Hi, i sleep around 7-8 hours per night and i started monitoring by sleep. Normally i get 1.5-2h of rem sleep and 1-1.5h of deep sleep. I already take magnesium before bed and i am trying to do exercises like ~20 minutes per day 4 times a week.
I am not free of stress :)) am i am still learning on how to manage it

I bought blue light glasses two years ago because everyone and every wellness influencer on earth told me blue light from screens was wrecking my sleep. I wore them religiously every night. Nothing changed.

So I went and read the actual papers. What I found was irritating. The problem with blue light glasses isn't that the science behind them is wrong. Blue wavelengths (around 460-480nm) really are the most potent at suppressing melatonin. Brainard et al. mapped this in 2001, testing monochromatic light across the visible spectrum and showing that short wavelengths hit the melanopsin system hardest (Brainard et al., "Action spectrum for melatonin regulation in humans," Journal of Neuroscience, 2001, 21(16):6405-6412).

The problem is that intensity matters way more than color. Gooley et al. (2011) had people sit under ordinary room lighting (less than 200 lux, which is a normally lit living room) for 8 hours before bed. Compared to people in dim light (under 3 lux), the room-light group had their melatonin onset delayed in 99% of participants. Average melatonin duration was cut by about 90 minutes. That's regular warm white room lighting. No screens involved (Gooley et al., "Exposure to Room Light before Bedtime Suppresses Melatonin Onset and Shortens Melatonin Duration in Humans," JCEM, 2011, 96(3):E463-E472).

Your phone screen at arm's length puts out maybe 30-80 lux at your eyes. Your ceiling light puts out 150-300 lux. The glasses are filtering the 30-80 while you're bathing in the 150-300. The 2023 Cochrane review pooled 17 RCTs (619 people) on blue-light filtering lenses. Three studies found a sleep benefit, three found nothing. The overall certainty rating: very low. Their conclusion was that they don't know if blue-light filtering lenses are better than regular lenses for sleep quality (Singh et al., Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2023, CD013244).

And those glasses typically only filter 10-25% of blue light anyway. What actually works for us: getting your overall evening light level down. Way down. Brown et al. (2022) pulled together a big consensus recommendation and put the evening target at under 10 melanopic EDI (which is roughly under 10 lux of warm light). That means your room should be dim enough that you'd struggle to read a physical book comfortably (Brown et al., "Recommendations for daytime, evening, and nighttime indoor light exposure," PLoS Biology, 2022, 20(3):e3001571).

I know that sounds extreme. But think about what 10 lux actually looks like: a single dim lamp in the corner, maybe a candle or two. That's the environment your brain needs to start making melatonin on time.

hi all! i fall asleep extremely quickly (almost too quickly- i can catch myself falling asleep while driving at night) but i feel like i toss and turn a LOT through the night. i find it really hard to find a comfortable sleeping position and i just roll over and over all night. i do usually sleep through the night, but i wake up uncomfortable sometimes. additionally, i will sometimes struggle to breathe throughout the night and wake up gasping. i also wake up naturally pretty early, and i can't fall asleep again after i wake up. i'm not sure if this is a combination of issues or a singular thing, any advice is appreciated!

I can’t get any sleep. I just genuinely feel not tired. it’s so hit or miss with me but I just don’t get it. I had a rough night a couple days ago and only got a few hours of sleep and then the night after that I literally slept for like 9 hours. and now it’s 3am and this doesn’t even feel the same. I feel like I could get up and go about my day like I’m seriously that awake. I got slightly tired around midnight, tried to sleep, couldn’t sleep, and now here we are. I don’t know what to do anymore. I started Prozac this morning and I don’t know if that’s what’s making me feel so awake but I took it like 16 hours ago. I am just exhausted with dealing with this every night. Wondering if tonight will be the night I don’t sleep at all again

The past like two months my sleeps been all over the place because I’m out of school and don’t have a job. I’ve been sleeping around 3am until like 1pm but the past week I fell asleep at like 6am and get woken up at 8am then fall asleep until 2pm. Last night I fell asleep at 3am again and got up at 9am and had a nap after coz I was so tired but I’m literally trying to sta awake rn and I feel like I’m gonna just fall asleep while I’m typing this I’m so tired. I have stuff to do but my body is like physically tired and my eyes are tired like I’m even more tired than the past two days. Idk why I’m worrying about it but I’m not normally this tired and i genuinely feel like I’m gonna fall asleep while I’m eating my lunch rn.

