How to Improve Sleep and Insomnia?

Off Topic
1

How well or badly you sleep has a huge impact on your life, not to mention your lifts and your performance in the gym.

In the last three months I’ve had a little bit of insomnia, despite training or running every day. Have any of you had sleep problems, and what have you done to fix them?

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i sleep always peacefully.

First something disturb ur in ur life ? relationship breakup and so on ? all of this shit u know

try Glycine, that help me for sleep so deep, less but deep.

How much by night did u sleep ?

i heard also about melatonin in the last

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I also struggle with sleep issues.

In terms of techniques, I recommend box breathing to relax. It’s helped me when my brain is racing.
There’s also the military sleep technique (@thefourthruffian ) but that takes 90 days to get used to

In terms of supplements:
Magnesium, fish oil and honey before bed have been game changing for me.

I’ve also heard good things about ZMA but I’m cheap

4

I’ve had insomnia for nearly 2-ish years? Gets worse the more my sleep schedule gets fucked up, or something stressful happens. I’m graced enough to have random work schedules, and only work 5 hour shifts. My classes are all online as well.

So some days I won’t sleep for like a little over 24 hours, I’ll get myself still enough and crash. Usually wake up fine and can reset from there.

Back when I was busier I’d just take random naps wherever my body would fit comfortably.

If push really comes to shove I’ll pop a muscle relaxer and knock out with 5–10 mins.

Other times I use grounding techniques (akin to relaxation techniques). And other other times I’ll just suck it up and be awake. Do some school work, play video games, do my hair or nails, do some yoga. Idk. I guess I’m just used to dealing with it, but insomnia reply isn’t the worst thing I’ve had to deal with. For me personally.

5

Oof that sounds grizzly.

I’ve had some periods where i was sleeping around 4 hrs a night. What motivated me starting this thread was me going down to 4 hrs a couple of days ago - since then I’ve been probably getting 7ish - which isn’t great but seems a lot better than what you’ve had.

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6

Well well well… something I’m the most experienced with.

I’ve struggled with insomnia since middle school and I’m in my mid 30s now. It seems like I’ve inherited a lot of this from my mother since she’s a light sleeper and a worry wart.

I’m not nearly as much of a worrier as her, but stress will absolutely exasperate it. So when I went to Oklahoma city for initial training as an air traffic controller that was a pretty miserable 4 months of averaging 4 hours of extremely interrupted sleep. At this point there really wasn’t anything that would help. That being said I’ve had horrible extended bouts of insomnia with no associated stress.

I guess we should talk about the things people will condescending suggest to help with insomnia:
1.Have you tried going to bed earlier? (FUCK YOU)
2. You should exercise more. Nobody can stay awake if you exercise ton. (I can and let me introduce you to super DOMS.)
3. Try relaxing before bedtime. (Very insightful)
4. Alcohol or melatonin. (Doesn’t help me and well ultimately have bad side effects)
5. Sex (while enjoyable it seems to give me a 50/50 shot of going to sleep or staying awake)

Things that actually seem to work.

  1. Cold room with minimal blankets.
  2. Minimal lights/good blackout curtains
  3. Z12 or whatever the tnation sleep supplement is.
  4. Reasonable exercise that your body can easily recover from
  5. White sound machine. I have this app called calm and there is a bed time story read by Matthew McConaughey and it’s all right all right all right. Only downside is the story is only 30 minutes long and I’ll usually wake up when it ends. Realistic thunderstorm recordings can be good.
  6. Regular sleep schedule. As a controller I do shift work so this is hard. If I didn’t have to work then I’d go to sleep around midnight and wake up around 8 naturally. However going to bed around 9 and waking up around 5 has worked well too.
  7. Notepad to jot down any thoughts.
  8. I actually sleep better alone which doesn’t go over well with the wife. But the first few months after my daughter was born I had the best sleep Eva! Id sleep in our bed and my wife slept with our daughter. Then I’d wake up early around 4 and we would switch until I left for work around 630. Then I’d take my daughter for a 2 hour walk when I got home so my wife could relax.

The hardest thing to deal with is the inner monolog.
“I’ve been in bed for 4 hours what the fuck is wrong? Why am I still awake? If I fall asleep right now I’ll at least get a couple hours.”
You’ll get so fucking angry.
Listening to an audio book can be good at breaking up this train of thoughts.

Hopefully this helps. All in all a bad bout is a pretty miserable experience. I’ve never been suicidal but I can definitely see how it could lead to depression and suicide…or becoming Tyler Durden.

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