Not like, casual “Hi, how are you?” but seriously, how are you? Are you sleeping okay, is everything in your personal life going all right? And if not, can Internet strangers do anything to help?

  • thesohoriots@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    27 days ago

    Any fellow insomniacs or any neurologists have some obscure wisdom? I truly don’t sleep. Since 2015, likely earlier, my sleep latency is forever, I keep waking up if I do fall asleep, and I wake up too early. When I do sleep, according to an inpatient sleep study, I barely get to stage 3 sleep for a few minutes and hang out in stage 1 & 2. There is no REM sleep happening. I have limb movement multiple times a minute. I was prescribed a CPAP a few years ago and it hasn’t helped, even with strict adherence to use. The AHI is only between 0 and 0.4 any night of the week. You name a medication, on and off label use, and I’ve tried it. My sleep hygiene is impeccable. I keep thinking one good night’s sleep will fix me, but at this point, I’ve lost hope.

    • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
      3·
      27 days ago

      I’m the opposite of an insomniac - I’m a rabid sleeper and love sleep. I usually hit 9 hours a day, sometimes more.

      Here’s what works for me - most obviously won’t work for you, but give some another try if you haven’t done them yet -

      • Clean your bedsheets every couple days. Clean sheets = 😍
      • Wash your hair well and shower right before getting into bed. No smell = 🥰
      • Use white noise. You’ll never get perfect silence, so drown out noise instead
      • Turn off every single LED and light in your room. Don’t have a single light source visible while you’re in bed.
      • Get an eye mask - a high quality one - if you can’t do the above.
      • Do the workout of your lifetime - Do an all-day hike or something. You can clock out from physical exhaustion
      • Get in and out of bed at the same time every day. Start with less sleep time than you need. Force your body to recognize “I only rest in this bed”
      • Conversely, don’t do anything in your bed besides sleep. Especially don’t use your phone with the nasty blue light
      • naught101@lemmy.world
        2·
        27 days ago

        That last one I heard from a psych. They also said: if you’re in bed and you can’t sleep, get up. Go back to bed only when you feel tired again. That way you train your brain that bed=sleep.

        • thesohoriots@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          27 days ago

          This is also true. I was told to do something unpleasant like clean bathroom grout with a toothbrush to make your brain hate being up. My go-to is tidying up the dining room table.

      • thesohoriots@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        27 days ago

        Great suggestions! This is known as “sleep hygiene” and I follow it religiously, but still can’t quite get sleep unfortunately. My spouse thought I was crazy when I taped over all the little lights lol

    • isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      27 days ago

      I’ve been there, people just telling “go to bed and close your eyes”, etc etc, finally solved it with Seroquel 25mg (50mg on the first nights) taken at 20:30, works like wonders

      if you haven’t tried it, suggest it to your medic

      • thesohoriots@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        27 days ago

        I have tried seroquel, and it’s a great drug for a coma. Unfortunately I started powering through it somehow at multiple strengths. Thanks for the suggestion though!

        • isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.de
          1·
          27 days ago

          Unfortunately I started powering through it somehow at multiple strengths

          it actually happened to me as well, but it turns out it was because of another med I was taking for ADHD (Zoloft)

          If you are taking other stuff besides the one for sleep, see if they counteract each other

          Besides that, good luck!

    • zerodawnA
      1·
      27 days ago

      As a fellow insomniac with apnea i feel your pain. Those who sleep but do it poorly can’t understand how miserable it is to be unable to sleep. I’ve cobbled together a list of things that each help slightly but when all of it is added together makes enough of a difference to tip the tide in my favor. I look at it like casting a spell with multiple ingredients, it’s still affective if i’m missing some but it’s more affective if it’s all there.

      My aim is to be asleep by 10pm most nights, to active that i try to include as much of this as i can

      • No caffeine after 3pm, hard stop. None after 12pm is ideal.
      • Dinner between 5pm and 6pm usually, no eating after 7pm.
      • Melatonin before my shower, i prefer gummie.
      • A hot shower usually between 8pm and 9pm.
      • Phone down by 9pm. I wear a smart watch that i use as my alarm so when i started this, to break my phone use habit, i actually charged my phone in the other room at night.
      • Read between 9pm and 10pm. I have a kobo e-reader that has a warm backlighting setting and i invert the color so it’s lighter letters on a dark page. Others might have this work against them but i find this calms my mind nicely.
      • A warm cup of sleepy tea, find a brand and flavor you like.
      • Cold room, warm blankets. I prefer 62-64 in the winter and 65-68 in the summer with a lighter blanket
      • An eye mask. This might not help others as i’ve been told i sleep with my eyes open
      • Block any light in the bedroom. I use electrical tape and cover the led lights on anything in the room that has an led
      • Sleep sounds. I’ve found i like either thunder storms or ocean waves. There’s a skill on the alexa app called sleep sounds and it let us combine the two.
      • The right pillow for you. A few months back i pulled the trigger on a cervical and it was a wonderful decision for me.

      That’s the stuff i try and make happen as often as i can. The rest of this list helps but isn’t totally necessary.

      • I’ve just started taking magnesium and have reason to believed it’s helping but it’s too early to say.
      • I have plantar fasciitis so i like to stretch out my legs, calfs, and feet as i jump out of the shower and i find out feels nice getting into bed after.
      • I have a standing desk and an under desk treadmill and i try to put 2 to 3 miles in 3 to 4 days a week. More if i’m able but i find that much to play a positive role on my sleep.
      • I’m a side sleeper and found i like to use a very large body pillow to support my upper arm and leg when i’m on my side.

      I was assigned a cpap after my apnea diagnosis but it was so hard to fall asleep with it on and if it ramped up pressure in the middle of the night it would jar me awake and i couldn’t get back to sleep so i sent the machine back. I’m heavier so i know a level of my apnea is weight related which is part of my goal of exercising more. I read that if cpaps don’t work you can get a mouth piece to hold your jaw forwards and open your airway. While seeing a specialist about this he remarked how large my tonsils were and suggested i have them removed. After the operation i noticed at minimum a 20% increase in airflow to my lungs which has also greatly affected how well i sleep.

      Before doing all of this i’d rank my sleep at a 30-40 out of 100. With doing all this i got it up to 50-60. Getting my tonsils out got me to 70-80. I know i’m still not getting the level of sleep most others get on a normal night and i’m still trying to find ways to bridge that gap like adding the magnesium or buying the new pillow but i know each little thing i do plays a positive role so i keep at it.

      I hope some of this helps. You’re not in it alone.