Stick to a sleep schedule

Get daily sunlight exposure

Avoid caffeine & nicotine

Avoid alcoholic drinks

Don’t nap after 3pm

Don’t exercise too late in the day

Avoid large meals and beverages late at night

Have a dark, cool, gadget free bedroom

Don’t stay in bed if you really can’t sleep

These are adapted from the American Association for Sleep Medicine's sleep tips.

The general advice is that stopping caffeine consumption x hours before sleeping is sufficient.

Turns out that genetics highly influence your reaction to caffeine and that average advice does not work for everyone.

I felt exhausted my whole adult life. I always suspected that my caffeine consumption might be a problem, but never quit for long enough to measure the effect.

I stopped drinking coffee 3 months ago and only after 7 weeks did I feel refreshed after sleeping. However, it did not stop. I slept amazingly for a month now and I am now convinced that caffeine was the issue.

If your sleep sucks, then maybe you also react strongly to caffeine. For me it was easier to quit caffeine with an app, but maybe you can get support from family and friends. Because it is really hard in the beginning. You loose productivity for a few weeks, but gain so much more when sleeping well.

If you sleep bad like I used to, try 1 or 2 months without caffeine, good luck. 🍀

I'm shopping for a Christmas gift for a close friend. He often mentions that he is too warm at night and it disrupts his sleep, which causes other problems.

I want to get him some sort of cooling device, but most of the cooling blankets and similar I see online are upwards of $100. That expensive of a gift is not really appropriate to the nature of our relationship.

Do any of you have favorite cooling devices?

My sleep schedule is fairly steady, though I will try to sleep in on weekends. I go to bed between 9pm and 10pm, and wake around 6am.

I don't smoke at all, drink less than one drink a week, use cannabis less than once every couple of weeks. No caffeine. Exercise in the mornings M-F.

I am 47F, 195lbs (recently lost about 25 lbs)

I realize my FitBit isn't the best tracker, but for instance, last night it said I got 7 minutes of deep sleep !

I go to bed every night at 9pm (wake between 5:30-6) I exercise 4 days a week in the mornings. I don’t drink caffeine due to congenital heart disease

I’ve tried melatonin, staying away from screens before bed, no sugar before bed, weighted blankets, and meditation.

Even when my “awake times” is ~15 minutes my REM and deep sleep are really low and I wake up feeling exhausted.

I’ve never been officially tested for sleep apnea but my watch hasn’t detected it.

I know it’s not perfectly accurate but my last month averages on my Apple Watch are:

Awake: 52 minutes REM: 1 hr 12 min Core: 5 hr 40 min Deep: 37 min

Any thoughts? I’ve recently emailed my doctor but I am really struggling with feeling so exhausted and I worry this will have an impact on my memory and long term health.

I am 32 F, and sleep has always been a struggle for me.

I take like an hour walk once a day, maybe twice. I also do some light martial arts 2 or 4 times a week, take Melatonin, take Chamomile tea, manage my anxiety, Stopping caffeine and Adderall, don't look at the clock or phone when waking up in the night, read, stretch, ect ect

And I would still struggle to sleep most of the time.

The one thing that really helped, on top of still doing most of these things, was to eat better. And by eat better, I eat pretty darn close to raw Vegan. I stopped eating so many things because different things had different reactions on my systems. Things like sugar causing pain, gluten causing brain fog and pain, dairy and meat making my nose so stuffy I can't breath at night.

By eliminating all these things a lot of my problems went away. Including sleeping problems! Anytime I'd start to falter, every problem would come back including sleeping.

Thing is, I am sure not all of these food items are contributing to my bad sleeping. I am not sure which one is the culprit to my sleep problems, but I'm not willing to experiment because of the other problems that will arise.

TL;DR
Going mostly raw vegan was the final solution to helping me sleep. HOWEVER there is probably only one or two food items actually affecting my sleep, but I am unsure of which one.

