7 ms·

I suffered insomnia for years (5+ years for sure). I had very poor sleep hygiene. I went sleep at 2 am, and woke up at 11 am. I felt tired at work and I drank c

I suffered insomnia for years (5+ years for sure). I had very poor sleep hygiene. I went sleep at 2 am, and woke up at 11 am. I felt tired at work and I drank coffee everyday. I was coffee-maniac, and coffee effectively destroyed quality of my sleep. So you see that I spent about 9 hours in bed and I had very bad sleep quality. A few months ago, I started learn a lot of stuff about sleep. Most of what I read on the internet was useless. But I found in academic sources (i.e. inside ".edu" and ".gov" domains) two very important concepts (they tightly connected to each other): 1. Sleep effectiveness; 2. Sleep restriction; You can get idea about them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_restriction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_restriction I started to follow very strict sleep schedule. 1. I go to bed in the interval between 21:15 - 21:50 2. I wake up in the interval between 06:00 - 06:03 Note that my wake up time is strictly fixed. Now I spend even less time in bed (21:50 - 06:00), but I feel much, much, much better. As my fitbit shows me, I have much less interruptions during the night.

guard-of-terra 11y ago
What if some social event wants you to be awake after nine? I would end up sacrificing all my social life if I go your route.
- hal9000xp 11y ago
  That's a good question. My social life is mostly daily (e.g. rock climbing etc). I don't drink alcohol, I don't go to bars/nightclubs. But sometimes I have to brake my sleep schedule. For example, two weeks ago I had to fly to another country for a job interview. Unfortunately, I had no better flights, so I had to go to the airport at late evening. I finally got home (from airport) at 3 am. I felt very tired during next 4 days. My sleep schedule was: Day 1: 3:30 am - 8:30 am Day 2,3,4: 21:30 - 06:00 (applied sleep restriction!) If I didn't apply sleep restriction in the following days I would mess up my sleep at lest next two weeks. In my case, one night with broken sleep schedule costs me 4 days. I think it's possible to brake your sleep schedule once in 3 weeks but if you do it frequently it would be bad for your sleep hygiene. So frequent alcohol and night-life is not compatible with healthy life style (at least for me, it's 100% truth). So it's probably question of priorities.
  - aluhut 11y ago
    This sounds to me like a huge disadvantage. I have what I thought of a terrible sleep hygiene too but after several years of watching collegues adapting "new ways to sleep", I realized it's not that bad at all. So me (and my girlfriend) usually stay up long. Midnight to 1am is normal for a weekday. 1-2am is the time when we say: we should have been in bed already but it happens more often then I thought. We get up at 7:30 on 3 of 5 days and 6:30 on the others. Obviously this shouldn't be enough sleep and it isn't. We both get tired sometimes somewhere around 6-7pm where we sometimes take a nap (usually on the 6:30-days) of max 1h. Sometimes we break it up early. On Friday we stay up as long as we can and sleep as long as we can and want on Saturday. Same goes for Sunday where we stay up to ~2am until the late NFL game is finished. It works pretty good I must say. I don't drink coffee or take any pills, energy drinks, whatever. I can sleep pretty good on the train or plane for some bonus hours and fall asleep instantly when I get into bed. I can even go to sleep early or sleep through a whole day if I'm sick and I think there is nothing better to do (but being sick is very rare for me. I was sick one day some weeks ago. Slept through it almost completely. Got up just to eat and pee). I would never want to miss the flexibility even if it's unhealthy or whatever.
    - olau 11y ago
      If you fall asleep almost immediately after going to bed, it's a sign that you need to sleep more. According to a lecture by a professor in sleep I watched many years ago when Google Video was still alive.
