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.