help. She sleeps like a rock. I am jealous.

@Brute -- I should look into light therapy more.

@Dragline -- whoa. Never heard of that, will have to do some research.

@Riggerjack -- one earplug?! What is this madness you speak of. That would drive me crazy. I agree, it's probably all about routine. I envy your ability to go to bed quickly with the CPAP. Maybe this was burying the lede, but I was diagnosed with mild sleep Apnea a couple years ago. I tried the CPAP machine and thought it was the devil incarnate. I lasted about 6 months before ditching it. It's possible I need to give it another go. I have a deviated septum that I have tried to fix via surgery (twice!) but it didn't work.

Getting off topic, but for anyone considering that surgery it is advised to wait at least a couple months after the operation before playing high-level basketball. I had a ball hit me in the nose and I'm pretty sure that didn't help the healing process.

+1 on the cold bedroom. I sometimes leave my window open even in the dead of winter.

It does make getting up harder though.

Marihuana.

I only mention the cpap, because it is part of the routine. You should certainly look into it again. Those who need cpap, and don't use them, need less to retire on, but that is no solution.

My wife wears one earplug, because she is a side sleeper. Why plug an ear that is against a pillow? We gave two cats that get locked up in a spare bedroom at night, to minimize shenanigans. What they do get up to disturbs her sleep, so an earplug. I get woken by deer and rabbits but that is no worry. Up, verify the source, go back to sleep, no problem. Deer thumping around in the backyard at night is common enough my wife calls em zombie deer. Always moving in the woods, just outta sight.

I used to work in construction, with quite a bit of shift work. Night shift, day shift, night again in the same week could happen, and did. 4 years in the army. A summer in Alaska, with no nights. Getting sleep as sleep is available is a survival skill.

I think your standards may be a bit high. I had insomnia so bad for so long I ended up in the doctor's office in tears begging for something. I had tried melatonin, cutting caffeine, blackout shades, no blue light after supper, cold, warm, sleeping by myself, "cuddling", anything.

I'm a very happy person if I'm 80% refreshed or 100% refreshed a few times a week. If I'm able to go to work, function and be happy that I am awake and with my friends and family, I'm satisfied.

7Wannabe5 wrote:Get a cuddle buddy who is a good sleeper.

just the worst. very few things are more annoying than laying in bed next to a human that's sleeping.

This is one of those issues where you are deciding between two diametrically opposed solutions:
- shaping your environment to yourself
- shaping yourself to your environment

Rigger said that sleeping in a loud, light place is a learned skill. I agree. Exposure (or immersion) to noise and light at night may encourage your brain to get better at prioritizing noises/lights and determining which to filter and which represent a threat. Maybe start with a night when you know you don't have to be 100% the next day and try sleeping with a radio playing in another room. See if you can train your brain to up the endurance to noise.

One of my favorite stories, which I am sure I told here before, is of the homeless woman who was offered a bed in a shelter after years of sleeping out on the cold hard sidewalk. The first night she had to sleep on the floor beneath the bed because she found the soft warmth of the bed uncomfortable. She had become accustomed to cold concrete.

For tens of thousands of years our ancestors slept like this.....



Presumably they got enough sleep to survive and function. The African bushveld can be a loud place at night. Cicada beetles are literally as loud as power saws.

@Ego your post is a nice wake-up call and reminds me of this fascinating paper on ancestral sleeping habits.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1119282/

Time to stop being a baby and go cold turkey on my ear plugs.

I'm reminded of the scenes in "My Cousin Vinny" where Joe Pesci's character, a wise-ass lawyer from New York, can't sleep at all in the country but sleeps like a baby when he gets thrown in jail and there are all kinds of sirens, doors banging and other human commotions.

There's much to be said for habituation. And plain old physical exhaustion. I never have trouble sleeping on backpacking trips no matter how hard the ground is or what kind of noises (mostly other humans in the group) I hear.

I have slept in C130s. Unstable, incredibly loud, tangle my Kevlar helmet in the webbing, out for most of a 1 hour flight.

At home, I have a white noise generator, that plays the sound of frogs. I got it when I lived in the suburbs, to raise my sleeping noise threshold. Nieghbors a few doors down slamming a car door doesn't wake me. My dog going through the dog door does, just enough to verify the source, roll over, and back to sleep.

I have motion sensitive exterior lights. When one of the lights trip, or in the summer, with windows open, there is a noise, I get up, check the source, go back to sleep. A glock, a flashlight and a night vision scope are within reach. Waking in the night should not be an adrenaline rush, it should be the norm.

Sleep shouldn't depend on uninterrupted silence, we didn't evolve for that.

BTW, I skipped a step in an above post. There are times when it is time to sleep, but I'm not yet ready for sleep. At these times, it is tempting to read, surf, whatever. This is all wrong. The last thing you want is any kind of stimulation at this time. I use this time to massage my wife's back/neck/shoulder. This is relaxing for us both, and after 15 minutes or so, I can roll over and sleep.

I have no experience equivalent to being in a C130, but your comment reminds me that I can almost always fall asleep when I'm on a plane. Even when I forget my earplugs. That makes me think it's a psychological barrier more than anything.

Also, I now feel like even more of an entitled, pampered, whiner after listening to Peter Attia and Jocko Willink on a podcast. An MD (pre-residency labor law changes) and a Navy Seal dive into some sleep deprivation stories that are pretty hardcore. http://jockopodcast2.com/2017/01/04/56- ... ter-attia/

Yesterday I typed the above post. Last night I was woken by Mrs. Ego snoring like a buzz saw and stared at the ceiling for a while wondering if the universe was playing a joke on me. Gave her a shove and she shut up. This morning she asked how I slept and I told her about her buzz-sawing. She told me to stop whining.

I'm starting to wonder if she reads my posts here then trolls me in real life. Wouldn't put it past her.

Maybe I am your wife...??

That's just mean!

No way she'd figure out how to upload an avatar. You had me going there for a minute.