2024 sleep masterpost

[azurelunatic]

Occasionally people on the internet ask for the community's collected wisdom about sleep. This is what I can think of for my own sleep routines, tips, and tricks, plus what I do about various confounding factors. Maybe one of these days I'll go through the paperwork from that wretched sleep class and write up my notes on that, too.

I have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, primary insomnia, sleep maintenance insomnia, and ADHD.


Equipment/Apps:
Phone!
• Blue light & brightness filter (built in to Android)
• Timed Do Not Disturb turns on at 11pm and turns off when I unplug from the charger or when my first alarm goes off (built in to Android)
• long charger cable that reaches from the plug well off the bed to any side of my pillow (there is a horrifying experience someone had with an extension cord and a half-unplugged charger and a necklace)
• dim light I can turn on if I'm too tired to plug in my phone in the dark (F you Mr. Sherlock Holmes)
• sleep tracking app (helpful in spotting trends and logging disturbances); I use Sleep as Android, by Urbandroid
• smartwatch that integrates with sleep app enough to work as an additional logging sensor (I tried using it as the primary sensor but kept exiting the app on the watch in my sleep; my workaround is that I have it set up to use the watch but then click the "track without watch" button)
• multiple alarms when I need to wake up (F you Mr. Elementary Holmes); first alarm tries to wake me, snooze to attempt again, subsequent alarms in case I turn off the first instead of snoozing it
• Android automatically tells me how many hours until the alarm I'm currently enabling, which is less math that I have to do in my head when I'm calculating for driving safety
• white noise generator in sleep app, set to Ocean Beach, with random extra sounds turned on but fairly low volume. The extra sounds (seagulls, boat horns, etc) keep my brain from acclimating too well to the sound's loop such that random house sounds won't immediately snap me out of a doze
• calculatedly not-quite-boring game(s); I use a skip-bo on easy mode if I need to play a game, and I have the colors set to dark greys and reds so it won't be bright at me. It's engaging enough that I won't put it down to start doomscrolling, but not so engaging that I will keep myself awake to keep playing. I had a dice game on a previous model of phone that served the same purpose and had the same level of color control.
• priority filter on notifications: house chat, my child, and a few others get through Do Not Disturb so I won't miss important things (built in to Android)
• Twitter's implosion has kept the doomscrolling there to a minimum
• I'm better about not looking at email with Do Not Disturb on so I don't see incoming notifications, and there aren't emergency emails (either it's a phone call, or it's not an emergency)
• bedtime/sleep specific home screen with all the apps organized so I don't have to search through more distracting apps to get to what I need
• Libby app with audiobooks of cozy mysteries I've read before, audiobook speed at 65% & an hour timeout (and knowing that the heroine meets peril at about 90% of the book, so I can save that part for not-sleep and start the next book)
• IFTTT and/or Tasker powered emergency contact call filter: a single call from a specific list (IFTTT, set up per number) or a starred contact (Tasker) resets my ring/notification volume to Very Loud. A second call from that list will therefore ring; my emergency contacts have been instructed how to use it, and are less concerned about waking me up if they should happen to call during a nap. (This does mean that a single call from the emergency contact will allow the next non-emergency contact who calls to wake me up, but that's a risk I've accepted.)
• notepad app on phone so I can succinctly write out thoughts I absolutely have to save without turning on a light

Automated lights/etc!
• The main LED lights in the living room start dimming and reddening a little before 11 pm (5 tentacled bulb lamp by the couch & strip of LEDs by the fireplace)
• All the living room lights, not just those, turn off at 11:30 pm after two verbal warnings (ok, except for some fairy lights, for safety)
• The TVs turn off about 30 seconds later
• The computer that runs the TV can be verbally or keyboard told to pause the current running media (video or audio) in a way that doesn't require turning the screen back on
• LED lights in the bedroom that turn on very dim red at 11:30 or when we say goodnight to the living room; it generally doesn't wake up anyone who is already asleep, and reduces the amount of loud blundering around in the dark
• widget on bedtime home screen to toggle bedroom lights (usually off) silently as well as by voice command or searching through the Home Assistant app to find the switch
This situation uses:
• Zigbee lights and a Zigbee dongle
• a few wifi lights and a secondary network, since we don't want to trust the makers of random wifi appliances to be sufficiently unhackable
• "Home Assistant", a software package and a dedicated mini-computer (will cheerfully run on a Raspberry Pi) in the living room and bedroom
• Some kind of infrared remote control dongle on the computer
• A wifi/infrared universal remote control puck that can be controlled by Home Assistant (the specific one is now discontinued)
• Several extremely clever little automations put together by Belovedest, some of which I requested


