I know there doesn’t have to be a reason. My body is most comfortable sleeping on my side, with my legs pointing down on the bed but the rest of my body completely turned making me into basically a right angle. It makes sleeping with my partner very challenging cuz I obviously need a lot of space to be comfortable. I’ve slept like this since I was a baby, according to my parents. why?
For reference, I'm 25M, 6'0" 187 lbs., 16% BF, with a 17" neck. Not sure what else is useful. I attached a list of symptoms in a document as well. Broadly, I have a mild sleep apnea diagnosis by RDI, and no insomnia diagnosis yet (I have an in-lab sleep study on Tuesday). I have been utterly confounded by a recent development since March of this year, where my sleep duration has steadily declined from 7 hours and 19 minutes per day to 6 hours and 28 minutes this October. Lately, nights were quite bad, at 4.5-6.5 hours, and the two medications I started last week have seemed to help, albeit with massive drowsiness during the day.
Importantly, nobody seems to know why this is going on.
Some of my theories:
Anyone have any ideas? Doctors have been... shockingly useless here. I want to know the reason behind this so I can prevent this from happening after getting a septoplasty next month... and potentially other treatments.
​
It's not like having a normal nightmare. You're aware of your surroundings, you know you're awake, but you literally can't move no matter how hard you try and sometimes you get this horrible feeling that someone or something is in the room with you. Even when it's finally over, you're just lying there trying to process what the hell just happened and the worst part? Having to close your eyes and go back to sleep knowing it might happen again.
Has anyone else ever been so scared after sleep paralysis that you just didn't want to sleep anymore? 😭
I do this near daily, im 15 and cannot sleep without it. Am i cooked
I sleep around 11pm and wake up around 7am. After waking up I lay in bed for much time around 9.
I want to fall asleep faster; I dont sleep at the time Im in bed. My roommate talks on mobile late at night and Im sensitive to light and noise , other way im Im sensitive to disturbance and my sleep is distupted easily. Im using sleep mask but I wanted to fall asleep faster as his talking keeps me disturbed with lights on.
Hello everyone I feel like I have the worst sleeping schedule ever. I'm writing this at 4 in the morning and have to wake up in an hour. I feel like I got so used to have an hour or 2 hours of sleep every day and I dont think that's good for me. This is how my day usually goes, I wake up at 5 go to school for 10 hours get home at around 6-7 pm, nap (but not really nap because my mom keeps yelling my name so I wouldn't nap) then if I DO nap I wake up at 9 then I stay up till like 2-330 am and then go to sleep.....i think its really bad for me for my age but I dont know how to stop doing it really
The structure of modern society damages both the physical and psychological health of people, specifically where people are forced to work jobs that require them to get up extremely early or stay extremely late and thus can create sleep deprivation along with other kinds of problems. For me personally, it's most comfortable for me to wake up in the afternoons (like going to bed at 4AM and waking up at 2PM) but I question if this is healthy in the long run even if I feel fine now and prefer such a lifestyle, and assuming the reason I stay up late is due to screen time.
Is there a certain time interval where it's the healthiest time to go to sleep and to wake up in the long-run? And should I adjust myself to such a schedule even if it may feel uncomfortable in the short run?
Saw Huberman talk about this and figured it was BS but tried it anyway. Basically you close your eyes and just slowly roll them around (clockwise in circles 5 times, then left to right side to side 4/5 times) while doing long slow exhales.
My twist is that straight after that, I picture moving super fast full screen in my eyes, like POV riding a big rollercoaster or driving an F1 car or a speedboat.
I came up with it quite intuitively based on previously learning to lucid dream when I was 18 via this book, which mentioned if you feel yourself waking up then spin in a circle in the dream which brings you deeper into the dream as your brain has to calculate what you are seeing as your spinning. Same concept as the above.
Apparently the eye moving thing from huberman is it confuses your balance system so your brain stops tracking where your body is, which is apparently part of what needs to happen to fall asleep. I'm usually out in like 5-10 minutes now, which is wild for someone who used to lie there for an hour. Has anyone else tried this or am I just super suggestible lol
About me: 36M, 181cm, 86kg, athletic build.
