How can I sleep more and deeper?

Ask your doc for a sleep study. Generally they want some data or something before dishing out the pills. Here’s an easy read through for a sleep study and prep which you can do now to see if it helps. 0

Waking up tired everyday could be a sign of something mundane and easily fixable. Try to take a shower before bed too.

I try to do some exercise to get my heart rate up to 70-80% of max, sweat, and feel worn out almost daily. I take magnesium l-threonate twice a day (yes it’s expensive and other forms of magnesium are different). Melatonin to set my sleep time but not at all regularly. Melatonin helps for going to a new time zone or fixing staying up late and resetting on Sunday nights. L-theanine occasionally if too anxious morning or evening. Desperate to fall asleep OTC: 2 Benadryl. Huberman podcast has a whole series on sleep, light, supplements, etc. Guided meditation could help.

It’s easy to get hooked on using melatonin, Benadryl, or prescription sleep aids. I’ve felt a bit of a worn out and slow feeling in the morning if I take something too many times in a row.

0. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diagnostics/12131-slee...

What helps me is exercising to the point of almost overdoing it. If I don't exercise enough I have trouble sleeping, the sleep that I do get is not very deep, and I'll also have trouble going to bed.

Eye masks have also helped tremendously.

I used to wake up randomly like OP did. I was gasping & heart beating when waking up. It's horrible.

Doctors prescribed pills, but they don't work for me.

1. Meditation more than 40min will help me.

Warm blood flowing in my hands and feet after that. It seems I'm focusing on parts of my body instead of my useless thoughts.

2. If you don't wanna meditate, just like my mom lol. Buy a anti-snoring mouth seal.

We both wake up the second day fresh. You can see that breathing & mental state can actually harm your sleeping quality badly.

Switch off everything wireless in your home before bedtime. If you live in an apartment, you may be exposed to neighbors wireless through walls. EMR-shielding bed canopies exist.

Try sleeping in an off-grid, no-wireless setting (cabin, in a car* in the woods etc.) and if that gets you proper sleep, you can suspect electromagnetic fields.

Also, try magnesium supplements for muscle relaxation, sleep improvement.

*= not a Tesla, obviously, which is WiFi-on-wheels.

Me too. Since one month before corona started, I started to wake up every night at 02:00am . Also, anxious about work. And, too, coffeeined very well. May be to well. From one day to the other day.. suddenly just started to wake up at exactly 2am. Then couldn't sleep for an hour, two or so. Then a few months after I started to have itching everywhere. Especially the parts of skin that have been rubbed, scratched... Hands after opening a bottle, f.e. also skin changed to bright red tone and scratch-shaped spots where it has been itching and scratched. I tried an antihistamine medicine Cetirizine, because it's one of the things that reduces pruritus symptoms, which are attributed to high histamine levels and Cetirizine is an antihistaminic. The pruritus got better. But still need my Cetirizine every 4-5 days a half. Sleep also got better. I still wake up at 2am, but, I'm not anxious anymore. I was laid off last September haha. Since then I sleep better even when I wake up.. may be got used to it already.

So, it can be a lot of all the things together. May be it's stress because of work and life. May be the coffee, which is also reduced a lot, to one or two cups milk latte. Not any later as after 0 pm. Take care what you eat. Like, if I drink a glas of red wine, I scratch my skin off without medicine AND can't sleep although being really tired and .. if, finally.. 2am... Wake again. But not anymore as tired, as in the beginning ;)

Here's what helped me. I would not wake up rested, I could not fall asleep properly. I was tired and moody all the time.

Living was turning into a hellish nightmare, one sorry day at a time.

There were a few aspects to this for me, most of which I'd be cancelled for bringing up here -- so won't venture there. What I can say is:

Do the opposite.

Which means, stay awake till you can't physically stay awake anymore. But your wake up time is fixed.

You wake up at 6am now. Don't stress the bed time.

Like another poster said, go all out physical activity-wise. I'm not necessarily talking gym. We move our body a miniscule amount compared to even 100 years ago. This is manifesting itself in many diseases, the mildest of which is sleeplessness.

- do some gardening or spending time with soil and nature

- does it take only 2 type to bring in groceries? Make it take 5.

- always take the stairs.

- can you walk or bicycle to work/grocery?

Your intent should be to fall dead when you hit the sack at night.

What helped me was eating freshly made food only. Either raw or just cooked. No food from the fridge. Eating twice a day - brunch and dinner.

This will actually reduce the amount you sleep, but when you sleep the quality is much higher.

I also stopped eating anything meat-based and dropped all caffeine, but that's up to you.

It's been a complete 180 -- energy, mood, clarity and enthusiasm. I don't feel half dead everyday.

I'm not trying to be mean, but your BMI would be twenty-nine point something, verging on obese (I've been there too). Couldn't hurt to lose some weight I'm sure. If you do find something that works, I'd love to hear about it. I've tried about everything and sometimes find something that helps but it never seems to last. Currently it's trazadone and melatonin time release which sometimes works alright.

I have experienced this, for me there were two main factors.

1) Temperature - If my bedding is too hot or too cold I found that I would wake up in the early morning. I now have three duvets a Winter, Autumn/Spring and Summer. If I find myself waking up in the night I shift to one of the others, it helped a lot.

