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I picked up very serious sleep problems (and seemingly permanent bags under my eyes) right around puberty and lived with it for about twenty years. Tried most o

I picked up very serious sleep problems (and seemingly permanent bags under my eyes) right around puberty and lived with it for about twenty years. Tried most of the "hacks" on this page (yes, including exercise) to no avail. It all unexpectedly went away when I moved into my current apartment. I have huge, unblocked, east-facing windows, and every morning I’m bathed in sunlight. No more sleeping in; I’m wide awake, no arguments. Consequently, by midnight I am dead to the world. All of this makes me a bit worried for the future, as "big unblocked east window in the bedroom" seems like a big ask for a rental. But yeah, it worked, my sleep is solved for the time being. Except for chunks of February.

Eric_WVGG 7y ago
“Huh, so maybe one of those seasonal-affect-disorder lamps would blah blah…” I’ve never been willing to try one as every one on the market is so ungodly ugly. There’s an opportunity out there for either a SAD bulb that could be added-on to a normal lamp, or an entire SAD lamp designed by an actual interior designer/artist.
- 1123581321 7y ago
  The only really nice-looking one I’ve found is Casper Glow: https://casper.com/glow-light/ https://casper.com/glow-light/ However, I don’t know if it counts, medically speaking, and the marketing page is careful not to make any actual claims.
tanin 7y ago
I unscientifically believe that we shouldn't use an alarm clock or any kind of trigger to wake up. My rational is: if your body has enough sleep, it'll wake up on its own. On the flip side: it's actually very hard to sleep when your body doesn't need sleep. On another flip side: it's easy to stay awake even though your body needs sleep. With this, we should all sleep in a completely dark (blocked) room with no sound and etc. The "big unblocked east window in the bedroom" (unless the curtain blocks the light effectively) is a no for me. I've read "why we sleep", and I get this conflict where: 1. The author believes in the no-trigger-to-wake-up as well. 2. Somehow I also get the impression that the author also believes that we should use sunlight as a trigger for waking up. We'd feel fresher. But wouldn't that cut off our sleep?
- quanticle 7y ago
  The problem with that idea is that it completely misses the fact that most of us have to get up at a specific time in order to get to work or school or whatever else we have to do. I tried the no-trigger approach for a while, when I was between jobs and didn't have anything to do otherwise. What I found out is that my natural schedule, without manual intervention, has me going to bed at approximately 2am and waking up at around 10:30-11am. When I regained employment, it was a pretty rough transition to go back to waking up at 7am again. After going through that experience, I'd caution people about buying into the no-trigger method. Yes, your brain will naturally get you the amount of sleep that you need. However, there is no guarantee that your natural sleep cycle will mesh with the other obligations you have in your life.
  - ACow_Adonis 7y ago
    Wild idea: maybe some people's sleep cycles are just inherently incompatible with society and the arbitrary schedules and obligations that a particular society and context has landed on. And I don't say that with any joy...
    - zeta0134 7y ago
      This is why I continue to seek out and work evening shifts. 3am-10:30am is just about exactly what my body wants to do naturally. Shifts that start at noon and get out after dark are perfect; once I got that synergy, I stopped feeling tired all the time. That said, sleep is a complicated, personal thing, and everyone's a little different. You should do what feels right to your body, because it might be very different from what works for my own.
    - yummypaint 7y ago
      Yeah i sometimes wonder about this in the context of our evolutionary history. Having some people around who naturally stay up late to tend the fire and keep a look out seems advantageous. I suppose teenagers can fill this role, but their numbers fluctuate.
  - tanin 7y ago
shantly 7y ago
Similar experience, had 15ish years of a terrible relationship with sleep starting when high school started, with a side order of seasonal depression. I blame a combination of: 1) puberty, 2) putting the long break in Summer rather than Winter plus a very early start time with the result that for several months I'd only see the Sun for at most 2.5 hours in the afternoon (walked into the building with the stars still out), 3) a homework load + butt-in-seat time that had more of my hours spoken for than I even came close to reaching again until I had multiple young kids of my own plus a full time job, plus the conditions being a hell of a lot closer to prison than to either college or working adult life (college was harder in some ways, of course, but less time consuming and way less stressful, I found, thanks to the much lower in-class time per week and more flexibility scheduling homework/study time, and consequently felt like a vacation after four years of high school), 4) glowing screens and the opportunity to reclaim some time for myself late at night with highly-engaging entertainment (by which I mean video games and screwing around on computers, the latter of which actually ended up being the most valuable thing I did in high school bar none, admittedly) Oh and there's a good chance, according to current research, that the whole Winter-is-school-time thing plus younger grades not getting us outside enough in those low-sunlight-per-day months was a major contributor to my being nearsighted by 7th grade. IOW K-12 school broke me both physically and psychologically for no good reason, with consequences lasting between a two-digit count of years and a lifetime, and I had it pretty easy, relatively speaking.
alanthonyc 7y ago
Have some children.
JamesBarney 7y ago
This is basically the first line treatment for delayed sleep phase syndrome, but if you can't afford a large east window you can a blue light generating device(like the ones used for seasonal effective disorder).