    - spuz 11y ago
      Some people obviously need better sleep hygiene than others. It's not a question of social life vs health. Both those things are factors that affect quality of life in general. If your body simply couldn't cope with poor sleep you would change your opinion on the relative importance of your sleep vs your waking life.
  - Namrog84 11y ago
    I normally never do this. But since your grammar, punctuation, and spelling was quite good and you used the word "brake" in more than 1 post. I think you should be using the word break instead for these use cases. My apologies for being that person today. Otherwise great responses! Thanks!
- jmnicolas 11y ago
  It's your wake up time that is the mots important : you should wake up at the same time every day, including week ends, no matter what. Napping can help compensate a shorter night.
  - mreiland 11y ago
    why is that? Do you have some reading on the subject?
    - jmnicolas 11y ago
      Sorry you'll have to Google it. I read almost everything I find on sleep and I encountered this quite a lot, it was even said to me by my doctor and a psychiatrist. A few days ago there was something on HN about how people that slept late on week ends had a shorter lifespan than other, it shouldn't be hard to find. Now for my sample of one : I'm subject to SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and common depression too but when I manage to stick to a strict wake up time (6AM at the moment) my quality of life is greatly enhanced. And this despite that I'm more an evening (even night) person.
chdir 11y ago
> 06:00 - 06:03 That's tight. Do you face any resistance and have to train your mind or does it come easy when you sleep timely ?
- hal9000xp 11y ago
  I usually easily wake up with first/second alarm at 6:00/6:01 and feel fresh. Sometimes, I feel sleepy at 06:00 but since I clearly got idea of "sleep restriction" into my mind, I actually inverted my emotions about wake up time. I mean I actually worry if I spend in bed later than 6:03 because I know very well that it's costly to break my sleep schedule. One day I actually missed my alarm clock because my phone was out of charge. Since my room is completely dark, I woke up at 7:20 confused about time and with headache (i.e. headache after unusually long deep sleep). Next 4 days I felt tired and my sleep wasn't very good. So now, I double check my alarm clock and my phone always charged every evening :) I.e. most of the time it's easy to wake up at 6:00. When it's not easy, I wake up anyway since I get a lot of negative emotions if I brake sleep restriction principle :)
  - acconrad 11y ago
    > I usually easily wake up with first/second alarm at 6:00/6:01 and feel fresh. I thought the signal for good sleep was that you didn't need an alarm to wake up? Can you point to those academic articles you've mentioned?
    - hal9000xp 11y ago
      I need alarm because I need to keep my sleep schedule in strict time frame. I often wake up at 5:30 because I slept very well at night. But I stay in bed and waiting for alarm. If I didn't sleep very well, I could wake up at 6:30, but my alarm triggers at 6:00 and I wake up at 6:01. In the beginning of my experiments with sleep, I tried to use natural wake up. But my sleep schedule started floating a lot and sleep quality degraded when offset become big. So I decided to keep strict sleep schedule. It's very balanced. If one night my sleep quality wasn't very good, then next night it's guaranteed that I have good sleep quality. But alarm clock guaranteed that I don't oversleep. I found "sleep restriction" for the first time here (look at "case illustration" on page 3): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3060715/pdf/nihms-279100.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3060715/pdf/nihm... After I just read another articles which I found by keywords "sleep restriction". It also contains very useful ideas about mindfulness meditation. I wrote about it in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10564930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10564930