Alarms
• Different sound for routine alarms vs. single-purpose alarms
• Rotating the alarm sound if I get habituated
• maxing out the number of possible snoozes in settings, so if I automatically snooze it repeatedly, it keeps trying
• Multiple alarms: one for the first time I should attempt to be awake, followed by more so I can't accidentally snooze/stop through my doctor appointment; an additional alarm for the out the door warning
• calendar appointment to announce bedtime with a ding on the computer and a visible notification on the phone; this is also calculated to not wake me up because it won't get through Do Not Disturb
• f.lux bedtime reminder on computers
• Android (Fitbit?) bedtime reminder
• Scheduling sleep time as a block on my calendar so I don't schedule anything over it (more in use when I have to get up at a specific time)


Less technological items

Bed
• a mattress that is not actively injuring me & is rated for more than one heffalump
• body pillow
• various bedding that lets me sleep on my side without injuring my shoulder, including a buckwheat hull pillow and using rolled-up/wadded-up cotton blankets as pillows some of the time
• Separate blankets from Belovedest
• a range of cover options, from super warm to very light so I can add or subtract in the middle of the night without thinking too much about it
• tried a weighted blanket but it was a little too heavy for me so I rolled it up and put it in a pillowcase as one of the more structural pillows
• pillow to keep my knees from knocking together

Light control
• Blackout curtains and roller shade; have replaced the curtains more than once to get satisfactory results.
• The window facing east has curtains that go below my bed-based eye line. It doesn't have a cornice or valance, but that would be a next step if the light blocking became not enough.
• The window facing south has a roller shade and the rejected blackout curtains that weren't enough on the east window. This is about the right length there due to bed placement.
• using the corner of one of my heavy cotton blankets as an eye mask that doesn't set off immediate sensory hell & working on a weighted eye mask, since I will pull off masks that fasten at the back of the head, as well as pulling off hats in my sleep
• various LEDs in bathroom are bright enough so I don't have to turn on the big light when I make a midnight visit; also used to have a nightlight
• controlling the amount of light coming in from the hall
• the aforementioned living room light settings so we "buzz off to bed" as Dad used to phrase it
• F.Lux program on living room TV machine & my desktop, set to very strict blue light filter in most cases
• Android light filter
• the aforementioned bedroom LED bulb automation situation for low red light as a bedtime prep light
• adjustable color temperature desk lamp
• Used a sunrise lamp when I had the early morning job, which made mornings Less Terrible (unfortunately the LEDs started making a sound when not at full power, which took it out of consideration for a slow fade bedtime)
• bedside lamp with dimming and auto-off feature
• masking tape over the very bright blue LED on the Home Assistant microphone in the bedroom (it's re-purposed old equipment or we might have chosen something different); my exact words were approximately "make it Not" while sobbing. We initially used some cloth. It can still be seen for troubleshooting purposes but no longer keeps me up.
•

Other Infrastructure

Cats & miscellaneous noise
• Yellface no longer starts begging for breakfast at sunrise, after her thyroid treatment
• Yellface does start begging for breakfast at Belovedest's first alarm, and resumes begging at every snooze-based reactivation (she's very smart, at least around things related to food) but once they've visibly stopped stirring she shuts up and sits on them and waits for them to move/the alarm to go off again
• Belovedest has lengthened their snooze interval from 10 minutes to 30 so I can often sleep through this portion of the morning
• Closing the bedroom door at cat-feeding time, to keep Roomba-pet (a Roomba, not a cat) out and not accidentally closing Yellface in with me