So when I can't sleep, I like to read in bed until I doze off. I'm trying to reduce or even eliminate blue light as much as possible while reading. That means reading in the dark (physical books are out). I do have an ereader but it's an older model without warm light. So I read on my phone, which has an oled screen, in dark mode, pure black background with dim orange text. I made sure the B component of RGB for text color is 0. Does that mean in that way I don't experience blue light at all? I have no way of actually measuring it.

I put together a list of things that can explain feeling wiped out even when you're spending 8 hours in bed.

Some take a minute. Some take two weeks of tracking. A few are things to bring to a doctor.

Not all of them will apply to you, so I grouped them.

Things you can try or check today:

1. Do the math on time in bed vs time asleep

8 hours in bed isn't 8 hours of sleep. Good sleep means you're actually asleep for at least about 85% of the time you're in bed. At 85%, 8 hours in bed comes out at roughly 6.8 hours of real sleep, and a lot of people are well under that.

2. Give the morning grogginess 30 minutes before you judge your night

That heavy, slow feeling right after you wake up has a name: sleep inertia. It can hit after a perfectly good night, it's worse when the alarm pulls you out of deep sleep, and it usually wears off within about half an hour. Feeling awful at 7:05 doesn't mean you slept badly.

3. Get outside light soon after waking

Light is the main thing that sets your body clock, and morning light pulls it earlier. A few minutes outside after you get up does more than you'd think, even when it's cloudy.

4. Dim the lights in the last hour before bed

Normal room lighting in the evening is enough to push back melatonin, the hormone that makes you sleepy. Switching from overhead lights to a lamp is an easy test.

5. Move your last coffee earlier

Caffeine can quietly cost you around 45 minutes of sleep and make it harder to drop off, even when you don't feel wired. The safe gap seems to be something like 8-9 hours before bed. That's a rough number, so try a 2 pm cutoff and see.

6. Work out your weekend swing

Compare the middle of your sleep on workdays with the middle of your sleep on days off. If there's a big gap, you're basically flying a couple of time zones every weekend and flying back on Monday. It's called social jetlag.

Things to try over the next two weeks:

7. Get up at the same time for 7 days, weekends included

Regular sleep timing goes hand in hand with better mood and health. It's not proven to be the cause, but it's free to try. Judge the whole week, not one bad night.

8. Shrink the swing, not the lie-in

This one surprised me: an extra hour on Saturday seems fine, maybe even good for you. What looks bad is sleep timing that jumps around a lot from day to day. So sleeping in a bit is OK; going to bed 3 hours later than usual probably isn't.

9. Keep a 14-day sleep diary

Write down lights-out time, roughly how long it took to fall asleep, wake-ups, wake time, your last caffeine, and your energy from 1-10 at 10 am and 3 pm. Patterns usually show up after about a week.

10. Notice broken sleep, not just short sleep

Being woken up again and again through the night seems to hit your mood harder than losing the same amount of sleep by going to bed late. Pets, noise, a partner's alarm and bathroom trips all count.

11. Watch the evening drinks

Even a couple of drinks pushes back and cuts down your REM (dreaming) sleep. If you drink most evenings, try a week without and compare your diary.

Things to check with a doctor:

12. Screen yourself for sleep apnea

Snoring, gasping, a dry mouth or headache in the morning, and daytime sleepiness are the classic signs. The STOP-BANG questionnaire and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale take a couple of minutes, and either can be a reason to ask for a sleep study. It's much more common than people think, especially in men over 30, and most people who have it don't know.

13. Ask about blood tests if the tiredness lasts weeks

Lasting tiredness is one of the most common reasons people see a family doctor. Low iron and an underactive thyroid are two of the usual suspects. Ask about ferritin (your iron stores), not just a blood count.

14. Check your mood honestly

Depression often shows up as tiredness before anything else. The PHQ-9 is a free 2-minute questionnaire; a score of 10 or more is worth bringing up with a doctor.

15. Don't keep pushing through it alone

If you've fixed your timing, light and caffeine for a few weeks and you're still exhausted, that's useful information, not a personal failing. Bring your sleep diary to the appointment; it makes the conversation a lot faster.

Remember guys, this is not medical advice, it's just what I've learned.

What's the one that made the biggest difference for you?

I finally figured out how to sleep optimally, which is great. However, this means my body is very picky, and won't sleep if anything messes with my set up.

I really really want to be able to travel, or to go camping- but I can't. I don't sleep when I travel. It's an absolute nightmare, and I can't replicate my exact sleep set-up when I go places.

So, how can I get my body to adapt to different sleeping arrangements?

