I’ve been fighting to regulate my sleep schedule for about 30 years now, and I’ve tried lots of things. These are the things that seem to help me, or that Studies Have Shown.
What works best is to simply “man up” and regulate your sleep schedule, to quote the international sweat-shop shoe company “Just Do it”.
1 Pick a “get up time”, set you alarm and GET UP. This helps to make sure you’re ready to go to bed on the other side. If you stay up until 4 in the morning playing Warcrack, play another 2 hours then go for breakfast. You’ll be tired all day, but that night you’ll be able to reset more effectively.
1.1 Do Not Nap, this makes it more difficult to get to sleep at a reasonable hour.
1.2 OTOH some people do really well to take nap in the afternoon (every afternoon) and stay up a little later. I can’t do this. YSSMV.
When the alarm goes off GET UP. Do not set your alarm for 5 minutes early, if anything set it for 5 minutes late.
3 Avoid caffiene after noon to start with. If this helps you may want to let it slip to 3 or 4 in the afternoon, depending on how you metabolize it. Definately no caffine with dinner or afterwards. NONE.
4 When the sun goes down start to darken your surroundings a bit—turn off unnecessary lights, use desk/table/spot lights instead of room lights etc.
5 Set a realistic bedtime and stick to it.
6 Your sleep quarters should be used ONLY for sleeping, sex and dressing. Do not read yourself to sleep, no computers or television.
6.1 Heavy curtains and limit light as much as possible. The goal is not only to sleep, but to sleep WELL.
6.2 A fan, or some source of “grey noise” might help as well.
6.3 A regular sex partner can help you get to sleep :) Well, so can an irregular one, but the sheets may need changing more often.
The other side of this is that some people seem to have body clocks that insist on running a certain way. I’ve been getting up at about 10 to 6 for the last 2 months every day of hte week. F’ing HATE IT. I can do 10 minutes to 7 so much easier, but there is no flex in my work schedule.
If you’re like that—if these sorts of things don’t work—they you have a decision to make. There are professions that allow you to work different, or sometimes even irregular hours, but they are generally not particularly high paying or influential (except for “Author”, but you have to get published first).
There are people who just live better working second shift or graves. If you’re like that you’re going to fight it your whole life.
Also you can try finding a sleep clinic and see if you need professional intervention.
When the alarm goes off GET UP. Do not set your alarm for 5 minutes early, if anything set it for 5 minutes late.
When you are getting into the routine this one of the hard parts. So use whatever assistance required. For me that has included a bottle of energy drink and a modafinil tablet sitting on top of the alarm clock. Sure, you can turn it off but it isn’t much more effort to down the stimulants at the same time. A sledge hammer approach. It more or less guarantees you will be able to get up 30 minutes later. I often deliberately allow myself another 30 minutes to sleep after I’ve taken the stimulants so as to cooperate more effectively with my instincts. They don’t like me @#$@#$ing with them and forcing them up but they don’t care at all if I give them stimulants and let them do their own thing.
(The above is not something I tend to use long term.)
When the sun goes down start to darken your surroundings a bit—turn off unnecessary lights, use desk/table/spot lights instead of room lights etc.
At about this time you can also take a dose of melatonin (which is essentially what you are doing with the light manipulation anyway). I have found this useful from time to time.
Put your alarm clock far out of reach so you have to get out of bed to switch it off. Put everything you need for your morning routine next to the alarm clock. This will make you much less likely to go back to bed.
I did this when I was a teenager. A few months later I found myself regularly jumping out of bed, taking two long running strides across my room, hitting the snooze button, running back to bed, and getting under the covers without ever properly waking up.
That’d be a good fix for one or two people living in an apartment, but the shower was at the other end of the house and was used by everyone in my family.
When you have a spare hour, set your alarm to go off every five minutes and practice ‘being asleep’, hearing the alarm, jumping out of bed, turning it off, and running to the shower. After 20 repetitions, the idea is that the next morning, when you hear the alarm, you’ll run to the shower without needing to get fully conscious first. I dunno, something to try at least.