The problem: For about 1.5 years I've been getting 3–5 hours of sleep a night. Falling asleep is fine. The issue is I wake at 1–2am almost every single night and can't get back to sleep.
On the odd night I get 6–7 hours, I feel great: mentally sharper and way more productive at work. So I know what I'm missing.
What I've tried so far:
Bloods: Testosterone came back pretty low. I first tried raising it naturally with supplements and enclomiphene, but I'm fairly sure the enclo gave me really bad night sweats, which made my sleep even worse. I switched to TRT and have been on it for 10 weeks. Quality of life has definitely improved, but it hasn't fixed the sleep.
Cortisol-lowering supps: Holy basil, phosphatidylserine, ashwagandha, skullcap, reishi, l- theanine, apigenin, glycine, magnesium glycinate
Snack Before bed: protein/ fatty snack before bed
Peptides: Epitalon and DSIP
Training timing: AM vs PM workouts make no difference
Morning sunlight: Within 30 minutes of waking
Blue blocker glasses: 1.5 hours before bedtime
Meal timing: Last meal before 6pm
What I'm considering next:
CBT-I (CBT for insomnia)
Looking into gut health, although my gut seems fine (minimal gas, normal stools and motility)
My question: If you've been through the same thing and tried a lot of options, did anything actually fix it for you? Especially interested in hearing from anyone with the same "fall asleep fine, wake at 1–2am" pattern.
I've struggled with sleep for 4 years. Late 20s male and my problem has always been I wake up after 4-6 hours no matter what. Regardless of when I fall asleep, where, how, etc. I am also always exhausted but never "tired", never able to feel like I'm falling asleep or that my body needs sleep.
Well I feel like I figured it out maybe. I injured my wrist and took a complete break from weightlifting. Also became a bit depressed and got a bad fever so I just slowed my entire life down - spent most of my time at home, took a break from all hobbies. I've been pretty disciplined about doing heavy powerlifting/bodybuilding routines 1-2 hours in the gym the last 4 years, which is around when my sleep issues started as well. Always at least two compound lifts at about 80% training max. But over the last year I only spent about 1 hour at the gym doing a superset bodybuilding program 3x a week
Well like clockwork about 3 weeks out from not lifting and, I am:
- Always tired about 15 hours after wake time
- Sleeping like CRAZY. 8 hours isn't even enough, I end up sleeping 12 sometimes if I'm not careful
- Staying asleep, not waking up in the middle of the night
Pretty crazy stuff. I know CNS fatigue is a thing, I read about it a lot a while back. But I did not realize I was ruining my life by lifting. I'm pretty conflicted now since lifting is a huge part of my identity and fitness journey but if I just can't sleep when I lift then I think the answer is obvious...
I need some help figuring out a new wake-up system because I am an insanely heavy sleeper, and I always have been.
I’ve tried basically every normal recommendation:
- Shaking/vibrating watches. I eventually just got used to the vibration and started sleeping through it.
- “Sun” Lamps. I sleep under two open skylights, the light doesn’t wake me up.
- Shaker alarms that go under your pillow or mattress. Somehow these barely wake me up, and they usually end up vibrating against my wall or furniture and waking up my roommates instead.
- Extremely loud alarm clocks. Same problem. I can sleep through them.
- My current method is setting my phone to play obnoxious, annoying songs at full volume. This eventually gets me up, but I have to set the alarms ridiculously early because I’ll apparently turn them off in my sleep with absolutely no memory of doing it.
The biggest problem now isn’t even waking myself up. It’s waking up my roommates.
My bedroom is on the third floor of our apartment, but there’s no actual door to my room. It’s basically just a staircase that leads directly up into the room, so any alarm I use travels down the stairwell like a damn megaphone.
This morning my alarm apparently went off for about 40 minutes, and I genuinely did not hear a second of it. Meanwhile, it woke up and really pissed off one of my roommates, which I completely understand.