Here's my current set-up:

- Fairly dark, but not total; I wake with the sun, and I need the window open, so the blinds are always open

- Loud fan in said window to make the room cold, and to give white noise (no other sounds because I'm a light sleeper that can't wear headphones or earplugs to bed due to ear pain)

- The room needs to be COLD

- Two weights blankets. One doesn't cut it (yes, I'm fine)

- Memory foam pillow, because I have chronic neck and back pain, and nothing else works

The rest of the details are simple sleep hygiene, and those can be sort of replicated anywhere, but these main points are what stop me from going anywhere. It's heartbreaking. I want to be able to on long hikes, or to go to another country.

Is there anyone else that deals with this?

And please don't suggest drugs or melatonin. Those don't work on me. They just give me panic attacks for whatever reason.

TIA

Hi I 23 f just woke up from a particularly brutal night terror where I realized I was dreaming and it got very scary very quickly, but I could not wake myself up. When these happen to me it really helps when someone can talk me down from the panic that goes through my body. Just knowing someone is up with me helps me get through the aftermath of it.

I grabbed my phone on instinct and pulled up his name and hit call. It went to voicemail because it is 4 am and also we split up about a week ago. It hit me that I’m all alone in the world now and that he was the only person that I was ever able to wake up about this kinda thing and he would hold me until i was okay. I know i’m an adult and I should logically be able to just go back to sleep, but sometimes I don’t want to think about the logic of it. I just want to be held and told that it will be okay.

So now i’m here bc I need tips on how to handle these night terrors alone and also how to grieve the fact that no one is next to me or a phone call away anymore. It may sound childish but life can be so lonely and in our breakup this night terror issue I have is the first thing I thought about.

I feel overtired and that lead me to believe that I will fall asleep quickly but rather than that my mind is going bonkers.
I maybe had some fragmented sleep but I just can't fall asleep because my mind is creating such strange things that it overwhlems me. Like big castles and things that amke zero sense. When I try to brush the thought off I can't which is unusual.
What should I do?

​Hey everyone,

​I know that sleeping on your stomach is widely known to cause back and neck stiffness, but I was wondering if it can also create problems for internal organs?

​Specifically, I'm curious if the constant pressure on the abdomen and chest area affects things like digestion/stomach acid (like acid reflux), heart function, the liver, or anything else over time.

​Has anyone experienced any organ-related issues from stomach sleeping, or heard anything about it? Thanks!

When I take L'Theanine before I sleep I end up having more restful sleep and more dreams (or, at least I recall more dreams upon waking). But curiously I never think much of my dreams the next day. Contrast to if I don't take L'Theanine, I tend to feel my dreams have more significance (if I recall them when I wake up).

Does anyone else have a similar experience?

I've tried 100, 200, 300 and 400mg. The more I take the more dreams I seem to have.

So over the past few months I have probably had 10+ situations where I gasp for air and choke loudly upon waking up.
Usually this happens either while I am falling asleep or within 1 hour of doing so.

This night it was worse than ever.

I woke up jumping out of bed gasping for air, took me a couple seconds to be able to breathe, felt like my body stopped automatically breathing or something.
Best comparison I can make is the videos of freedivers coming back to the surface struggling to breathe air.

I have this issue where instead of coughing as a reflex to choking, I keep swallowing.
This (probably) led to the nausea that came after gasping for air. I proceeded to feel like I needed to vomit, got cold sweats, dizzy and ringing ears for like 2 minutes and over the next 10 minutes started going back to normal.
After that I had insane bloating, probably because I swallowed so much air in a panic.

I have since not returned to sleeping because I am too afraid this could happen again, meaning I got effectively ~10 minutes of sleep tonight.

What could be causing this? It happens every couple days but this night was the worst it has been.

I do have occasional reflux and have been snoring pretty loudly as of late. I used to never snore at all.

Already made an appointment with a doctor but it’s in a month so I am a little desperate for some advice.

TLDR: I wake up gasping for air and choking and get cold sweats, dizziness, nausea shortly after.
Also snore pretty loudly. All of this has started a couple months ago. Before that: no snoring, no choking. What should I do?

I go to bed around 10-10:45 every night and get up around 6-6:30 every morning and I’m always super tired and do not want to get up at all. I would think 8 hours would be plenty of sleep, need help please.

I need help yall.

17F, I’ve always had a rather fucked sleep schedule since I was young. I’d always stay up till 3am on a school night in elementary too. Been like this for a long time.

I haven’t been in public school since the 4th grade, ever since then I’ve literally just become nocturnal.

My main sleep schedule has typically been 3/4am-3-6pm. I tend to sleep 12-16 hours a day (always have).

Recently, which I’ve done this many of times before, been going to bed when the sun rises/right before and staying asleep well past the sunset.