Did you keep everything you need for your morning routine next to your alarm clark? I found that was the key element to stop me from jumping back into bed. It’s habit forming. You get to the alarm clock and then go through your routine. Otherwise, if everything’s out of reach or disorganised, it’s easier to just go back to bed than deal with it.
Did you keep everything you need for your morning routine next to your alarm clark?
The next step of my morning routine was to stumble down the hall to the bathroom. There wasn’t an additional object necessary to do that. Or one could say that the next step was showering, but I couldn’t physically move the shower next to the alarm clock.
My brother does this. Personally I’ve never had trouble waking up...if anything my problem is falling asleep and staying asleep all night. I tend to stay on an early-to-bed, early-to-rise schedule, which is convenient for work and class but inconvenient for social life...overall I think I prefer it to constantly having to fight my internal clock. My main problem is mid-afternoon sleepiness on the days when I don’t quite make my 8 or 9 hours.
That might still be an improvement over hitting the snooze and rolling over. I would intuitively expect someone to wake up faster if they had to keep jumping in and out of bed.
Put your alarm clock far out of reach so you have to get out of bed to switch it off. Put everything you need for your morning routine next to the alarm clock. This will make you much less likely to go back to bed.
I use this technique from time to time. But as Cyan suggests it isn’t a reliable long term solution. It still amounts to trying to bully yourself into compliance. And that just isn’t the best way to deal with allies—be they internal or not. I know myself and know how I respond to attempts at dominance. I’ll do it if necessary but it rapidly burns out any sense of loyalty. And I want myself on my own side.
I’ve considered using melatonin before, but some cursory searching didn’t reveal an easy way to get my hands on it from Melbourne. Since you live here too, I presume you have found a source. Would you be able to share that with me? Thanks.
Some pharmacies have begun to sell it, however the dosage can sometimes be ridiculously small. I got mine online. Possibly from cognitivenutrition.com. Maybe bulknutrition. The price was trivial. I got 3 mg capsules although I may perhaps get 1mg capsules if I buy again.
This advice seems reasonable. However, I don’t see why timed-release melatonin wouldn’t be helpful in preventing early awakening (especially assuming you want to sleep past dawn), and I don’t understand their recommendation to use timed-release only when trying to shift sleep by more than 1hr (1hr earlier, I presume).
Surprisingly few, at least considering melatonin’s role in there among the neurotransmitters doing some rather drastic regulation. People can (and do) take thousands of times the natural level of melatonin without too much trouble. (It is a ridiculously powerful antioxidant. The kind of thing people like to experiment with.)
Something I find is that if I have, say 6mg I can reliably expect to wake up about 4 hours later, alert. I exploit that sometimes if I need to drastically alter my sleep patterns. But it isn’t what you usually want to aim for.
I haven’t heard of nasty headaches (I don’t doubt that it could well be possible...) but mild headaches are common. Similar to the kind you get when you are mildly dehydrated. Quite probably related, too, because they respond well to drinking a lot of water. As do the dry mouth and eyes that sometimes occur.
Grogginess during the following day is perhaps the most annoying side effect.
I bought some for someone else a matter of days ago (she’s living kind of hand to mouth at the moment, so I sprung the cost for her,) but I didn’t notice until after I placed the order that I had selected the highest available dosage, 10 mg per pill. Would it be best for her to start with fractions of a pill per night? Her sleep issues are pretty serious.
10 mg? Wow. I didn’t know they sold them that high!
If I was using it myself I would just take the 10mg tablet and see what happened, it isn’t going to do anything particularly harmful. But if I was supplying them for someone else I would either split the dose or buy new ones. Some people are reluctant enough to try pills that an initial bad experience will turn them off completely.
Would it be best for her to start with fractions of a pill per night?
It is actually pretty hard to say. Response to melatonin in humans is just bizarre. For some people 0.1 mg is too much while others could gulp down that 10mg tablet and it’d be just right. The degree of sleep difficulties don’t necessarily come into it.
Her sleep issues are pretty serious.
It could work wonders if her difficulties are melatonin or sleep-clock related or it could do absolutely nothing. :/
I’ve been fighting to regulate my sleep schedule for about 30 years now, and I’ve tried lots of things. These are the things that seem to help me, or that Studies Have Shown.
