I used to listen to a podcast by a certain Dr Andrew Huberman. He’s got a website and he’s got what he calls the “sleep toolkit”. I’ll allude to parts of the so called “sleep toolkit”.
Parts of the toolkit that you haven’t mentioned:
Temperature is very important for sleeping. In summary, get a hot shower, that’ll have the paradoxical effect of telling your body to lower it’s temperature. Then, try sleeping in a slightly colder room, it works for me.
Then there’s avoiding exercise and eating for a few hours before sleep. Both of these activities apparently raise the body’s temperature and alertness.
Also, looking at the sunset is supposed to help with the natural melatonin cycle.
One last thing was the stack of food supplements for sleep (not really sleeping pills, but allegedly help falling asleep and not waking up in the middle of the night). I gave theanine, myo inositol, magnesium bisglycinate and ashwaganda a try.
I am trying a few of the behaviors above as well as the supplements. I feel like I fall asleep and keep on sleeping better than usual, on average. It might be placebo but so far so good.
Wow - going back a couple of years! My sleep is generally “ok” most of the time now by my standards (probably not good by others’, but whatever). I have a more stressful job, but stress is fairly under control.
I still get extremely wound up for races (not that there’s loads of them), so I generally reserve a Zopiclone for the night before or 2 nights out, but otherwise never touch them. My main complaint is waking up 5+ times every night, which is still a thing unfortunately. Acceptance keeps me fairly chill about sleep most of the time.
I listened to approximately 700 hours of a conversation between Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Andy Galpin (joking on the time) but I picked up a little tip that I’ve heard people talk about before and it was a real breakthrough for me.
It’s the breathe right strip. I’d wake up with a dry mouth (due to breathing through my mouth) and have to use the bathroom over and over. I’ve tried to focus on drinking extra water in the morning and laying off after dinner and then wearing the strips. I slept from 11:30 to 4:30 without waking up for the first time in a long time and it was glorious. Almost as soon as I started wearing the breathe right strip my sleep score in Whoop hit 100 for the first time and now if it’s not in the 90s it’s because of something I did (staying up late, drinking, eating right before bed).
Ooh interested! I became habituated to oxymetazoline (rebound congestion) for over a year, after using it to fight night time congestion. I weaned myself off it when I was ill with Covid, as I had no choice but to feel crappy!
Anyway, these could really help, and appear safe, so thanks for the tip! Seems they’ll be really useful for me.
I seem to have bouts of insomnia but my body seems to compensate a few days later and relatively oversleeps and probably triggers another bout of insomnia.