Temperature regulation: I'm fat and in surgical menopause. I overheat at the drop of a thermometer. One of the useful things I did get out of that wretched Sleep Hygiene class was that you shouldn't be a hero about temperature, you do need to be the right temperature for sleep
• Heat pump with a pretty good thermostat
• (retired the portable air conditioners that kept the bedrooms cool even if the rest of the house was Very Hot)
• (retired the smartish window fan that would turn off/on at a certain temperature so we wouldn't wake up freezing)
• tiny positionable personal fan with three speeds: allows me to cool off even during the cold season without disturbing my bedmate; it's hanging by one of its bendy tripod legs from a repurposed tension rod shower shelf so it won't confuse the sleep trackers
• personal heat/cold jobbies:
- hot water bottle for feet when cold
- towel-wrapped ice pack when hot; I have sewn an old towel into a long sack so I can drop the ice pack into the bottom and wrap the rest around so even if it comes somewhat unwrapped it won't necessarily get fully loose and cold me awake
• sometimes a shower before bed
• drinking water bottle in bed, sometimes with ice or hot, optionally hot with peppermint herb tea

Medical/Meds:
• Treatment of miscellaneous medical problems that can cause discomfort
• pre-medicating certain things and medicating at the first sign of An Problem for others
• Surgical correction of deviated septum & excessively large turbinates. Those had caused chronic nasal congestion.
• Treated chronic nasal congestion aggressively
- antihistamine regulated to not dry out too badly
- steroid spray
- saline spray
- neti pot
- swabs easily accessible in bathroom to manually clear nose
- dedicated Vaseline by bed, to make swabbing out easier
- therefore was possible to sleep with mouth closed most nights
• Sleep apnea screening
- lowest diagnosable level; medical outcome not actually improved with CPAP & I didn't notice improvement that couldn't be explained by other means
- it kept blowing snot towards my lungs
- side-sleeping is a legit treatment for sleep apnea
- pillows to position jaw Just So
• Reprogrammed my brain about sleep schedule guilt (morality should not attach to sleep schedules! In a pre-industrial agricultural society it is definitely inconvenient for someone to be asleep after first light but somebody also needs to be able to stay up with the sick cow!!)
• got a sleep neurologist
• fired the bad sleep neurologist who believed in CBT-i
• melatonin in dinner pills at 0.5mg, not at bedtime at 3-5+ mg, per the good sleep neurologist
• some people can sleep dep and gaslight themselves into a new sleep schedule (CBT-i) but it makes some other people suicidal and generally unstable. Guess which I am.
• bedtime meds stored by bed, not somewhere else in the house
• bedtime meds in a weekly case, not counted out manually every night, so it's fewer actions to take them and so I will see if I have or haven't taken them
• my friend swears by timer caps for any scheduled meds, to see when you last opened the container
• Meds with a stimulant effect taken in the morning
• sleep & sleep-promoting meds
- trazodone is a sedating antidepressant which doesn't have all of the same problems as many other categories of sleep med
- anxiety meds help with not getting to sleep/waking up in the middle of the night thinking obsessively about distressing topics or things I need to do
- Gabapentin (sedating nerve pain med) taken at night, & nerve pain WILL wake me up (thanks, Taxol!)
- Naproxen for miscellaneous aches and pains, as it's supposed to be for 12 hours rather than 8-ish like ibuprofen
- my "as needed" IBS antispasmodic med in the nightly box because spasms will wake me up and I should pre-medicate
• Additional compartmented pillbox with single day/night amounts of all the digestive/additional pain remedies I'm likely to need, pre-cut if necessary. This means I can't (badly) over-medicate by accident, am unlikely to grab the wrong ambiguously shaped pill, and don't need to get up in order to access meds
• travel bottle for approximately 24 hours +1 of my srs bzns pain meds
• A small hard case & bag to carry my digestive emergency & srs bzns pain meds with me at all times, so I don't have to maintain as many separate bottles as I do for the Ritalin
• Storing the necessary amount of my Ritalin by bed and taking it at my first alarm if I absolutely positively have to be awake (this is why we don't de-label those bottles for ordinary reuse for Several Months: main bottle, purse bottle, and bed bottle, with the two other bottles getting a very limited supply that it won't kill me to lose in case I misplace one.)
• Separating my AM pills into before meal / after meal on a weekly basis, so I don't have to think about what pills I'm taking before I'm coherent
• Lip balm by bed for chapped lips
• an unventilated surface under my ear results in an ear infection if there's any dampness. This is bad news because I'm a side sleeper. Worse news when I've taken a night shower or happen to live in Arizona and my ears generate sweat. My pillow situation is set up carefully to avoid this.
• Psyllium fiber capsule taken with water around 4-5 am to combat "mechanical hunger" -- my blood sugar is fine (chemical hunger) at that time but my digestive system sometimes thinks it should have something with some bulk to it, and reacts painfully if it doesn't. Unfortunately this is because I have slept through my natural dinner time, not overshot my breakfast. Ideally mechanical hunger and chemical hunger will line up, but Not Always.

