Thread: Rant and Rave, Cry and Complain

I SLEPT ABOUT EIGHT HOURS LAST NIGHT! For the first time in recent history (months, maybe year or more?) I was woken by my alarm at my ideal wake time! For the first time in the 4 weeks that I've been working through the CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) for insomnia, I was in bed for 8.5 hours without suffering any long periods of wakefulness! Wow, what a relief. CBT and sleep hygiene and cognitive therapies (where you stop trying to "fight/fix" insomnia, and instead adopt attitudes of acceptance to experience whatever one particular night has in store for you) *really* works!!

It's still a work in progress to be sure, but it shows that there are specific things you can do to drastically improve your sleep!

Originally Posted by FryingMan

(where you stop trying to "fight/fix" insomnia, and instead adopt attitudes of acceptance to experience whatever one particular night has in store for you) *really* works!!

I think that's true with so many things. It's almost like magic. Stop fighting, stop fixing, and practice acceptance instead. It's only when you can accept something, just as it is, that it starts to get better.

I had another "woken by the alarm in the middle of a dream" situation this morning. Woohoo. There are still morning wakings, but I'm making it back to sleep without a long struggle and continuing to doze/dream. Yay!

Originally Posted by FryingMan

You're welcome! Glad you liked it. He has a lot of good stuff. I haven't added the cold morning shower yet (shudder!) but I think pretty much everything from him is spot on. I jump out of bed and run outside first thing in the morning to get sunrise or low-horizon sunlight directly in my eyes whenever I can.

I think Apigenin is also in grapefruit? But the concentrations are low. I may try that. But I'm sleeping so much better now from natural rhythm adjustments and CBT-i (cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia) and circadian rhythm goodness (morning light &, exercise) and light management (avoiding bright evening lights) and having mostly rigid to-bed and rise times, that I generally think I can do without supplements for sleep.

I have ordered magnesium threonate, I already have theanine (but have ordered more), have glycine and GABA and tryptophan (he doesn't mention that, but it's a precursor to melatonin). I tried a 3-way stack the other night (3g glycine, 420mg GABA, 300mg theanine) and BOY the relaxation really hit me about half an hour after that. I was already in bed, and I felt a real "deepening" occur. I was woken by my alarm the next morning (with wake/sleep dozing the final 30 minutes, but I was asleep in a dream when the alarm hit). There are studies that show theanine together with GABA promote more both deeper and REM sleep than either alone. Deep sleep is all good of course, but it's the REM that we're really interested in . So that's good news.

I'm really grateful I found him and all the other resources available. I've always struggled with regular bed and rise times, but no longer! I'm totally rigorous about them now and after about 4 weeks I REALLY see the difference in sleep quantity and quality!

p.s. you're so lucky to be in a sunny place, with an empty eastern horizon (well I don't know what city your'e in but there is a long eastern-facing coastline of course). I'd SO be there on the beach every sunrise if I lived there...

(Moving the conversation here to stay on topic)

Great start for today. Followed his advice. Drank my coffee in the backyard to get the sunlight in my eyes. It was so lovely because the field was wet and we have waterbirds grazing back there right now. I noticed after 15 minutes or so that I felt very awake.

I also did my workout at the gym and a cold shower all before 9:30 am today, so that's great. Now enjoying a little green tea.

Speaking of green tea, that is an excellent source of theanine, but along with caffeine (so definitely not a night time drink). It's supposedly synergistic with caffeine so it offsets the crash effect later. I also have theanine powder I add to coffee when I'm not planning on making tea.

As for apigenin, I didn't know that about grapefruit. I do know it's in parsley. Last night I went ahead and added a little theanine powder to the chamomile tea since I didn't have it in the morning. I did have vivid dreams. I don't need supplements either, but I am always interested in things that increase dream vividness (assuming they are safe).

Yes, I love it here in Boynton Beach, but I don't go to the beach all that often. During the summers sometimes I will go at dawn for sea glassing when it coincides with low tide. It is so wonderful. We do get beautiful sunrises here! I would go more often if it was a quicker drive (it takes 15-20 minutes to get out there).

What's it like where you are?

I have never tried GABA - I know nothing about it. That's interesting what you write though, about it increasing REM with theanine. I wonder if there is a natural source?

Looking forward to seeing his podcast on memory today.

I am in a northern latitude where winter more or less lasts from October through April. In summer I get morning sun, thankfully, I usually have to move around the neighborhood to get the earliest post-sunrise light, I already have 3 or 4 spots where the break in the trees lets it through . I get not-quite-sunrise but still low solar angle sun in my backyard in summer. But I'm addicted, if I could catch the sunrise every day I would. There's something magical about the orange/golden rays when the sun is still just barely above the horizon. I have less evening exposure but get some, but the morning exposure is the more important one.
I don't know when the earlier morning sun access vanishes, I can see that it's rapidly already changing now in the 2nd half of September. Winter will probably be a bummer, they are dark, overcast, and grey here.

I basically run outside in the morning, find the sunniest spot in the neighborhood, and do squats/pushups with the sun in my eyes. I notice a marked increase in energy and motivation when I get a good solid dose of direct low morning sun.

I may try ordering the apegenin, it's the only thing from his recommendations that I don't have (there was actually one more he mentioned but that may be just too much!). I want to do updated sleep logs with the sleep stack from him and see if I can tell any difference. That'll probably take a couple months to fully complete. And it won't be entirely scientific because with the drastic light exposure changes coming with winter, it'll be hard to tell what had the most effect. At least it's cool now, sleeping in the heat was really difficult.