So I’m looking for ideas for an alarm or wake-up system that is:
1. Powerful enough for an extremely heavy sleeper
2. Difficult to shut off while half asleep
3. Ideally not dependent on blasting sound throughout the apartment
Has anyone dealt with this level of heavy sleeping before? I’m especially interested in things like bed-based alarms, lights, vibration systems, smart-home setups, or combinations of multiple things.
At this point I’m willing to get pretty creative because “just set a louder alarm” clearly isn’t working. 😭
Edit: I do light therapy, but would like to actually change that schedule.
Hi all,
For the last seven years, I have been unable to sleep at night and can only sleep during the day. No matter how much I try, strict routines, countless different medications, I have never been able to solve the problem. I am also diagnosed with autism, and have been told a delayed melatonin release is very common in autistic individuals. Before 2020, my sleep was basically the same but I was in school, and got so sleep deprived I could no longer continue. I've tried so many different meds, including "heavy" ones, anxiety ones, even some primarily prescribed for alcohol withdrawal... they have little to no effect. At best, they work for 5 days before I get used to them. Again, I was told autistic people usually require higher dosages, but they do not change my sleep schedule, just make the sleep much heavier when it finally sets in.
I am very lucky that my employment allows me to choose my own hours. But soon winter will come again and I will never see the light of day, making seasonal depression even worse. I need a lot of sleep (commonly 10-12 hours) and dream of being able to sleep during the night, to have a schedule where I could see daylight and not want to go out at the coffee shop when it has already closed. I wonder if anyone struggled with the same, if they found a medication that work, or any other trick? I've done the "no sleep during 24 hours" too, many times, but no matter how dead tired I get I will only fall asleep in the early morning.
Thank you!
No middle of the night wakeups, just falling asleep relatively soon after getting in the bed, and sleeping through the night. I hope it stays consistent, but I don’t like that I’d have to do cardio every day to achieve this.
Waking up at 3am and not being able to fall back asleep is one of the most frustrating parts of bad sleep. I've spent the past year reading through research studies on sleep, and most of it points back to daily habits. I cut out the stuff you can't change (age, sex, menopause, sleep apnea) and ranked what's left by how big the effect was and how easy it is to change.
1. Cut caffeine earlier than you think. Caffeine added ~12 min of nighttime waking in a 24 study meta-analysis. If you're waking up at 3am and drinking coffee after lunch, start here.
2. Regular moderate cardio. Cut ~10 min of nighttime waking in a meta-analysis of RCTs in people with insomnia. Evening workouts are fine. Don't go hard within 1 hour of bed, that's the one window where it can fragment sleep.
3. Make the room actually dark. Even dim light (5 to 10 lux, roughly a nightlight) increased awakenings in a PSG study. Blackout curtains or a sleep mask.
4. Block the noise. In one rail noise study from the WHO review, noise added ~30 min of nighttime waking. Earplugs or a fan for white noise if you live anywhere loud.
5. Keep the bedroom cool. Keep it under at least 77°F (25°C). Above that, nighttime waking goes up, and a room that's too cold wakes you up too.
6. Stop eating 1+ hours before bed. Eating within an hour of bed showed 2 to 2.6x higher odds of waking up during the night.
7. Open a window or run a fan for airflow. CO2 at 1000 ppm (a closed bedroom can get there fast) added ~5 min of wake time.
8. Skip the nightcap. Alcohol before bed was linked to lower sleep efficiency, meaning more of your time in bed spent not actually asleep.
9. Add strength training. A review of 13 RCTs found resistance training improved mid-sleep disturbance and sleep efficiency.
10. More fiber, less sugar. More fiber was linked to fewer arousals and deeper sleep. More sugar was linked to more arousals. Small study (n=26) but tightly controlled.
11. Tart cherry juice. Cut nighttime waking by ~17 min vs placebo, small study as well.
12. Yoga. Showed a huge reduction in waking (~56 min) in insomnia patients, but the evidence is rated low certainty so the real effect is probably smaller.
Short version on supplements if you've made it this far.