Thirst, etc.
• Belovedest has a nice body (heh)
• water bottle in bed, always topped off before bedtime
• bathroom before lying down, and then again a little before I think I might be able to sleep
• dehydrating meds mostly moved to morning
• blood sugar control
• vitamin c helps me combat the ravenous thirst I get after too many preserved meats; taking it with my evening meal or at bedtime means I don't have to drink a ridiculous amount that has me peeing every hour
• No chance of becoming pregnant and therefore nobody tap-dancing on my bladder
- learning how much sleep deprivation was involved in traditional biological parenthood was the second major driver of deciding to never become pregnant. Learning about morning sickness was the first.
• if I have to poop I can't fall asleep so I get up promptly for that rather than thinking I can fall asleep and wait until later
• getting my nose fixed reduces the amount of water I need to drink to keep my airway free of glue, which means less for my bladder to think about at night

Procedure/Schedule:
• Never again taking a job that means I have to be awake too early on a daily basis
• my executive function goes to bed relatively early; if there are any tasks standing between me and bed, get them done well before that point
• my executive function doesn't wake up early either; laying out necessary morning objects lets me fake functionality before I can think through things
• conditioning any necessarily immediately pre-sleep tasks in a chain where it takes more energy to break the chain than to carry it out (fill water bottle, visit bathroom, shower, brush teeth with the toothbrush that lives in the shower)
• laying out clothing not just before bed, but as early as possible
• laying out bag for morning not just before bed, but as early as possible
• detailed morning checklist that details every departure from routine, prepared again as early as possible and assuming I can read and follow simple instructions but cannot necessarily break down complex tasks or optimize their order
• demi-permanent signs detailing repeating complex tasks in their optimized order in the place where Morning Me or Bedtime Me will have to think about them. (example: a sign taped on the mirror, saying bedtime pills and water first, then floss, then inhaler, then rinse mouth, then and only then the special toothpaste that needs to be followed by half an hour of no drinking or rinsing)

Convenience & comfort
• If any little thing makes me go "oh but that's effort" or "I can power through this", what if ... Not?
• duplicate phone and watch charger by bed (also ADHD place-bound item strategy)
• should also have a headphone cord
• fresh underwear, cotton (I recognize that some experts say that none underwear is best for overnight, but that doesn't work for me)
• ideally I would put the bed into a sleepable state immediately upon leaving it; this is different than "making the bed" as that implies an aesthetic that appeals to authoritarian regimes like some parents and all drill sergeants. This is strictly functional but probably should include layering the blankets correctly, finding all the necessary pillows, and applying a top layer resistant to cat yak and other unpleasant surprises.
• I cannot sleep with pants on. If it has enough elastic to keep a pair of pants worth of cloth from slithering down around my knees, it's too tight for me to sleep in.
• change positions regularly throughout the night so things don't start hurting and don't get injured from staying in one bad position too long
• f you Mark Zuckerberg for saying that you should keep still in spite of pain because that's your body trying to distract you from meditation. Sometimes it's your body warning you about the horrifying injury you're about to get.
• avoid bad positions in case I fall asleep in them

Comments

[rydra_wong]

Is this open/an invitation for other people to contribute what works for them in comments?

[wibbble]

my executive function goes to bed relatively early; if there are any tasks standing between me and bed, get them done well before that point

Multiple times a week I will sit in the living room, with the TV off, phone in my pocket, stick in hand, and just sit for 10-30 minutes working up the capacity to do the thing and go to bed.

Sometimes this is because of tiredness and I might have a nap to get awake enough to go to bed, but most of the time it's just complete executive function collapse.

Brains are just fucking awful.

[princessofgeeks]

Thank you for sharing this. I can only imagine the years of trial, error and suffering that brought you this far. Wow.

[senmut]

That is SO comprehensive!

[azurelunatic]

Yes

Outstanding resource

[jesse_the_k]

conditioning any necessarily immediately pre-sleep tasks in a chain where it takes more energy to break the chain than to carry it out

What a brilliant formulation.

