Anyone else have sleeping problems?
bpost
Member Posts: 32,669 ✭✭✭✭
I have always been the early to bed early to rise kind of person, even as a kid but this is getting out of hand.
I am TIRED and I mean tired around dark, so I go to bed soon thereafter. I always read my Kindle until my eyes feel heavy then take off my reading glasses, close the book and drift of to sleep in about a minute. I never hear the cell ring or text come in when sleeping, even though the phone is on the charger 2 feet from my head.
I get up to pee at 11-12:00, then again around 3-4AM. On many days I can't get back to sleep and get up at 4:30AM to make coffee and eat b-fast.
Last night I went to bed at around 9:00 PM I got up this morning at 4:38AM, unable to sleep any longer. I was no longer tired so I got up.
I wish I could sleep better or more normal, like going to bed at 10:00 PM and getting up at 6:00 AM but it just does not happen.
Anyone else have weird sleep patterns?
Comments
Only when I am awake. Don
My sleep pattern varies from 5-6 hours per night to 8-9 depending on how many calories I burned during the previous day. Sometimes have to force myself to go to bed at 10pm and try to sleep and other times fall asleep in easy chair at 8PM
As forgemonkey commented, when your day starts @4AM for some reason, bedtime often comes early that night.
There are products you can take that encourage longer more restful sleep and probably taking such at a prescribed time would help get you into a more regular sleep pattern.
What you describe is not abnormal. In fact, it seems pretty much normal. A 9 to 5 pattern is eight hours, after all.
My own pattern is similar: 9-5. But I wake up between those hours from three to seven times. I get from 45 minutes to an hour, wake up, turn over and drift off again. Not until maybe 2 or 3 am do I get more than an hour at a time. Fortunately, I do not have to pee at night.
Both the VA and my civvie Doc recommended I do a sleep study. I completed it yesterday. It was an in-home test where I wore a snug strap around my chest, a sensor clamped to a finger, and a cannula in my nose. (I also just had a cataract removed, so also had to wear an eye shield at night. The device recorded my sleep for three miserable nights wearing that thing.. I mailed the thing back and I'll get results eventually. I hope they take into consideration the disruption caused by getting tangled up in all those hoses and wires.
Back to you...Pick up some 5 mg tablets of melatonin or valerian. Melatonin is a chemical your body makes to induce sleep, and valerian is a plant-based compound that does the same thing. About 20 minutes after you take melatonin, you'll drift off. You might want to quit that Kindle routine - it is known that blue light from screen devices inhibits production of melatonin. If you must read, use real books and incandescent (yellowish) light. No screen devices.
Oops. Double tap.
Been taking ZMA for years. Really helps.
dang democrates keep scratching at everything at night keeps me up
Go see your doctor. There’s things you can do about nocturnal urination.
Try melatonin from a health food store. The stuff from Walmart ain’t no good.
I'm up every couple hours, wander aimlessly about the house, pee rinse repeat. Seems to be part of growing old.
Maybe I'm afraid the grim reaper will sneak up on me as I sleep.
Smoky
I seem to have a opposite reaction to Melatonin it keeps me up!
I used to sleep eight great hours but now I have a really hard time getting to sleep and after about 4 hours I struggle to get back to sleep.
I don't want to take a drug to sleep I used to use alcohol fairly liberally LOL but as I got older even that would only last until I sobered up enough to wake!
Hopefully as I continue to heal I will return to good sleep habits as well.
The truth is that the older we get, the worse our sleep gets.
use to do the same Bruce, pee about every 4-5 hours, since getting the c-pap machine I still wake up but just roll over and go back to sleep, don't know why the urge to pee is gone. My trouble is falling asleep once I do, I am good for 6-8 hours, but I have to get sleepy, lately that is 2-3 am or so, before I am sleepy enough to go to bed......
after retiring I got into the habit I would get up early make breakfast for my wife about 4:00 am let the dogs out open up the chicken coop and such things then go back to bed get up a couple hours later and good to go
then it turned into staying up all night then sleeping thru the day
I have trouble sleeping any way ( my back and legs' have issues and wake me up often ) but I need to break my habit of reversed sleeping now that spring is around the corner I hope too any way
I still have to play a radio and run a fan for back ground noise even from you tube to drown out the ringing in my ears or it really makes going to sleep almost impossible for me
I drink a cup of green tea every night around 8pm. It seems to help me sleep better.
bpost, No problems going to sleep once I started drinking beer years ago. 😀
When I was a young man, if I could lay down flat I could fall asleep within minutes- whether I was "sleepy" or not. Everything changed when I turned 50. I'm now 60, and it is hard for me to fall asleep. Some nights I stay up into the early morning hours working on various projects. On other nights I take a so called "sleep aid" which let's me sleep beyond 0700.
Getting old is not fun.
dang democrates keep scratching at everything at night keeps me up
I've always been a night owl. My normal hours to sleep are 2 to 10 am. Since I'm older, I don't sleep straight thru. So some nights/days I'm up til 3 & it's noon before I get up. It's interesting which other members are on their PCs that late.
Mark, "Getting old is not fun" is breaking my heart. 😄
Used to wake up several times a night and did never rest well. I got a CPAP and after using about a week I quit getting up to urinate during the night. Fall asleep immediately and wake up only for a minute to change sleep positions, I get uncomfortable if I sleep more than about four hours in one position. I have dreams all the time now since I am on the CPAP. Never had a deep enough sleep to dream before the CPAP. One of the best things ever for my health was being put on the cpap and no way would I go without it now. I sleep wonderfully.
I use a Bipap machine and almost never get up to pee (unless I have imbibed in adult beverages). Usually get 6.5-7 hours of sleep per night, even when I stay up til 1 o2 AM. If I need to get up really early, I take a 5mg Ambien that my Doc prescribed and hit the hay at 9 or so. I also make sure that it is DARK when I lie down.
melatonin gives me wild dreams. I may sleep more but wake up more tired cause Ive been running in my mind all night
I do well with just getting around 6 hours of sleep a night. Have been on this cycle for over 25 years.
I did notice a bit of a change in my pattern when I bought a big comfortable recliner chair. Always had a rocking chair before. Never a recliner. Now when I sit down to watch TV in the late afternoon and put my legs up, I will fall asleep within 5 minutes no matter what I am watching. I find myself waking up in the dark usually after about 2 hours in the chair. I go to bed but it takes me a good half hour to an hour to get back to sleep.
I always wake up at 2 AM and that is my get up time. As stated above, been this way a very long time and it comes so natural I do not consider it a sleep problem.
No issues at all, I go to sleep in about 3 min after hitting pillow. Nice firm bed and hard pillow. No outside light entering the room, dark windows and tight blinds. I can see like an owl at night so no light is important
I'm usually in bed between 8:30 and 9:00 and then awake between 3:30 and 4:30. For the most part I can sleep straight through though the some nights I have some bizarre dreams about traumatic incidents in my past that will awaken me. I'll go through phases like that a couple times a year and then the dreams stop and I sleep like a baby.
Usually takes 2-4 hours to go to sleep. I'm a side sleeper,and restless also, so the CPAP has made things more difficult. Once I get to sleep, I seem to do okay.