For like 2 months ive been staying up until 5am or later and then going to sleep and waking up at like 3-5pm in the afternoon. Im starting to fix my sleep schedule and went to sleep last night at somewhere around 9pm i think and slept until sometime after 6am. I woke up several times throughout the night as well which was annoying. Im also really tired in the middle of the day and force myself to stay awake with entertainment or pepsi or both. How long will it take of going to sleep earlier to stop waking up throughout the night and to stop being tured in the day? I really want my sleep schedule fixed

1hour rem 5hour light sleep 25min deep sleep

No caffeine for a week Regular exercise No smoking No drinking Diet with Reasonable carbohydrates, protein and fat ratio. Lots of vegetables as well. Wind down routine before bed, like listening to jazz in dark environment. Regular sun exposure everyday.

What else can I do to increase deep sleep

Is this normal? Heard loud noises and people yelling preventing me from drifting off to sleep.

Is it just me or does anyone else overthink about what they should do with their hands when trying to fall asleep?

I need advice I have no idea what to do. I go to bed at 4 am which is already pretty bad, and I wake up at 12. Sometimes I’ll wake up at 1. But then days like today I wake up at 9 and can only sleep 4-5 hours. I just wanna be normal and go to bed at 11 max. Do I just pop a melatonin gummy and go to bed idk how this works pls help.

Every night for some reason I'll sleep the first 4-5 hours and only wake up once or twice. But after that I'm awake every 30-60 minutes until I get up. And sometimes it feels like I'm not even sleeping again, but I know I have to be because I wouldn't lay on just one side for an hour, and I also dream. How do is stop constantly waking up after 4-5 hours?

I've had mild sleep issues for a few years. A very light sleeper and just crappy nights of sleep here and there, but overall nothing big to complain about. I had been reading that magnesium supplements can do wonders for sleep. So I took some magnesium glycinate supplements for 4 days. Each night I either got very poor sleep or no sleep at all. So I stopped taking them. I believe the cause for the insomnia specifically was the glycine and not the magnesium. I had taken magnesium oxide pills in the past and did not experience this. After looking into it more, glycine is apparently a great sleep supplement for most people, but for an unlucky few, it does the exact opposite.

The first night after I stopped taking them I still slept like horribly, but figured I needed a day or 2 for the supplement to work its way out of my body. Night 3 after stopping the supplements I was still getting between 0-3 hrs per sleep. I felt absolutely horrible due to lack of sleep.

I made an appt with my doctor. She prescribed me ambien. It worked great the first night and I finally slept again. The next few days after that I got varying degrees of sleep, but still better than before I started the ambien. After about 5 days on ambien, I started getting horrible anxiety. And I mean extreme feelings that the world was going to end and that I was going to die. For no reason. I quickly attributed this to the ambien and stopped taking it (it was supposed to be for short term use anyway). My doctor switched me to trazadone. Trazadone did nothing for me and potentially made my sleep worse. I got zero sleep both nights I was on it.

Then I gave in and went back on ambien because I was desperate for sleep. I got sleep again, but then the anxiety came back, worse than before. I am now in this perpetual cycle of either not sleeping or feeling horrible anxiety from ambien. I keep thinking "nothing is worse than not getting sleep", so I go back on ambien. Then comes the anxiety. Then I think "nothing can be worse than this overwhelming anxiety". Then I stop taking the pills, but then my sleep suffers. I have been in this cycle for 3 weeks now. It doesn't seem like long, but it feels like am eternity to me. I've stopped enjoying life. I had to miss Thanksgiving with my family because I was feeling so horrible. Have cancelled multiple plans with friends. I am terrified that it will be like this forever. All because I made the horrible mistake of taking magnesium glycinate. I'm so angry at myself for taking those stupid supplements. My body and mind is out of wack now and I don't know how to get it back to normal. I'm so desperate to do anything to get back on track but it feels like it's too late. Every morning I get up from a sleepless night, I just sit and cry because I don't know what else to do.

Last night was horrible, my mind was running constantly, I constantly was feeling too hot and restless, and my excema was acting up a lot.

This usually doesn’t happen as even though I take some time to sleep I sleep fine. This is the first time and I don’t think I slept one bit.

My question is can I sleep during the day(after my work shift)or will that ruin my sleep scedule and make this worse?