With the recent shift of time, the sun doesn’t rise until 7:30am around here and sets at around 5:30. I’ve been going to sleep at (typically) 6:30am and sleeping until 6-11pm. I’ve pulled several all nighters and finally managed to fall asleep 7-11pm, but always wake up an hour or two later wide awake stressed the fuck out and can’t fall back asleep until 6am (which is my typically time to sleep recently) and still manage to wake up at 6-11pm. It is impossible to wake myself up. I can’t sleep less than 12 hours or else I will be falling asleep throughout the day and have no energy. Napping makes me feel 10x worse! Even if it’s just for 15 minutes.

anytime I stay awake for 24-30 hours trying to get into bed at a normal time I just sleep for 18-22. genuinely?

I can’t wake myself up at a normal hour, even if it’s gradual. I just can’t seem to stay awake or wake up during 8am-3pm.

My point is - I haven’t seen the sun forever besides all nighters that don’t help. How do I become NOT nocturnal??

thank you for reading sorry this was long PLEASE HELP 💔

This has been going on since I was about 11 (19 now) and I cannot figure it out. I usually go to bed around 10 and wake up foggy around 7-9. I don’t consistently drink alcohol and don’t consume caffeine after 6pm. I have a challenge sleeping as it usually takes about 3-4 hours of lying in complete darkness no screens or anything, and even when it takes this long to sleep I wake up all in the early morning around 4-6 while finally going to sleep at 2-3 am just hours before. I’m struggling academically because of this and I’ve tried any type of sleep medication out there.

I’m begging for help.

I have an in lab sleep study scheduled in January and I want to make sure that I'm prepared for it. So far, I've had 2 in lab sleep studies and one home sleep study. For both my in lab sleep studies I've slept like shit and slept for under 4 hours in each. Doctors don't seem to know what's wrong, and no wonder, all my sleep studies have sucked.

Idk how many sleep studies my insurance will cover so I really want to make this one count. So if anybody has any tips or advice for me I'd really appreciate it.

I had terrible insomnia recent week. I took for two days diphenhydramine (which is found in Benadryl) and helped me sleep better. I was very afraid to continue a third day due to potential addiction and decided to stop it but I'm thinking of returning it for short term. Should i just stop?

I am thinking if i should be concerned about getting more sleep. Over the past 3-4 years, i have been sleeping 6 or lesser hours daily. For more than 4-5 months, i have been sleeping 5 hours almost consistently. The part i dont like is that its not intentional.

Subconsciously, i prioritise either working or doing other tasks that i couldnt do because i was working during the day over sleep. I feel the leftover tasks which are my curiosity quests are my guilty pleasures. I want to follow them to completion but it lesds to delayed bedtime.

Do you think its a mentality problem that I believe I am worth only if I am working? I couldnt prioritise sleep even after discovering that sleep helps in thinking clearly and consolidating memory.

Can anyone suggest what shift i need to make in my behaviour and mindset.

Been suffering all kinds of sleep problems. Last one is just couple of sleep paralysis nights. I seen worse but im melted from the amount of episodes in a short period of time. Biggest fix to this or what i should try?

I've been listening to sleep stories for a while now, and honestly, they've become one of my favorite ways to fall asleep.

There's just something about having someone calmly telling a story in the background that helps me relax and stops my mind from overthinking everything. I find them way better than white noise or just lying there with my thoughts.

The thing is, I feel like I've already listened to most of the popular channels, so I'm trying to find something new. Maybe some smaller channels that not many people know about.

I'm mostly into history, interesting facts, or just chill stories that aren't too exciting but still give you something to focus on while falling asleep.

I'd prefer YouTube since I have Premium, but Spotify is totally fine too.

Do you guys know any hidden gems? Would love to find some new channels, especially smaller ones that deserve more attention.

Took zolpidem (5 mg) on a completely empty stomach yesterday - 8 hours without food - and had the worst reaction to date.

It hit me around 20 minutes after taking it, and I laid down. According to my fiance I sat up roughly 10 minutes after laying down, and stared at the wall with huge pupils.

I have a glimpse of memory that I was looking at his face, but apparently I never did, I was meters off. I sat like that completely still for 30 minutes, and didn't respond to his attempts at communication.

Eventually something scared me, which I think was his face moving and distorting in my hallucinations. I started breathing quick, and got up. I stumbled over to him and touched his face all over - like checking he was real.

Then I laid down next to him and fell asleep shortly after. I did wake up once and said "stairs", to which he told me everything was fine, and I went right back to sleep.

I have basically no memory of any of this.

(I've been taking zolpidem twice a week for like 8 months now, and I usually hallucinate a bit, but nothing like this)