stupid first world problems you're dealing with

[Adieu]

Lately I've been sleeping like 5 hours a night. Been trying to ride my bike more often, but it doesn't do much to tire me out enough to get a good night's rest 

 

for me sleep quality is a function of a few controllable variables:

 

1) energy expenditure - working out to some extent throughout the day including a session of stretching

2) light exposure - turning off lights around the house at least an hour before bed. Limiting or blocking exposure to pc's or phones by turning them off or wearing tinted glasses while I wind down.

3) how recently I've eaten - can't sleep if I'm hungry but apparently you dont want to eat after 10pm and cutting off food by 7-8 is best.

4) supplementation - I take melatonin and magnesium and it helps a lot. other things like nighty night tea help too. Epsom salt baths close to bed time help a lot.

5) mental state - I use headspace to do a 10 minute meditation session and it calms me down a great deal.

6) not drinking alcohol

 

Anyway, if I pay attention to those things sleeping is pretty easy for me.

[Squee]

So apparently I suffer from psoriasis...?

[Perezvon]

Got stuck for ~40min in the cold room at work.

[auxien]

How cold is the cold room?

[Perezvon]

Something like 3°C, so not freezing fortunately. Probably would have died otherwise lol.

[Braintree]

 

Lately I've been sleeping like 5 hours a night. Been trying to ride my bike more often, but it doesn't do much to tire me out enough to get a good night's rest 

 

for me sleep quality is a function of a few controllable variables:

 

1) energy expenditure - working out to some extent throughout the day including a session of stretching

2) light exposure - turning off lights around the house at least an hour before bed. Limiting or blocking exposure to pc's or phones by turning them off or wearing tinted glasses while I wind down.

3) how recently I've eaten - can't sleep if I'm hungry but apparently you dont want to eat after 10pm and cutting off food by 7-8 is best.

4) supplementation - I take melatonin and magnesium and it helps a lot. other things like nighty night tea help too. Epsom salt baths close to bed time help a lot.

5) mental state - I use headspace to do a 10 minute meditation session and it calms me down a great deal.

6) not drinking alcohol

 

Anyway, if I pay attention to those things sleeping is pretty easy for me.

 

 

 

Thanks for the tips. I already do most of those, though. It's mostly stress that's keeping me up. I get the feeling things will subside in the next month and a half, hopefully.

[Adieu]

The I'd highly suggest doing the 10 min of headspace. It really winds me down. Throwing on some good ambient during is nice as well.

 

I forgot to mention that making sure your sleeping environment is as dark as possible is also a good move for uninterrupted sleep

[Braintree]

Yeah, I throw a towel over my receiver and play tibetan singing bowls. I often restart it after waking up.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0BYnSsVnNs

[caze]

[Echolalia]

Deciding which space ship moving through space sound is better - Nostromo, Enterprise or Babylon 5. Decisions decisions. 

[caze]

Deciding which space ship moving through space sound is better - Nostromo, Enterprise or Babylon 5. Decisions decisions. 

 

Babylon 5 was a space station. smh.

[hello spiral]

Eliane Radigue's Jetsun Mila has been my sleep soundtrack for yeeeaarrsss now

[YEK]

Something like 3°C, so not freezing fortunately. Probably would have died otherwise lol.

holy crap

[ambermonk]

I've been hearing my condo neighbor across from the hall constantly shouting "FAAHk!" for three days in a row. He sounds like a cross between Family Guy's Peter Griffin and that Francis guy on YouTube. Dunno if he keeps getting fragged on some online shooter game or what. But I may have to leave my phone on record at my door so I can use all those FAAHks in my next track

[auxien]

Something like 3°C, so not freezing fortunately. Probably would have died otherwise lol.

Damn! That's a long time in that temp. At work our big freezer stays at -10 F, I can't be in there for more than about 15 minutes at a time, suited up. Anything below about 30 is fucking cold imo tbqh irl.

