{"id":21039,"date":"2024-04-03T12:25:22","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T19:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/?page_id=21039"},"modified":"2024-12-01T17:11:26","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T01:11:26","slug":"sleep","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/hodgepodge\/nonfiction\/sleep\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes on sleep"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

For many years, I had various forms of insomnia, and I still occasionally have trouble falling asleep and\/or wake up too early and can\u2019t get back to sleep. This page covers some of the things that have and haven\u2019t helped me with that.<\/p>\r\n

This page is not about telling you how you can get better sleep. It\u2019s specifically about me, and my personal experiences; my approaches may not work for you at all. But I\u2019m hoping that some of this page will be useful to some people.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Sleep hygiene<\/h2>\r\n

The standard advice that I see for people who have sleep issues is to practice good \u201csleep hygiene,\u201d which means never using your bed for anything other than sleeping and sex. The general idea seems to be to strongly associate bed and sleep, so that when you\u2019re in bed, sleeping seems to be the right\/only thing to do.<\/p>\r\n

Sadly, this approach has never made sense to me. I very much enjoy doing things like reading in bed. Bed is comfortable and warm, and reading in bed often helps me get sleepy. I think that if I had to keep making decisions about whether a given use of bed was or wasn\u2019t appropriate for sleep hygiene, I would start to associate bed with anxiety rather than with sleep.<\/p>\r\n

I also feel like the exception for sex kind of undermines the idea of associating bed entirely with sleep.<\/p>\r\n

But that said, this is by far the most common advice that I see, from professionals who seem to know what they\u2019re talking about, so I\u2019m guessing it must work well for a lot of people.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Sleep-aid drugs<\/h2>\r\n

The thing that most reliably helps me sleep is NyQuil LiquiCaps, regardless of whether I\u2019m sick or not.<\/p>\r\n

I know that many many people think that NyQuil makes people sleepy using alcohol, but there is no alcohol in the LiquiCaps. Instead, the relevant ingredient seems to be doxylamine succinate, an antihistamine.<\/p>\r\n

For me, a single LiquiCap tends to give me at least four hours of really solid deep restful sleep, and usually more than four hours.<\/p>\r\n

But when I take NyQuil more than three or four nights in a row, it gets less effective. At that point, I sometimes switch to Benadryl allergy pills, which contain diphenhydramine HCl, another antihistamine. For me, Benadryl doesn\u2019t result in as thoroughly restful sleep as NyQuil does, but it does help me sleep.<\/p>\r\n

In theory, other brands with the same ingredients ought to do the same thing. In particular, Unisom SleepTabs contain doxylamine succinate (like NyQuil), and Unisom SleepGels contain diphenhydramine HCl (like Benadryl). (Yeah, different products under the same brand name sometimes contain totally different ingredients.) In my limited experience with Unisom, though, it doesn\u2019t work quite as well for me as either NyQuil or Benadryl; not sure why. (I can imagine that NyQuil\u2019s other ingredients might make it easier for me to breathe, but that\u2019s pure speculation. Another possibility: It could just be that I associate NyQuil so strongly with good sleep that taking NyQuil puts me in a better frame of mind for sleeping.)<\/p>\r\n

Another drug approach that has helped me in the past is valerian. For a while, I used a liquid preparation of valerian (in alcohol, I think) that came with an eyedropper; I think I took a few drops each night. That seemed to work pretty well for me for a while, though the scientific evidence<\/a> for valerian helping with sleep is mixed. But I think after a while, it stopped working as well for me, and I haven\u2019t tried it in a long time.<\/p>\r\n

The most common ingested-substance approach that I see recommended is melatonin<\/a> pills. It seems to work well for a lot of people, but in my limited experience, it hasn\u2019t noticeably helped me.<\/p>\r\n

Another drug that I\u2019ve tried is Ambien. On the plus side, it got me to sleep quickly and for a long time. On the minus side, the resulting sleep was not particularly restful for me. And as with Sonata (another sedative), it can result in weird and dangerous behaviors, including sleep driving. I kept one Ambien tablet around for a long time, just in case I really needed it, but I don\u2019t really want to try it again.<\/p>\r\n

Another drug approach: I hear that a smallish amount of alcohol can help with relaxation and sleepiness. I don\u2019t drink alcohol under normal circumstances, but I have a few times tried a little bit of wine before bed as an attempted sleep aid. For me, it didn\u2019t have clear\/obvious effects.<\/p>\r\n

One more drug approach: Sometimes I\u2019ve found Sleepytime camomile tea (with honey) helpful in relaxing me for sleep. That may partly be because of comforting associations with childhood\u2014we used to drink that when I was a kid.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Sounds<\/h2>\r\n

One of the most effective approaches to sleep for me is so idiosyncratic that I doubt it would work for most people: Listening to one specific piece of music. The music in question is one side of Suzanne Doucet\u2019s New Age album Reflecting Light, Vol. II<\/cite><\/a>, specifically side 2, titled \u201c...and Here.\u201d I bought this album on cassette tape in high school, and listened to it while going to sleep for years. There was a while, a few years ago, when I could start it playing and I would be asleep within about thirty seconds.<\/p>\r\n

(I worried briefly that that effect might happen if the music accidentally came on at other times, like while I was driving. To be on the safe side, I don\u2019t listen to it except when I want to sleep. But I have accidentally heard the beginning of it once or twice while awake during the day (not driving), and it hasn\u2019t instantly put me to sleep.)<\/p>\r\n