One change I made -- I'm a side sleeper, and I for a long while used two pillow stacked one on the other, one was large, and I discovered I was waking up at about 5 hours or so really warm, hot even, from having this pile of pillows right up against me. I ditched the larger pillow and just folded the smaller one in half to make it taller, and I find I'm sleeping better with that. If I wake and feel too warm, I'll stick out an arm on top of the blanket. In the hot part of summer I just ditched the blanket entirely.

He did say that it's best to delay the morning coffee until about 1.5-2 hours after waking, he said that avoids the afternoon crash. But I'm highly caffeine sensitive so I don't drink either coffee or tea (it makes me nauseous and dizzy).

Originally Posted by FryingMan

I am in a northern latitude where winter more or less lasts from October through April. In summer I get morning sun, thankfully, I usually have to move around the neighborhood to get the earliest post-sunrise light, I already have 3 or 4 spots where the break in the trees lets it through . I get not-quite-sunrise but still low solar angle sun in my backyard in summer. But I'm addicted, if I could catch the sunrise every day I would. There's something magical about the orange/golden rays when the sun is still just barely above the horizon. I have less evening exposure but get some, but the morning exposure is the more important one.
I don't know when the earlier morning sun access vanishes, I can see that it's rapidly already changing now in the 2nd half of September. Winter will probably be a bummer, they are dark, overcast, and grey here.

I basically run outside in the morning, find the sunniest spot in the neighborhood, and do squats/pushups with the sun in my eyes. I notice a marked increase in energy and motivation when I get a good solid dose of direct low morning sun.

I may try ordering the apegenin, it's the only thing from his recommendations that I don't have (there was actually one more he mentioned but that may be just too much!). I want to do updated sleep logs with the sleep stack from him and see if I can tell any difference. That'll probably take a couple months to fully complete. And it won't be entirely scientific because with the drastic light exposure changes coming with winter, it'll be hard to tell what had the most effect. At least it's cool now, sleeping in the heat was really difficult.

One change I made -- I'm a side sleeper, and I for a long while used two pillow stacked one on the other, one was large, and I discovered I was waking up at about 5 hours or so really warm, hot even, from having this pile of pillows right up against me. I ditched the larger pillow and just folded the smaller one in half to make it taller, and I find I'm sleeping better with that. If I wake and feel too warm, I'll stick out an arm on top of the blanket. In the hot part of summer I just ditched the blanket entirely.

He did say that it's best to delay the morning coffee until about 1.5-2 hours after waking, he said that avoids the afternoon crash. But I'm highly caffeine sensitive so I don't drink either coffee or tea (it makes me nauseous and dizzy).

Ah, man, I guess I am lucky then. I won't have to worry about sunlight at all in the winter. When I lived in Connecticut, I would get Seasonal Affective Disorder every winter. I did not know at the time I had a bad vitamin D deficiency. So the combo sent me into depression every winter. Down here that is not a problem. A lot of reasons to love Florida.

Ah, man, I can't imagine sleeping without AC. We are lucky because down here all of the houses have AC (up in New England we didn't have that). After watching his video I ordered a cheap knock off of the eightsleep he mentioned. On amazon they have some similar thing with a water-cooling system. I only need a twin size so it was not too bad. $250 bucks and that included the cover to go with it. That's a lot of money, but, I figure this will help my sleep a lot! Even with AC I am often hot at night too. I like it 70 degrees or cooler if I can have it, but we keep the AC at 76 at night.

I don't understand side sleeping . Back sleeper all the way.

Yes, I know he said that. There is a trick though. You can add powdered theanine to coffee and it should help with reducing the crash, like in green tea. However, I don't think the delayed caffeine intake changes your schedule. I think he suggests that just as a way of avoiding the crash. I try to keep my caffeine intake to as early as possible - I want as little of it in my system by night time. And ... I'd rather enjoy my coffee first thing in the morning, and take a bit of a crash

Took a cold shower today after walking the dog and getting what morning light there was and doing some light calesthenics. Slept a bit worse last night, lots of wakings, but I've set intention to remember dreams and lucid dreams higher, so that may be interfering. But I always got back to sleep. Recall medium, but over several wakings, and remembered one dream after getting up that I'd forgotten by the time I got up. I even cranked the shower all the way to cold, and was amazed that I could take it without a big shock reaction (I did it in stages, not all at once!). Surprising, because my cold water is only about 8 degrees F year round.

My wife is a sugar/sweet addict and I usually go along with her. We ordered more ice cream and yesterday I ate it along with her. I'm going to stop it, though, because I'm sure I sleep worse after eating it during the day. Really. I'm. Not. Going. To. Eat. The. Ice. Cream. My big improvement in sleep came when we ran out of the ice cream and didn't re order, a week or so ago.

I'd definitely like to get a cooling (and warming!) smart mattress cover. The one promoted on the Huberman podcast is crazy expensive, though, and of course unavailable where I live. In winter time, unless the heating is really cranked up, the bedroom is quite chilly, so extending a hand/foot out of the covers works well.

But even on a "worse" night, I still slept I estimate a bit more than 7 hours out of a bit more than 7.5 hours in bed. I think it may soon be time to set a fixed wake time at between 7 and 7.5 hours, to further consolidate sleep. I'm now not drowsy/nodding off in the evening, a sign that my sleep drive is lower, or, I suppose, that I've caught up on sleep. But I've come to like that evening drowsiness, so this morning I got up well before my alarm when I found myself awake and not all that drowsy, and got a jump on the day and the morning circadian rhythm goodness (outside, light, exercise, cold shower).