• Standard melatonin doesn't help you stay asleep. It's for timing, not maintenance
• Ashwagandha had the best data for reducing nighttime waking
• Glycine reduced waking, but in a very small study
• Magnesium improved sleep efficiency in older adults but never measured waking directly
• Valerian made people feel like they slept better, with no measured change
I put a camera in my room & found out every 15-30 minutes I rub my eye or scratch my face or rotate sleep position or something. I’m sure this can’t be good for my quality of sleep. I don’t actually feel like I wake up when this happens. I also didn’t know I did this in my sleep until I watched the footage back for a different reason. I normally wake up tired but that grogginess kinda goes away by 11am. Could this be some form of sleep apnea? Or is this serious enough to go get it checked out? (The blue tick is everytime I moved in my sleep last night from 2am - 9am)
I’ve been going to school for the last month Monday- Friday and I’ve been working maybe like 2 to 3 days a week. But as of this week, I feel like my sleep hasn’t been that great. I don’t know if it’s because temperatures here in California are back to 100°. But I’ve been sleeping with a fan and the AC and some cooling linen. I don’t drink any caffeine. I try not to eat too close to bedtime. And I’ve taken magnesium glycinate, but recently I ran out and that was what was really helping me. I was wondering if someone can suggest anything else for me
So sometimes, especially after a tiring event, my mind goes into this half-sleep mode where it feels as if I am between being awake and asleep, and seemingly loops over something strange and random over and over where it can be distressing. I find that I have to really unwind to prevent this from happening, and if it does, I have to finally come awake and stay up until my brain has had a reset of sorts.
To give an example: I had given my room a deep-clean and Fall touch, and it took some time to where I was exhausted afterwards. I had my screentime of 2 hours for the day, where I played some games and looked on the internet to relax. When I tried to sleep, it was loops in my mind of some person in a room and thinking (this is a made-up one as I don't remember how it exactly went): "Dave can't move because he's in the messy room". It was just that, over and over again. I have to endure it until I finally wake up.
I have had it happen over a video game, too. I had played XCOM 2, and my loops that night were that I needed to move one of my soldiers into a position over and over, with no continuing of thought, just the same one. I've also had it of something that was stressing me, or a task that needed being done. This can also occur when I know I have an event coming up, such as a vacation or long drive for an appointment/interview.
For visuals, I have had some of bullets being loaded into a hunting rifle, or a belt of rounds into a machine gun (though this has only occurred once).
So with that, I just wanted to know if anyone else experienced the same.
I work 3rd shift 11pm-7am and during the week i dont rlly struggle to sleep but weekends rlly kill me idk why.
I usually ko by 10-11am and wake up around 5-7pm but weekends i get like anxiety or something. Usually only get like 2-3 hours of sleep and cant go back to sleep.
Not sure if its bc im trying to change my sleep schedule but during weekends i cant stay asleep. I was literally fighting my sleep and ko by 8:40pm today and woke up an hour later from a dream and been struggling to go back. Did some research and people recommended magnesium l-threonate, i already take magnesium glycinate daily and during the week it helps but for weeknds it doesn’t. I take melatonin from time to time but it also doesn’t work. Got the magnesium with ashwagandha too bc it was buy one get one mix & match. Wondering if anyone had any luck with these?
I suspect its anxiety thats messing me trying to change my sleep schedule weekends so i dont waste the whole day.
Hey all. Starting last year, I recently started having issues sleeping, due to what appears to be some sort of neurological issue in relation with my bladder. This has developed into full fledged nocturia. I've seen 4 different specialists so far, tried a myriad of prescriptions, breath-work, cutting caffeine and alcohol completely, even tried nerve stimulation. I am continuing to explore medical options. I am currently trying to schedule a sleep study.
Before this happened I was pretty much sober. I smoked weed maybe once in a blue moon, drank about as often, and my only physical vice, if you can even call that was caffeine, and even then my consumption was the normal ~90 mg dose a day. Prior to this condition I was in shape, lifting 5-6 days a week, never pushing myself too far. On paper, I was healthy. So I have no idea what triggered this.
I'm just curious if anyone has gone through anything similar and if they discovered anything that meaningfully changed their condition. At this point I'm willing to try almost anything to sleep normally again.