What works best is to simply “man up” and regulate your sleep schedule, to quote the international sweat-shop shoe company “Just Do it”.
1 Pick a “get up time”, set you alarm and GET UP. This helps to make sure you’re ready to go to bed on the other side. If you stay up until 4 in the morning playing Warcrack, play another 2 hours then go for breakfast. You’ll be tired all day, but that night you’ll be able to reset more effectively. 1.1 Do Not Nap, this makes it more difficult to get to sleep at a reasonable hour. 1.2 OTOH some people do really well to take nap in the afternoon (every afternoon) and stay up a little later. I can’t do this. YSSMV.
When the alarm goes off GET UP. Do not set your alarm for 5 minutes early, if anything set it for 5 minutes late.
3 Avoid caffiene after noon to start with. If this helps you may want to let it slip to 3 or 4 in the afternoon, depending on how you metabolize it. Definately no caffine with dinner or afterwards. NONE.
4 When the sun goes down start to darken your surroundings a bit—turn off unnecessary lights, use desk/table/spot lights instead of room lights etc.
5 Set a realistic bedtime and stick to it.
6 Your sleep quarters should be used ONLY for sleeping, sex and dressing. Do not read yourself to sleep, no computers or television. 6.1 Heavy curtains and limit light as much as possible. The goal is not only to sleep, but to sleep WELL. 6.2 A fan, or some source of “grey noise” might help as well. 6.3 A regular sex partner can help you get to sleep :) Well, so can an irregular one, but the sheets may need changing more often.
The other side of this is that some people seem to have body clocks that insist on running a certain way. I’ve been getting up at about 10 to 6 for the last 2 months every day of hte week. F’ing HATE IT. I can do 10 minutes to 7 so much easier, but there is no flex in my work schedule.
If you’re like that—if these sorts of things don’t work—they you have a decision to make. There are professions that allow you to work different, or sometimes even irregular hours, but they are generally not particularly high paying or influential (except for “Author”, but you have to get published first).
There are people who just live better working second shift or graves. If you’re like that you’re going to fight it your whole life.
Also you can try finding a sleep clinic and see if you need professional intervention.
If on a computer, software like F.lux or Nocturne can help with this.
When you are getting into the routine this one of the hard parts. So use whatever assistance required. For me that has included a bottle of energy drink and a modafinil tablet sitting on top of the alarm clock. Sure, you can turn it off but it isn’t much more effort to down the stimulants at the same time. A sledge hammer approach. It more or less guarantees you will be able to get up 30 minutes later. I often deliberately allow myself another 30 minutes to sleep after I’ve taken the stimulants so as to cooperate more effectively with my instincts. They don’t like me @#$@#$ing with them and forcing them up but they don’t care at all if I give them stimulants and let them do their own thing.
(The above is not something I tend to use long term.)
At about this time you can also take a dose of melatonin (which is essentially what you are doing with the light manipulation anyway). I have found this useful from time to time.
Put your alarm clock far out of reach so you have to get out of bed to switch it off. Put everything you need for your morning routine next to the alarm clock. This will make you much less likely to go back to bed.
I did this when I was a teenager. A few months later I found myself regularly jumping out of bed, taking two long running strides across my room, hitting the snooze button, running back to bed, and getting under the covers without ever properly waking up.
I solved this problem by maxing out my alarm’s volume and putting it in the shower.
That is...genius. And hilarious.
That’d be a good fix for one or two people living in an apartment, but the shower was at the other end of the house and was used by everyone in my family.
When you have a spare hour, set your alarm to go off every five minutes and practice ‘being asleep’, hearing the alarm, jumping out of bed, turning it off, and running to the shower. After 20 repetitions, the idea is that the next morning, when you hear the alarm, you’ll run to the shower without needing to get fully conscious first. I dunno, something to try at least.
Good idea—I’ll do that.
Did you keep everything you need for your morning routine next to your alarm clark? I found that was the key element to stop me from jumping back into bed. It’s habit forming. You get to the alarm clock and then go through your routine. Otherwise, if everything’s out of reach or disorganised, it’s easier to just go back to bed than deal with it.