[Bechuga]

Big old alsatian lunged at me today and by pure luck alone it did not gain any purchase on my hip, although I certainly felt those fangs on my jeans. Didn't really think about it at the time but thought later 'holy fuck, I could have actually been really hurt!' There's even a tiny abrasion where its jaw almost got me but not quite. Not fond of dogs to begin with, and this does not help.

 

And I've seen the owner with the same dog on a field I walk through, with the dog not on a leash. I hope to fuck it doesn't do the same thing again, this time when it's free to move as it likes.

[KovalainenFanBoy]

I read that as "big old asian"

[pcock]

 

 

Lately I've been sleeping like 5 hours a night. Been trying to ride my bike more often, but it doesn't do much to tire me out enough to get a good night's rest 

 

for me sleep quality is a function of a few controllable variables:

 

1) energy expenditure - working out to some extent throughout the day including a session of stretching

2) light exposure - turning off lights around the house at least an hour before bed. Limiting or blocking exposure to pc's or phones by turning them off or wearing tinted glasses while I wind down.

3) how recently I've eaten - can't sleep if I'm hungry but apparently you dont want to eat after 10pm and cutting off food by 7-8 is best.

4) supplementation - I take melatonin and magnesium and it helps a lot. other things like nighty night tea help too. Epsom salt baths close to bed time help a lot.

5) mental state - I use headspace to do a 10 minute meditation session and it calms me down a great deal.

6) not drinking alcohol

 

Anyway, if I pay attention to those things sleeping is pretty easy for me.

 

 

 

Thanks for the tips. I already do most of those, though. It's mostly stress that's keeping me up. I get the feeling things will subside in the next month and a half, hopefully.

 

its funny, 5 hours is optimal for me recently. any more and i feel groggy for hours. i sleep 2.30 - 8, if i go to bed at even 1 am, i wake up feeling like shite. 

[Adieu]

Yeah, I throw a towel over my receiver and play tibetan singing bowls. I often restart it after waking up.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0BYnSsVnNs

 

nice sounds for sleep.

 

I have a little device called the Withings Aura, and it connects to radio stations, so I set it to an ambient one and it does a 15 minute routine of shining red spectrum light on me, which is meant to initiate melatonin production and signal the body to sleep. I also set the wake-up routine,  which is a 10 minute process of shining an increasingly bright blue spectrum light as well as playing BBC Radio 3 to gently wake me up in the morning. The blue spectrum light stop melatonin production and helps initiate cortisol production which shocks the body into waking up.

 

It also tracks your sleep with an under mattress pad and tells you how many times you woke-up, what levels of sleep you were in and for how long, and other data like your average heart rate and total sleep. Pretty cool device. Especially cool if you're experimenting with variables that may impact your sleep quality.

 

(pics are kind of big sorry)

 

 

Eliane Radigue's Jetsun Mila has been my sleep soundtrack for yeeeaarrsss now

 

That might be a little droney for my tastes. I wasn't into the ambient music for sleeping thing until recently. I've never wanted to create a direct association with something I might like, but luckily for me the radio station I listen to is random and I have no idea what songs are being played. My friend is kind of weird and plays the same song for the duration of the night but that seems really odd to me.

 

 

its funny, 5 hours is optimal for me recently. any more and i feel groggy for hours. i sleep 2.30 - 8, if i go to bed at even 1 am, i wake up feeling like shite. 

 

 

the groggy thing might just be your body being of sync. The circadian rhythm is very sensitive and in modern life very difficult to get functioning properly due to our environments. I've been tending to sleep too much lately, but I'm really awful at waking myself up unfortunately. 

 

Basically for the modern human our body is totally confused as to whether it's day or night, when we should be producing melatonin and falling asleep, if we should be continuing melatonin production, and at what time we should start producing cortisol and beginning the cycle of becoming awake. I think that's why so many people seem to struggle with having proper sleeping hours, "insomnia", etc.