guard-of-terra 11y ago

What if some social event wants you to be awake after nine? I would end up sacrificing all my social life if I go your route.

hal9000xp 11y ago
That's a good question. My social life is mostly daily (e.g. rock climbing etc). I don't drink alcohol, I don't go to bars/nightclubs. But sometimes I have to brake my sleep schedule. For example, two weeks ago I had to fly to another country for a job interview. Unfortunately, I had no better flights, so I had to go to the airport at late evening. I finally got home (from airport) at 3 am. I felt very tired during next 4 days. My sleep schedule was: Day 1: 3:30 am - 8:30 am Day 2,3,4: 21:30 - 06:00 (applied sleep restriction!) If I didn't apply sleep restriction in the following days I would mess up my sleep at lest next two weeks. In my case, one night with broken sleep schedule costs me 4 days. I think it's possible to brake your sleep schedule once in 3 weeks but if you do it frequently it would be bad for your sleep hygiene. So frequent alcohol and night-life is not compatible with healthy life style (at least for me, it's 100% truth). So it's probably question of priorities.
- aluhut 11y ago
  This sounds to me like a huge disadvantage. I have what I thought of a terrible sleep hygiene too but after several years of watching collegues adapting "new ways to sleep", I realized it's not that bad at all. So me (and my girlfriend) usually stay up long. Midnight to 1am is normal for a weekday. 1-2am is the time when we say: we should have been in bed already but it happens more often then I thought. We get up at 7:30 on 3 of 5 days and 6:30 on the others. Obviously this shouldn't be enough sleep and it isn't. We both get tired sometimes somewhere around 6-7pm where we sometimes take a nap (usually on the 6:30-days) of max 1h. Sometimes we break it up early. On Friday we stay up as long as we can and sleep as long as we can and want on Saturday. Same goes for Sunday where we stay up to ~2am until the late NFL game is finished. It works pretty good I must say. I don't drink coffee or take any pills, energy drinks, whatever. I can sleep pretty good on the train or plane for some bonus hours and fall asleep instantly when I get into bed. I can even go to sleep early or sleep through a whole day if I'm sick and I think there is nothing better to do (but being sick is very rare for me. I was sick one day some weeks ago. Slept through it almost completely. Got up just to eat and pee). I would never want to miss the flexibility even if it's unhealthy or whatever.
  - olau 11y ago
    If you fall asleep almost immediately after going to bed, it's a sign that you need to sleep more. According to a lecture by a professor in sleep I watched many years ago when Google Video was still alive.
  - spuz 11y ago
    Some people obviously need better sleep hygiene than others. It's not a question of social life vs health. Both those things are factors that affect quality of life in general. If your body simply couldn't cope with poor sleep you would change your opinion on the relative importance of your sleep vs your waking life.
- Namrog84 11y ago
  I normally never do this. But since your grammar, punctuation, and spelling was quite good and you used the word "brake" in more than 1 post. I think you should be using the word break instead for these use cases. My apologies for being that person today. Otherwise great responses! Thanks!
jmnicolas 11y ago
It's your wake up time that is the mots important : you should wake up at the same time every day, including week ends, no matter what. Napping can help compensate a shorter night.
- mreiland 11y ago
  why is that? Do you have some reading on the subject?
  - jmnicolas 11y ago
    Sorry you'll have to Google it. I read almost everything I find on sleep and I encountered this quite a lot, it was even said to me by my doctor and a psychiatrist. A few days ago there was something on HN about how people that slept late on week ends had a shorter lifespan than other, it shouldn't be hard to find. Now for my sample of one : I'm subject to SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and common depression too but when I manage to stick to a strict wake up time (6AM at the moment) my quality of life is greatly enhanced. And this despite that I'm more an evening (even night) person.

chdir 11y ago

> 06:00 - 06:03 That's tight. Do you face any resistance and have to train your mind or does it come easy when you sleep timely ?

hal9000xp 11y ago
I usually easily wake up with first/second alarm at 6:00/6:01 and feel fresh. Sometimes, I feel sleepy at 06:00 but since I clearly got idea of "sleep restriction" into my mind, I actually inverted my emotions about wake up time. I mean I actually worry if I spend in bed later than 6:03 because I know very well that it's costly to break my sleep schedule. One day I actually missed my alarm clock because my phone was out of charge. Since my room is completely dark, I woke up at 7:20 confused about time and with headache (i.e. headache after unusually long deep sleep). Next 4 days I felt tired and my sleep wasn't very good. So now, I double check my alarm clock and my phone always charged every evening :) I.e. most of the time it's easy to wake up at 6:00. When it's not easy, I wake up anyway since I get a lot of negative emotions if I brake sleep restriction principle :)
- acconrad 11y ago
  > I usually easily wake up with first/second alarm at 6:00/6:01 and feel fresh. I thought the signal for good sleep was that you didn't need an alarm to wake up? Can you point to those academic articles you've mentioned?
  - hal9000xp 11y ago
    I need alarm because I need to keep my sleep schedule in strict time frame. I often wake up at 5:30 because I slept very well at night. But I stay in bed and waiting for alarm. If I didn't sleep very well, I could wake up at 6:30, but my alarm triggers at 6:00 and I wake up at 6:01. In the beginning of my experiments with sleep, I tried to use natural wake up. But my sleep schedule started floating a lot and sleep quality degraded when offset become big. So I decided to keep strict sleep schedule. It's very balanced. If one night my sleep quality wasn't very good, then next night it's guaranteed that I have good sleep quality. But alarm clock guaranteed that I don't oversleep. I found "sleep restriction" for the first time here (look at "case illustration" on page 3): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3060715/pdf/nihms-279100.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3060715/pdf/nihm... After I just read another articles which I found by keywords "sleep restriction". It also contains very useful ideas about mindfulness meditation. I wrote about it in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10564930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10564930