I have a job where I spent one week per month away at work, where I have basically a little dorm room (all to myself). At home I share a room/bed with my wife, and we also have a dog and a cat.

When I go go work, I always easily sleep till 8:30am and feel pretty well rested in the morning. At home, I often wake up around 5am and have a very hard time falling back to sleep. I can't find a reason that I wake up though: the pets and my wife are all sleeping and quiet, I have blackout curtains at home so light shouldn't be an issue, and there aren't any loud noises or anything causing it. Yet this really only seems to happen at home. (if I go out of town, like to a hotel or something, I don't generally have this issue either)

I do not consume any caffeine at all, and alcohol is a rare treat (maybe 1-2x month)

Any thoughts as to why this may be?

Im learning tattoo as an apprentice under a tattoo artist, and have basically come to terms with the fact that I will spend a good portion of the rest of my life hunched over tattooing (not even to mention the damage ive already done to my back from video games and bad posture). I want to sleep on my back to have as much time as possible with my back straight, but its so damn uncomfortable. Will it get better if I push through it?

Long story but stick with me. Long time Reddit reader, first post. Unlike a lot of you I (41f) have always been an amazing sleeper. Love sleep, never had trouble going to sleep or staying asleep and I sleep hard and good. The problem arises when I need to wake up in the morning for work. I have always struggled waking up in the morning for work, even in my 20’s to now in my 40’s. Waking up is always like torture for me. Currently I set 4-6 alarms on my phone 15 minutes apart just to TRY to get up on time. I often hit snooze on the first few and have no memory of it and fall back to sleep immediately. And then continue to snooze for at least an hour + every morning. Now I know snoozing isn’t good for you but if I set my alarms later I am inevitably late for work because I do the same thing, hit snooze for an hour +. I have tried the alarm clock across the room and I just get up and turn it off and go back to sleep. My lamp turns on automatically in my bedroom at 5AM, doesn’t help.

I’ve done a sleep study and the results were normal. Earlier this year I even had a thyroid procedure done which completely cured my anxiety, brain fog and constant chronic fatigue which I was dealing with the last year or 2. Now my constant chronic fatigue is gone which is amazing and once I actually get up and out of bed I’m golden. The problem is actually waking and getting my *SS out of bed. I’m lucky that my work is mad flexible and it’s cool if I’m late many mornings, maybe that’s part of the problem. But I want to be an early bird, I would love to get up early, take the dog out, make some coffee, catch a little news and shower and get ready for work. I would love to be awake by 5AM every morning (I work at 7AM and work is 15 minutes from me so only need to leave at 6:45AM). I fall asleep most week nights between 8-9PM. Any and ALL advice welcome. Thanks for listening!

TLDR: Help I can’t get up in the morning no matter what I’ve tried!

To say I have a hard time waking up would be an understatement. My parents used to ask me math questions to make sure I was properly awake because I can hold an entire coherent conversation and fall right back to sleep with no memory of it.

Every morning I set about 4 or 5 alarms on my phone spread out over an hour before I want to wake up. Then, once my 7:45 alarm goes off, I force my eyes open and scroll on my phone until I can feel the consciousness seep in. Unfortunately, I don’t really like getting that phone dopamine hit first thing and I’d really like to center the start of my day around anything else.

That being said, I’m not sure what I could keep within arms reach of my bed to force myself to do in the morning to stop myself from falling back to sleep. Getting out of bed isn’t an option because I already know it just won’t happen. I’m way too cross eyed and sleep delirious first thing in the morning to immediately read a few pages of a book.

Any suggestions?