Reporting from iOS land, almost all the things you do with Android are also available on the iPhone (all phrased differently.) "Focus" is do-not-disturb on steroids, enabling filters for contact via phone numbers, email, messages as well as customized home screens, suppressing notifications, and hiding apps. Gray scale is hiding under Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text size > Color filters -- asking Siri is the easiest way to toggle it. Apple offers Shortcuts and JavaScript to control almost anything if you've got enough sleep and can handle programming.

[kore]

//bookmarks with the quickness

[azurelunatic]

Yup. Ugh.

[rydra_wong]

(I am compiling my list.)

Also, okay to signal-boost? I think this'd be a really useful resource for many people.

[azurelunatic]

Yes. I am planning on linking back to this when various parts of the internet ask about sleep tips.

My list

[rydra_wong]

Internet curfew — has to be on the earlier side because if I get too tired, I’m much more likely to get stuck on the internet and be unable to get the fuck off the computer and go to bed

changed bedside light for a dim red/orange bulb

established a rule that I have to be in bed with all other lights out by a certain time, but then no pressure to go to sleep — I can read or listen to podcasts or whatever until I’m actually sleepy, I just have to be in bed

Phone:

don’t have e-mail on it
wired headphones — I use Bluetooth headphones during the day, but they take too much effort to switch off and disconnect when I’m half-asleep; the wired ones can be pulled out of the phone with minimal consciousness
Android blue light and brightness controls
many, many podcasts
timed Do Not Disturb
sleep timer in podcast app (AntennaPod), where you can set it to stop playing automatically after a certain time, so you don’t doze off and then get woken half an hour later because someone’s yelling

laptop:

f.lux

bedroom:

cold! I sleep infinitely better under a pile of duvets in a cold room. Including sometimes wearing a hoodie to bed so I can pull the hood up and keep my ears warm without having to turn the heating in in my bedroom.
blackout curtains
Tempur eye mask (squishy!)
weighted blanket
yoga bolster in the bed — this goes under my knees if I’m lying on my back, under my feet if I’m curled up on my side. Sometimes it is removed from the bed to do actual yoga.
duct tape over the light on the radiator and other small appliance lights that can’t be turned off
expensive but indestructible mattress from https://www.alphabeds.co.uk/

supplements/meds:

low-dose melatonin — Solgar do a liquid one which is great because you can titrate it in drops to get exactly the right amount for you
ashwagandha, Chinese skullcap

water curfew -- I get woken a lot by needing to pee (interstitial cystitis) so I try to drink the bulk of my fluids earlier in the day and minimize liquid intake in the two hours before bedtime

caffeine curfew (5pm) — established by trial and error. I’m a rapid metabolizer of caffeine, so can get away with drinking it way way later than some people can without it affecting my sleep.

[kate_nepveu]

AppBlock on Android set to limit usual time distractions to 5 min a hour at bedtime.

Prescription trazodone.

soundcore sleep earbuds, a stock of proven sleepy audio/video (like How It's Made on Tubi and a relisten to the Hidden Almanac podcast), and a sleep timer to turn that off.

[vass]

Thank you for this post. I'm bookmarking it. Almost everything that works for me was already on your list, and some of them (temperature, correct melatonin dosage) I remember having learned from previous posts of yours.

Two things that help me which I didn't see:

- specific music and podcast episodes that I trust enough to fall asleep to)

- my most recent favourite sleep tip comes from ms-demeanor, who also has DSPS... I forget the exact phrasing, but they posted something like "arrange it so you don't have to get up to go to sleep." As in, remove barriers between "get sleepy" and "go to sleep". Which for them means if they get sleepy on the couch then that's where they're sleeping, and for me has recently meant tying "brush my teeth" to my morning shower instead of my bedtime. Because I am very committed to brushing my teeth every day, and if I have to get up and do that before I can go to sleep, then... well, what wibbble described.

[jecook]

Popping in to mention that there are zigbee based 'button' controls, and if your device has a combination Zigbee / Z-wave radio, there are Z-wave button controls as well.

(I have a Hubitat, which is a packaged hardware box that does what Home Assistant does and has built-in Z-wave and Zigbee radios; I chose it because it has a built-in connector to take commands from the Amazon Echo devices, and an add-in that runs ~$5/month on Heroku to give commands back to the echo devices via buttons. I have... opinions on the wifi-based smart home stuff, which I'll not rant about here. :D )

[amaebi]

Wow. This sounds magisterial to me.

