this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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It's great you're visiting a professional. Perhaps it might be nacrolepsy? Also try sleeping without light and sound by using the proper curtains and ear plugs. No alcohol or caffeine. Try sleeping a multiple of 1.5 hours, there's apps for that. Look into other kinds of sleep hygiene.
Thanks for the advice. I saw a doctor today and he suggested doing some exams to narrow down the possibilities. Also got a prescription for a drug "in case I really needed", but I suppose I should try with improving my sleep quality first.
That's great. Yes as I mentioned look up sleep hygiene. People underestimate it and often ignore my advice. I had to learn it due to some meds I took a long time ago that kept we super awake.
Ear plugs require some practice, and there's many different kinds. I prefer wax. And if you have curtains that let any light through it is really worth the investment. IKEA has good ones for like 50 eur.
If you must drink coffee, just take a single cup in the morning. You can also replace it with decaf like I did. Tea you can replace with ginger and mint. And like I said avoid alcohol. Like even a beer before bed will have negative effects.
Of course your tech usage matters too. At least start using the blue filter setting on your phone and pc.
Then regularity goes without question.
There's a bunch of other things that help if you look it up. It's really a matter of trying everything out.
Finally you might want to look into meditation. Stress means bad sleep. Even a simple body scan can help here.
So I got this thick curtain today. Ear plugs are still pending, but at least the room should be completely dark at night. I have a bad habit of doomscrolling on my phone before sleep, so that should be the next one to tackle. About meditation, is there anything you used as a guide at beginning in your case?
That's great to hear. Who knows maybe this is enough. It can be annoying to change those pesky habits.
Well I am quite active on my phone actually before I sleep and it's OK for me. I'd say experiment with it. At least turn on the blue light filter and keep the light down in your room. Avoid blue light. You might also want to avoid intense news and images and focus on longer texts. For example Wikipedia or librera/kindle. Or longer posts here.
A more extreme approach (extreme by today's standards) would be not to have your phone in bed with you at all. Grab a book instead. It's basically just a really long post from someone I think :)
Also when you get that sleepy feeling, go for it. Ignoring it will make it disappear for quite a while. At least that's what I read and it applies to me.
If your ryrhm is screwed you can fix it by skipping a night or by doing lots of exercise.
And meditation. Well there's countless ways. If you've never tried it before you might want to start with a body scan or with a breathing exercise. You can do this at any point during the day, even in meetings and during presentations.
There's a lot of info online and also many apps. A lot of them are paid but are worth it. If you have Netflix, I believe it also has a course called mind space. There's also a paid app by that name.
In short, meditation is about identifying with your awareness. More practically speaking, take the body scan. You focus on your big toe. Maybe even wiggle that baby. Then move up to the arch and the ankle, the lower leg. All the way up. You can even try to wiggle your nose, maybe your colleagues will notice! The point is that you are selectively focusing on a part of your body and moving that focus slowly and patiently.
The breathing one is just like it. But you focus on your breathing this time. Try taking in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Just doing that will reduce your stress, and focusing on it will help even more.
Ya it's really that simple. All the deeper stuff is basically just playing around more with your ability to focus and be aware.
Which drug did you get prescribed, if you don't mind me asking?
As someone with years and years of, err, experience with sleep issues, I've learned a thing or two about sleep aid medication. Most of the ones that fool with your GABA receptors tend to be pretty terrible for sleep quality and cause dependence and all sorts of other issues. Pretty much one of the only sleep aid medications that won't fuck you up with longer term use is mirtazapine, which is an antidepressant but also inhibits your histamine H~1~ receptors (like older-type antihistamine drugs) so it'll make you very sleepy. Used in super low doses (something like 3.5mg, where the lowest used for depression is usually 15mg) its SSRI effects don't really kick in and it can actually increase sleep quality, and for most people at these low doses its only downside is that if you take it too late in the evening you'll have a hell of a time wrenching yourself out of bed. It can lead to the H~1~ receptors getting desensitized in longer term use, meaning you can build up tolerance to the sleep aid effects, but that's solved by taking a few weeks off of it if you do notice it getting less effective.
I got prescribed Modafinil. So far so good, I had it in the morning and it's been fine through the day - no drowsiness at all. Now, the doc said to treat this a "trial run" before doing more specific exams (he gave me a medical sample so I could assess how effective it is)... I'll ask about the others you mentioned the next meeting.
Ohhh right, you meant medication for the drowsiness and not to help you sleep. Huh, surprising that he started with modafinil instead of a sleep aid, but yeah it'll definitely get rid of your drowsiness. It's a weird "wakefulness promoting" drug and not a regular stimulant, and it doesn't have many of the downsides of something like amphetamines, but I'd still assume it'd be better for you to try and fix your sleep quality first before going for the stimulants. But then again, I'm absolutely not a doctor of any kind 😄