[YEK]

trying to ween myself off klonopin (benzos).. it sucks, constant waking anxiety, bit of panic here and there, tight feeling in my throat.

could take a year to ween off and then withdrawal symptoms can last another one or two years after quitting.

fuck the dr. who put me on it.

[Adieu]

trying to ween myself off klonopin (benzos).. it sucks, constant waking anxiety, bit of panic here and there, tight feeling in my throat.

could take a year to ween off and then withdrawal symptoms can last another one or two years after quitting.

fuck the dr. who put me on it.

 

damn that's heavy man. Sorry to hear it. Good luck though!

 

I read that cold turkey can be dangerous with klonopin. I hope you're staying safe with it.

 

coincidentally I hear kratom is decent at helping with symptoms after the actual chemical withdrawal occurs. 

[YEK]

 

trying to ween myself off klonopin (benzos).. it sucks, constant waking anxiety, bit of panic here and there, tight feeling in my throat.

could take a year to ween off and then withdrawal symptoms can last another one or two years after quitting.

fuck the dr. who put me on it.

 

damn that's heavy man. Sorry to hear it. Good luck though!

 

I read that cold turkey can be dangerous with klonopin. I hope you're staying safe with it.

 

coincidentally I hear kratom is decent at helping with symptoms after the actual chemical withdrawal occurs. 

 

 

thanks! yeah my dr. told me that cold turkey in worse cases can kill.. i'm following a schedule for withdrawling off the med that i follow religiously: cut a tiny bit off, take for two weeks or more, cut a bit more off etc.

[ignatius]

 

 

trying to ween myself off klonopin (benzos).. it sucks, constant waking anxiety, bit of panic here and there, tight feeling in my throat.

could take a year to ween off and then withdrawal symptoms can last another one or two years after quitting.

fuck the dr. who put me on it.

 

damn that's heavy man. Sorry to hear it. Good luck though!

 

I read that cold turkey can be dangerous with klonopin. I hope you're staying safe with it.

 

coincidentally I hear kratom is decent at helping with symptoms after the actual chemical withdrawal occurs. 

 

 

thanks! yeah my dr. told me that cold turkey in worse cases can kill.. i'm following a schedule for withdrawling off the med that i follow religiously: cut a tiny bit off, take for two weeks or more, cut a bit more off etc.

 

 

cold turkey can lead to psychosis and death. no joke. 

 

read about xanax withdrawal.  you have to step down. it's all about he GABA in your central nervous system. I had to do it for xanax after being on it a while for panic attacks and coping with some other health problems and a bunch of reasons really.. anyways.. it's the weirdest fucking thing ever. pretty hard to do. took me a year... and then symptoms still persisted.  

 

had taken xanax in short durations before so never had any issue but took low dose for long time and that was a mistake. 

 

i found that stepping the dosage down over long period is the only way. i would break it in tiny pieces and eventually got to where it was like a tiny crumb of a crumb of a crumb and ever other day type thing or every three days.. etc.. 

 

but.. visual and auditory hallucinations, sweats, dizziness, panic, joint pain, derealization (<- wtf is that!?!?!) and depersonalization etc.. weird appetite, weight gain.. weight loss.. there's a whole list with some tranquilizers.. it requires learning what the symptoms might be so you know what you're experiencing is a withdrawal symptom.

 

sorry you have to go through it.  be patient. stick with it. it's hard as fuck at times but exercise (cycling) helped me a ton when i was ready for it. 

 

if you're withdrawal symptoms are strong then go slower. i would stay at one dosage level for a month sometimes.  happy to chat about it if you want to message me. 

[Adieu]

If it's GABA related I bet you can diminish the negative effects with supplementation of various things. Exercise helps everything.

[YEK]

yeah, exercise is something i already do every day. i think i'll go to my herbalist and see what she says about supplements. 

Edited September 17, 2016 by yek