Re: Outstanding resource

[satsuma]

In iOS you can add toggles for color filters or other accessibility settings to the control center! (The control center being that menu where you've got like volume/screen brightness/orientation lock that's usually accessible from the top right corner). I have night shift set to automatically turn on around sunset as the maximum warmness and then I turn on a *second* even redder color filter at bedtime--pure red color tint at about 90 percent. It looks odd in daylight but I've found that my eyes don't have any trouble adjusting to it when the phone is the only light source in the room.

Another accessibility setting which I use as a toggle is "reduce white point" for when even the dimmest brightness on my phone is too bright (you *can* use this one with both night shift and a color filter enabled but I've found stacking all three does produce a very small amount of perceptible lag while scrolling)

I've also found adding a custom lock/home screen to my "sleep" focus setting to be helpful--it changes the background to be warmer & simpler toned than my usual one and gives me a super simple interface with just the handful of apps I'm most likely to need before bed visible (eg. a weather widget so I know if I need to adjust the bedding, my task tracker, the clock app to check alarms & my podcast app for insomnia nights)

[azurelunatic]

The Hidden Almanac is so great!

[azurelunatic]

That last is so vital, and yet so completely counter to the "bed is only for sleep" bullshit! But I have done a lot of work to remove sleep anxiety from my life.

[the_wanlorn]

lol I've been arguing with myself over whether to post this or not for days, but fuck it:

With the extreme caveat that this will not work for 90% of people, because of the way my life shook out the number one top thing I do to make my sleep good is go to bed when I'm tired.

I say this not because I think that is most people's problem, but because for me, personally, it took a long time for me to give myself permission to stop trying to sleep "right". So if you're in my specific boat with me, this is someone giving you permission to just. Go to bed when you're tired.

My specific boat looks like this:
My "natural" sleep schedule, with cpap machine but without sedating psych meds, is a 3/5 cycle: 3 hours asleep, 5 hours awake. With the sedating psych meds and no stimulant intervention it's more like 3/3, which is no way to live a life. Stimulants make it so I average a 3/5 cycle again, but "average" is the key word there.

I used to go through life in like a haze of exhaustion. Ever since I started just rolling with my body's weird sleep schedule and just going to bed when I get tired for as long as my body wants to sleep, I've been awake for real and it's amazing. I could've been doing this for so much longer than I have been, but second best time to start and all.

My point is: I am extremely lucky to be able to do this. For a significant time the only thing stopping me was a sense that I "had" to get 8h of sleep in one chunk because That's Just What You Do. So if anyone is like me, and the only thing stopping you is everyone saying 8h in one go is the only way, I am signing a permission slip for you to just stop listening and try this instead.

(Cant's believe I used to make fun of biphasic sleep bros and now I'm basically one of them. Except triphasic. Oh how the mighty have had their comeuppance.)

[azurelunatic]

The bro part of the biphasic sleep bros is important here, and a lot of the problem.

(I'm also in a life position where I can sleep when tired right now, and I feel extremely lucky.)

[the_wanlorn]

lmao true

re: sleeping when tired: was it as life changing for you as it was for me? I legit did not know life could like. Feel like this? Until I started. Like my level of alertness had definitely gotten much better after I got a cpap machine, but I was still so tired always, and then I wasn't and it was like oh my god life is beautiful.

It honestly makes me so mad that more people who have trouble with sleep can't do this because of extenuating circumstances (capitalism, family, etc). And I dread finally finding employment again because I don't know if the new place will be as receptive as the old place to me splitting my workday in two, with a three hour break around lunch.

[rydra_wong]

- specific music and podcast episodes that I trust enough to fall asleep to)

Yes! Personally I don't need specific eps (though there are some favourites I return to), but it's definitely important for me to have series which I trust to maintain a predictable tone and am comfortable having whispering in my ear while I drift off.

Doesn't need to be "cosy"; some of mine are horror. I just need to have that sense that I know roughly what sort of thing I'm getting (and that it's not going to make me unexpectedly upset, for example).

I forget the exact phrasing, but they posted something like "arrange it so you don't have to get up to go to sleep." As in, remove barriers between "get sleepy" and "go to sleep".

It occurs to me that what I've done is basically a very different route (because mercifully I don't have DSPS to deal with, so I can keep things running on a 24-hour clock) to the same goal.