Eric_WVGG 7y ago

“Huh, so maybe one of those seasonal-affect-disorder lamps would blah blah…” I’ve never been willing to try one as every one on the market is so ungodly ugly. There’s an opportunity out there for either a SAD bulb that could be added-on to a normal lamp, or an entire SAD lamp designed by an actual interior designer/artist.

1123581321 7y ago
The only really nice-looking one I’ve found is Casper Glow: https://casper.com/glow-light/ https://casper.com/glow-light/ However, I don’t know if it counts, medically speaking, and the marketing page is careful not to make any actual claims.

tanin 7y ago

I unscientifically believe that we shouldn't use an alarm clock or any kind of trigger to wake up. My rational is: if your body has enough sleep, it'll wake up on its own. On the flip side: it's actually very hard to sleep when your body doesn't need sleep. On another flip side: it's easy to stay awake even though your body needs sleep. With this, we should all sleep in a completely dark (blocked) room with no sound and etc. The "big unblocked east window in the bedroom" (unless the curtain blocks the light effectively) is a no for me. I've read "why we sleep", and I get this conflict where: 1. The author believes in the no-trigger-to-wake-up as well. 2. Somehow I also get the impression that the author also believes that we should use sunlight as a trigger for waking up. We'd feel fresher. But wouldn't that cut off our sleep?

quanticle 7y ago
The problem with that idea is that it completely misses the fact that most of us have to get up at a specific time in order to get to work or school or whatever else we have to do. I tried the no-trigger approach for a while, when I was between jobs and didn't have anything to do otherwise. What I found out is that my natural schedule, without manual intervention, has me going to bed at approximately 2am and waking up at around 10:30-11am. When I regained employment, it was a pretty rough transition to go back to waking up at 7am again. After going through that experience, I'd caution people about buying into the no-trigger method. Yes, your brain will naturally get you the amount of sleep that you need. However, there is no guarantee that your natural sleep cycle will mesh with the other obligations you have in your life.
- ACow_Adonis 7y ago
  Wild idea: maybe some people's sleep cycles are just inherently incompatible with society and the arbitrary schedules and obligations that a particular society and context has landed on. And I don't say that with any joy...
  - zeta0134 7y ago
    This is why I continue to seek out and work evening shifts. 3am-10:30am is just about exactly what my body wants to do naturally. Shifts that start at noon and get out after dark are perfect; once I got that synergy, I stopped feeling tired all the time. That said, sleep is a complicated, personal thing, and everyone's a little different. You should do what feels right to your body, because it might be very different from what works for my own.
  - yummypaint 7y ago
    Yeah i sometimes wonder about this in the context of our evolutionary history. Having some people around who naturally stay up late to tend the fire and keep a look out seems advantageous. I suppose teenagers can fill this role, but their numbers fluctuate.
- tanin 7y ago

shantly 7y ago

Similar experience, had 15ish years of a terrible relationship with sleep starting when high school started, with a side order of seasonal depression. I blame a combination of: 1) puberty, 2) putting the long break in Summer rather than Winter plus a very early start time with the result that for several months I'd only see the Sun for at most 2.5 hours in the afternoon (walked into the building with the stars still out), 3) a homework load + butt-in-seat time that had more of my hours spoken for than I even came close to reaching again until I had multiple young kids of my own plus a full time job, plus the conditions being a hell of a lot closer to prison than to either college or working adult life (college was harder in some ways, of course, but less time consuming and way less stressful, I found, thanks to the much lower in-class time per week and more flexibility scheduling homework/study time, and consequently felt like a vacation after four years of high school), 4) glowing screens and the opportunity to reclaim some time for myself late at night with highly-engaging entertainment (by which I mean video games and screwing around on computers, the latter of which actually ended up being the most valuable thing I did in high school bar none, admittedly) Oh and there's a good chance, according to current research, that the whole Winter-is-school-time thing plus younger grades not getting us outside enough in those low-sunlight-per-day months was a major contributor to my being nearsighted by 7th grade. IOW K-12 school broke me both physically and psychologically for no good reason, with consequences lasting between a two-digit count of years and a lifetime, and I had it pretty easy, relatively speaking.

alanthonyc 7y ago

Have some children.

JamesBarney 7y ago

This is basically the first line treatment for delayed sleep phase syndrome, but if you can't afford a large east window you can a blue light generating device(like the ones used for seasonal effective disorder).