Partly it helps me sleep because it\u2019s soothing, relaxing music; but I suspect that mostly it\u2019s a strong association between that music and sleep, unintentionally built up over a period of years. It\u2019s gotten to the point that sometimes I can just \u201cplay\u201d the music in my head to help me get to sleep.<\/p>\r\n

I mention all that not so much to recommend this specific piece of music as sleep music, but rather to say that I think that building a connection between something specific and sleep can help. (Which ties back to the sleep hygiene thing. I suppose I\u2019m using a similar approach here; it\u2019s just that the thing I\u2019m associating with sleep isn\u2019t bed per se.)<\/p>\r\n

Of course, there are a lot of other sound-related things around sleep. I have a hard time sleeping when my surroundings aren\u2019t quiet. So for many years, I habitually slept wearing earplugs.<\/p>\r\n

I found that foam earplugs (a) didn\u2019t block enough sound, and (b) made my ears itch. And silicone earplugs always felt too big and unwieldy to me. The earplugs that I love are Flents brand wax-cotton \u201cstopples\u201d<\/a>, which used to be widely available in drugstores but I rarely see them any more. They too make my ears itch a bit, but not nearly as much as foam earplugs do. And when I mold them to fully block my ears, they\u2019re quite good at reducing sound.<\/p>\r\n

Another approach to dealing with environmental sound is to mask it with other sound. For a while, I used a device that combined a clock with a white-noise generator; more recently, I\u2019ve used an iPhone app called White Noise that can generate a bunch of different kinds of sound\/noise. My favorite for sleeping, by far, is brown noise. Other apps that can produce useful sound-masking background noise include Ambiance, and Apple\u2019s built-in Background Sounds<\/a> feature.<\/p>\r\n

In a hotel room, I\u2019ve often generated white noise by setting the air-conditioning unit to keep its fan running even when it\u2019s not cooling the room. (That also helps me by keeping the noise levels relatively consistent; a fan turning on and off over the course of the night can wake me up.)<\/p>\r\n

A plug for a specific device: I\u2019ve recently acquired the new Ozlo Sleepbuds<\/a> (a revised and improved version of Bose\u2019s former Sleepbuds product), and I like them so far. They work as earplugs, and they also let you stream noise-masking sounds and\/or your own music. And they\u2019re specifically designed for sleeping with them in, unlike earphone earbuds.<\/p>\r\n

One more thought: sometimes the noise in question is someone else snoring loudly in the same room. Sometimes it\u2019s possible to get a snoring person to shift position (sometimes without waking them up) in a way that will cause them to temporarily stop snoring.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Darkness<\/h2>\r\n

It used to be that I usually couldn\u2019t sleep in a room that had light in it.<\/p>\r\n

That led me to acquire blackout curtains for my room at home, and to try to get hotel rooms with as opaque curtains as possible.<\/p>\r\n

I tried various kinds of eye-coverings, like sleep masks, but they had to be attached somehow, and the attachment methods were always too uncomfortable for me.<\/p>\r\n

But eventually, more or less by accident, I discovered that a dark-colored pillowcase laid over my eyes made an excellent light-blocker. And putting a small pillow (say, 14\" square) inside such a pillowcase more or less anchors it in place.<\/p>\r\n

So that\u2019s what I use now. I sleep on my side, so the small pillow usually goes behind my head, with the pillowcase draped over my head and tucked in around the top of my head to cover my eyes (but leaving my nose and mouth uncovered). And that makes it possible for me to sleep in all sorts of lighting conditions.<\/p>\r\n

Speaking of light, I should mention the blue-light thing. Blue light can make it harder to fall asleep, and a lot of screens emit blue light. For me personally, this doesn\u2019t seem to be an issue; as far as I can tell, there\u2019s no particular correlation for me between blue light and my ability to fall asleep on a given night. But I figure it can\u2019t hurt to reduce my blue-light exposure at night anyway, so I use Apple\u2019s Night Shift<\/a> feature to shift to warmer colors on my devices at night.<\/p>\r\n

I\u2019ve also been replacing most of the lightbulbs in my house with LED bulbs over time, and I\u2019ve been getting those in warmer colors rather than the cooler \u201cdaylight\u201d colors (because I like the warmer colors better in general). So I\u2019m probably exposed to less blue light in general than I used to be. (But I haven\u2019t noticed a particular effect on my sleep from this. And this change in my home lighting may result in my not getting enough<\/em> blue light in the mornings, I\u2019m not sure.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Temperature<\/h2>\r\n

I\u2019ve seen various sources that say that the best temperature for sleeping for most people is 65\u00b0F. I\u2019m surprised by that; I would expect that it would vary hugely by local temperatures and by individual.<\/p>\r\n

I can usually sleep in a range of temperatures, but I do have trouble sleeping if I\u2019m too hot or too cold. So adjusting the temperature of the room can help, as can using more or fewer blankets and such.<\/p>\r\n

The temperature issue that affects my sleep most often is that I can\u2019t sleep when my feet are too cold, and my feet are often too cold at night. I don\u2019t tend to consciously notice that until I\u2019m in bed, at which point I can\u2019t stop noticing.<\/p>\r\n

A couple of techniques for warming up cold feet:<\/p>\r\n