My various curfews ensure that anything requiring executive function (getting off the internet, taking evening meds and sorting out tomorrow's meds, actually getting into bed, etc.) gets done and out of the way ahead of time.

So when I actually get sleepy, I am already in bed in the dark and don't have to do anything except put down my phone or book or pull out my headphones. Minimal barriers.

[melannen]

The podcasts have also been unexpectedly helpful with anxiety around insomnia! Restless nights when I am wide-awake at 2 AM and feel like I've gotten no sleep at all suddenly feel a lot more restful when I realize I only remember the first five minutes of the two-hour podcast I had on. (I tend to listen to conversational ones about awful disasters and horrible deaths.)

[azurelunatic]

It was ... a Lot.

[azurelunatic]

I'd had enough small stretches of being able to sleep until I was done that it wasn't quite that much of a surprise. And it took so long to dig myself out from under the mountain of sleep debt that suddenly being able to sleep as much I needed to wasn't quite enough anyway. But thinking about how miserable I was -- yow.

thanks

[brainwane]

Thanks. Linked from MetaFilter.

Hi, MetaFilter!

[azurelunatic]

* Yes, someone got horrifying burns all over their neck and I think chest, from a loose plug making contact with their conductive necklace. The clickbait article I read about it in had him pleading with others to not charge their phone in bed, but since my phone is a key part of how I stay asleep, I elected to merely make sure that any possible loose plugs are not in bed, and my phone charger gets plugged into my power strip's USB ports.
This is a different incident, but same general situation: https://www.wjtv.com/news/13-year-old-mississippi-boy-burned-after-necklace-touches-cell-phone-charger/

* Holmes in two separate adaptations was a dick about sleep-related shenanigans. In Sherlock, his assumption that Harry is an alcoholic due to the scratches around the charging port, absolutely yes, it lives rent-free in my head, and every time I struggle to plug in my phone when I'm zombie-ing to bed and there isn't enough light, I ritually curse him. In Elementary, he concludes that Joan Watson's job doesn't spark joy, because she needs two alarms to wake up. Hey asshole, some of us have sleep problems no matter how much we love our jobs. I would have accepted Elementary Holmes saying that he'd ruled out a sleep disorder because of (some other thing) but like that? Nah, bro.

* Lactose: I lost my lactose tolerance over about a month in college where I consumed no milk, and the process of figuring it out was fascinating (and obnoxious). My whole digestive system is being extra hilarious currently due to my recent chemotherapy, but my chemo nurses have given me dispensation to use as much Imodium as I need to in order to halt any runaway Situations. Having been prescribed anti-nausea medication for the chemo, I became aware that I have a lot of low-grade nausea in my life, and have negotiated with my primary care to continue the prescription that doesn't interact with my other meds. I mostly don't get acid reflux now that I'm medicated appropriately for my stomach [acid reducers]; I've been gradually eliminating things that cause digestive problems at all times rather than just making sure to not have them before bed.

* My personal caffeine curfew is 4pm.

* Diphenhydramine with melatonin had been my personal go-to when I was trying to go to sleep on time for an early-ish job, but I also discontinued using that regularly due to reading probably the same study. My buddy Rah-who-reads-a-lot-of-studies says that the evidence is shaky at best, so I occasionally still use it, but I'm out of the habit now. (My personal assessment of Rah's medical opinions is pretty high, as while she is not an M.D. she has been forced by having a lot of terrible chronic conditions to get pretty good at reading and understanding medical publications.)

* Cannabis: there are some cannabis that knock me out about as effectively as the other sleep hammers. Unfortunately, it's expensive and not covered under my state's prescription plans. ;) I use a sublingual tincture rather than edibles or vaping, on the recommendation of the California cannabis doctor who got me my first MMJ card there; he said that's the most efficient way to get it in you.