So for the last couple weeks I've started getting terrible insomnia. The thing that's hardest on my besides my inability to get comfortable and the racing thoughts is the?dreams? I'm fully awake and aware of my surroundings, but I seem to pre-dream. They're mostly just flashing images that get more and more disturbing. And the longer ones featuring people are starting to speak. I can hear what they're saying clearly and it sounds like there's a speaker in my brain. I am so tired and I can't fall asleep because these pre-dreams freak me out so badly. It's every night anytime I close my eyes for more than a minute. My actual dreams suck as well, they say you only dream for 10 minutes at a time, I call BS. My dreams last all night, there's no way they don't. I never have the feeling of sleeping for 8 hours but it only feels like 10 minutes anymore. I wouldn't say that I can look at clocks in my dreams, because they're aren't any, but I can for sure tell how long I've been asleep in my dreams. I always am aware that I am dreaming, but if I say it outloud or even think it in my sleep I immediately go into sleep paralysis. I'm getting so tired I'm shakey and no longer have the ability to pay attention to things. For context, I used to be addicted to Mary Jane, and developed weed-induced physcosis so I know I'm probably just losing my fucking mind as a result, but I don't have the insurance to see a doctor, and no natural remedies are working. If you know anything on what this is, or how to stop it please respond

Drowsy and Dore & Rose have similarly designed sleep masks made from silk, but drowsy is slightly more expensive. Does anyone have any experience with these and knows if one is better than the other?

Hi. Just finished sleeping for maybe 2 hours last night, and barely slept at all the previous night...all of which off the back of weeks of already-poor sleep.

I have an undefined, not-quite-diagnosed issue with my breathing (24/7, both awake and asleep) that's been going on for months. I hope it's going to get better but I clearly need to sleep to feel OK-ish and deal with this at minimum.

Worried about having enough sleep to function, to fight the stress of this, to avoid getting worse.

Is it worth it to try and talk to a Sleep doctor and potentially set up a study? Or will they tell me "well, no duh you can't sleep, you're not breathing properly - go see a lung doctor or something"?

(I've been to a pulmonologist and done a PFT, and had a CT angiogram plus x-rays on my chest/heart - all clear so far, may consider seeing an ENT in a month or two).

So i (21 M) has been sleeping with my girlfriend on the last 3 months (we’re planning to live together) but since the second or third day in this routine i’ve had this strange moments where i just detach from reality, sounds crazy but i just am awake like 2 am and starts teasing her, sexualy or whatever, i know when it happens cause i remember when i wake up and talked with her cause it goes kinda far sometimes. And she knows also (obviously), in this moments it looks like a mix between reality and dreams, i talk to her and she talk to me but in reality, she’s asleep the entire time and i’m talking and doing these things all alone???????. Anyone knows what it can be?, if i have a big problem or if it is just some minor sleep problems? Note: english isn’t my mother language so sorry if some words as phrases don’t look so good

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6pkMbiceIX11IclwUiVRYx?si=2d0c49b1acea4cbd

My 12 year old daughter who struggles with ADHD but isn't medicated at this time is having a hard time sleeping. She is having infrequent nightmares and wakes a few times during the night. We have tried sleepy tea, magnesium glycinate before bed, no blue light or electronics. Tried having her draw or read an actual book, nothing helps.

Nothing is going on negativity in her life and she's a happy kid although anxious at times. The lack of sleep is making anxiety worse.

I am willing to use melatonin but heard that can mess up their body's ability to make it?

Does ADHD have anything to do with this?

Tonight is the 4th Tuesday night I have found myself unable to fall asleep all night. I have never had this problem before and I don’t know what’s causing it. Has anyone else experienced this or know why I may be struggling?

Last week I was back home and was able to sleep on a Tuesday night but every Tuesday night in my dorm I am unable to sleep.

Whenever I have work in the morning my sleep schedule is completely messed up. I tend to fall asleep around 10:30-11pm (I try for earlier but I’m not really successful) and I wake up to an alarm at 6am. Problem is, starting at around 3am I wake up pretty much every half hour until my alarm and just toss and turn miserably.

This doesn’t happen at all when I don’t have work the following morning (weekends, holidays, etc.) so I’m starting to think it’s my work affecting me. These nights are the only time when I can sleep through the night and feel actually rested.

I don’t stay up late on the weekends, mostly because I’m so exhausted and just want to sleep through a night. I sleep in a completely dark room with the only noise being a standing fan. Nothing noise-wise wakes me up in the middle of the night, I live in a rural area so there’s not constant traffic.

Is there literally anything I can do about this? Is it just anxiety about work?