The next step of my morning routine was to stumble down the hall to the bathroom. There wasn’t an additional object necessary to do that. Or one could say that the next step was showering, but I couldn’t physically move the shower next to the alarm clock.
My brother does this. Personally I’ve never had trouble waking up...if anything my problem is falling asleep and staying asleep all night. I tend to stay on an early-to-bed, early-to-rise schedule, which is convenient for work and class but inconvenient for social life...overall I think I prefer it to constantly having to fight my internal clock. My main problem is mid-afternoon sleepiness on the days when I don’t quite make my 8 or 9 hours.
That might still be an improvement over hitting the snooze and rolling over. I would intuitively expect someone to wake up faster if they had to keep jumping in and out of bed.
I use this technique from time to time. But as Cyan suggests it isn’t a reliable long term solution. It still amounts to trying to bully yourself into compliance. And that just isn’t the best way to deal with allies—be they internal or not. I know myself and know how I respond to attempts at dominance. I’ll do it if necessary but it rapidly burns out any sense of loyalty. And I want myself on my own side.
I’ve considered using melatonin before, but some cursory searching didn’t reveal an easy way to get my hands on it from Melbourne. Since you live here too, I presume you have found a source. Would you be able to share that with me? Thanks.
Some pharmacies have begun to sell it, however the dosage can sometimes be ridiculously small. I got mine online. Possibly from cognitivenutrition.com. Maybe bulknutrition. The price was trivial. I got 3 mg capsules although I may perhaps get 1mg capsules if I buy again.
I take 0.4 mg an hour or two before sleep, then 0.3 mg timed-release (sold by LEF) just before getting into bed.
That took a lot of tweaking to find.
This advice seems reasonable. However, I don’t see why timed-release melatonin wouldn’t be helpful in preventing early awakening (especially assuming you want to sleep past dawn), and I don’t understand their recommendation to use timed-release only when trying to shift sleep by more than 1hr (1hr earlier, I presume).
What are the downsides of taking larger doses than necessary?
U-shaped response curve, so it starts losing effectiveness & nasty headaches are the consequences of a melatonin overdose that I know of.
and also grogginess in the morning if you get anything less than 8hrs of sleep, at least in my experience
In my experience too.
Surprisingly few, at least considering melatonin’s role in there among the neurotransmitters doing some rather drastic regulation. People can (and do) take thousands of times the natural level of melatonin without too much trouble. (It is a ridiculously powerful antioxidant. The kind of thing people like to experiment with.)
Something I find is that if I have, say 6mg I can reliably expect to wake up about 4 hours later, alert. I exploit that sometimes if I need to drastically alter my sleep patterns. But it isn’t what you usually want to aim for.
I haven’t heard of nasty headaches (I don’t doubt that it could well be possible...) but mild headaches are common. Similar to the kind you get when you are mildly dehydrated. Quite probably related, too, because they respond well to drinking a lot of water. As do the dry mouth and eyes that sometimes occur.
Grogginess during the following day is perhaps the most annoying side effect.
I bought some for someone else a matter of days ago (she’s living kind of hand to mouth at the moment, so I sprung the cost for her,) but I didn’t notice until after I placed the order that I had selected the highest available dosage, 10 mg per pill. Would it be best for her to start with fractions of a pill per night? Her sleep issues are pretty serious.
10 mg? Wow. I didn’t know they sold them that high!
If I was using it myself I would just take the 10mg tablet and see what happened, it isn’t going to do anything particularly harmful. But if I was supplying them for someone else I would either split the dose or buy new ones. Some people are reluctant enough to try pills that an initial bad experience will turn them off completely.
It is actually pretty hard to say. Response to melatonin in humans is just bizarre. For some people 0.1 mg is too much while others could gulp down that 10mg tablet and it’d be just right. The degree of sleep difficulties don’t necessarily come into it.
It could work wonders if her difficulties are melatonin or sleep-clock related or it could do absolutely nothing. :/
She’s bipolar, and apparently bipolar individuals tend to be chronically low in melatonin.
Ouch. Yes, and also a group that responds very well to getting a consistent, stable sleep pattern in order.