* Sleep maintenance: I will wake up in the night, every night, multiple times, unless I am sufficiently physically exhausted that my bladder doesn't wake me. Unfortunately, since that comes with a whole bunch of physical pain and an inability to function the next day, that's not an effective technique for me. (If I don't at least turn over every few hours, I also wake up in pain, sometimes to the point of an ER visit for chest pain.) So my goal is to make those times as short as I can. A lot of these look like my techniques to get to sleep in the first place, but I can absolutely break out the specifics that I usually go with.
- Go to the bathroom immediately if there's the slightest indication that I might need to, that doesn't improve by adding more time or more determination to tough it out. It helps that the bathroom is on the same floor as the bedroom and is the next door down. Usually my partner is asleep and our housemate and I rarely sync our bathroom schedules. (Clew's tip about warm feet is on point!)
- Turn over onto my other side and rearrange my pillows for the new position. This makes sure that any parts of me that were getting sore from lying in one position have a chance to become not-sore.
- Turn my audiobook back on, readjust the phone position and volume so I can hear it but my partner probably can't, reset the timeout for another hour.
- Close my eyes and help them stay closed; recently I discovered that if I'm wearing a hat instead of a band-type eye mask, I will leave that on a little longer. So I put on the hat of the moment and pull it down over my eyes.
- Watch the screensaver on the inside of my eyes and get it to do things. My colors are green fading into purple and new green coming in to take over. Sometimes I can will it to change a little.
- Try to make sure my thoughts are slow. ADHD and anxiety make this difficult unmedicated; that's why one of my anxiety med doses is at bedtime. Unmedicated it's like steel bees circling like moths in a brass lampshade. Not very restful. If I was awakened by anything that gave me a jolt of adrenaline, it will take me Quite A While, and at that point I switch over to the other set of strategies. (Or sometimes I wake up and I feel like I'm Awake even though there's no good reason. Even through the goddamn Trazodone.)
- one of the things that will absolutely wake me TF up is smelling smoke; for safety reasons I have not tried to deprogram this response the way I have attempted to deprogram other Immediately Awake triggers.
- Get physically comfortable even if I know I'm going to be awake; comfort won't put me to sleep but discomfort will wake me up. This can involve applying medications, unguents, temperature changes, occasionally swapping a nightgown that's gone all clammy for a nice fresh one. Keep my body parts from sticking to each other.
- Find something to do that won't make me any more awake than I already am, or keep me awake if I do calm down.
- Often this is one of the just-boring-enough phone games.
- Try to avoid focusing on how much sleep I'm not getting or any of the side effects I may suffer if I don't get enough sleep, as those are a sleep-killer. Remember the Mythbusters episode about closed-eye time being more restorative than None Sleep, and see if I can manage to close my eyes.
- Count while I'm breathing; this typically will slow my breathing and heart rate (rather than making me anxious that I'm breathing wrong, which some people get). I do the inhale-4, hold-4, exhale-4, hold-4, but rather than a hard breath-holding it's more like continuing the breath I was doing, but barely perceptibly.
- Use a sleep-compatible (not exciting and slow) audio with a timeout to mark the time, instead of trying to watch the clock. If the audio turns off in an hour and I'm still awake, I can turn it back on.
- Avoid getting up to do something else, because instead of becoming sleepy I will get distracted (ADHD).
- Avoid reading (bibliophile ADHD).

* I had to drop the Sleep With Me podcast after his voice showed up in a nightmare where I was getting in an argument with an extremely smug man who thought he was Always Right and refused to tone match with me while he was saying the most bigoted things and I was telling him exactly what kind of dick he was. A pity, because otherwise the podcast was great for me, and I'd leave it running the whole night at 50% speed. (I'm sure the Sleep With Me guy is great, but some of the worst assholes I've met believe that they are 100% right and will accept no evidence that they're wrong, and they keep that kind of level tone too.)

Re: thanks

[azurelunatic]

Cool!

I wrote a comment with responses to some of the discussion there.

Re: My list

[azurelunatic]

Speaking of interstitial cystitis, it was news to me that it can manifest as just needing to urinate more often, as opposed to a feeling that translates to pain.

One of the weirdest neurological moments of my life was when my need-to-pee signal switched on me. Like, there was a feeling that had been "need to pee" my whole life. Then one day I started feeling a thing that lit up my brain different, but I figured out that it was "need to pee" -- and I never felt the old feeling again, it was the new feeling henceforth. I think I was about 7.

Re: My list

[rydra_wong]

Speaking of interstitial cystitis, it was news to me that it can manifest as just needing to urinate more often, as opposed to a feeling that translates to pain.

Yeah, as far as I can see the boundary between what gets classed as IC/"painful bladder syndrome" and what get called "overactive bladder syndrome" is very fuzzy and imho useless; which label you get seems to be dependent on which consultant you see (and how up-to-date their knowledge is or isn't).

Also wow on signals switching on you, that's fascinating.