2) Fresh air - I cannot say why but having a window open even if it's just a couple mm makes a huge difference to me.

You could easily have sleep apnea.

You didn't mention caffeine, but the half life of caffeine can be over 12 hours. Even if you limit yourself to two cups of coffee at 8 am, you'd still have as much caffeine in you as if you had one cup of coffee at 8pm. The rule of thumb about "no caffeine after noon" is just unreasonable, it really should be "almost no caffeine".

There could be a lot of things that are impacting your sleep that are physical and mental.

On the physical side of things: sleep apnea. This can be caused by enlarged tonsils, enlarged adenoids (if you still have them), deviated septum, and obesity, and probably other things that I don't know about.

On the mental side of things: I don't know.

Point is that seeing a doctor is probably going to get you better solutions than here.

Greatest factors contributing to deep and overall sleep increase tested on myself, sorted from more to less prominent and repeatable:

1. Don't eat or drink _anything_ except water at least 2-3h before bed

2. No alcohol or caffeine after noon.

3. Starting a sleep earlier, rather than later at night

4. Physical activity not too late (to leave >2h before bed), so that you feel tired

5. Low stress and relaxed mood as early as possible before bed

6. Dark room

7. Quiet room

8. No screens at least 1h before bed

> At what point would I try going to a psychiatrist to get some pills that make me sleep for 9 hours at a time to get "out of this loop"?

Don't assume you know what the treatment will be.

Go to a psychiatrist and tell them your issues. They'll run some tests to rule out any low-hanging physiological fruit like anemia and likely recommend getting a sleep study to rule out things like sleep apnea. From there, they'll narrow down the possible causes until they find a solution that will work for you. Might end up being garden-variety insomnia treatable with CBT for insomnia.

Make sure you're doing the following, or work towards doing them: https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/where-should-my-priorit...

> At what point would I try going to a psychiatrist to get some pills that make me sleep for 9 hours at a time to get "out of this loop"?

As someone in a very similar scenario who just started taking sleeping pills, they don’t work like that … IME they helped me not wake up in the middle of the night, but I still wake up feeling groggy.

You should talk to your doctor and try them if you want but don’t expect them to be a magic loop-bucking silver bullet.

No caffeine after lunch or no caffeine at all. Dark room, heavy blanket, perfect silence. I wind down an hour before bed, leave my phone in the other room and read myself to sleep. It helps to exercise during the day and to actually be tired. In my bedroom I try to have a fix for all the little problems: chapstick, headache pills, skin cream, water. Once I get in bed, I don't have to leave until morning.

Andrew Huberman has a good video on YouTube that talks through the different ways you can "fix" your sleep.

A sleep study is not a bad idea.

For me, limiting caffeine intake, limiting late night screen time, having a more regular bedtime, spending time outside. I found that if I spent too much time at a screen after 8pm, I would wake up at around 2am and feel "awake" but exhausted.

Manzanilla. It’s a variety of chamomile sold at Mexican grocery stores as a dried but otherwise unprocessed grassy herb. Drink an herbal tea from it to experience the deepest sleep you can imagine.

I have also heard that lettuce latex processed into a drink can help with this in a very mild way but I have not tried that myself.

Maybe you have too much screen time before bed, or you are too caffinated before bed. You can get melatonin without a psych visit.

If that doesn't work then a common culpit is sleep apnea... { do you snore, do you drink alcohol, do you have a deviated septum, overweight => sleep apnea }

For me, it's overwork. I sleep badly when I work too much and worry too much. Which of course leads to vicious cycle, as bad sleep generates more problems at work. When I don't work, or work lightly, my sleep is 10/10.

Get a sleep study done. Lofta will ship you an at-home test. Sleep apnea will leave you feeling unrefreshed no matter how much sleep you get, and it will only get worse without a CPAP or other aid.

Do you drink alcohol in the evenings? Alcohol has a sedative effect at first, but your body compensates and so you'll tend to wake up when the alcohol wears off, rather than when you're fully rested.

I exercise everyday, use THC at night, and apply high concentration magnesium lotion to my forearms at night. Be careful with weed though. Deep sleep but less REM.

I personally had good experience with a ZMA supplement for exactly the problem you described (not a severe though). More vivid dreams also.

Melatonin. Here in Australia they sell an extended-release version that lasts throughout the night.

1. No light in your room

Quit caffeine, for one.

No. Seriously. Quit caffeine. For at least a few months. You sound like you have a mild issue with anxiety. The caffeine isn't helping. Do not listen to its lies of productivity.

Start this weekend, and see what happens.

Maybe try this: An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia: https://ilya.sukhar.com/blog/an-algorithmic-solution-to-inso...

The TLDR is: "sleep a lot less before you can sleep more"

Recently discussed on HN: https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/40539997

i'm not a great sleeper, but the folowing has helped me quite a bit:

earlier bedtime (no later than 11:00 pm unless super necessary).

earplugs. I seem to sleep deeper. I think sometimes I'd be woken up and not remember from random sounds outside or even my air conditioning going on.

melatonin/cbd/ashwaganda gummy. Very very small dosage of all of the above.

Not eating for an hour+ before bed. I used to love snacking right before bed, but I don't sleep as well.

Coffee finished before 10:00 am.