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I need to curb my bad sleep habits.

Metalhead

Metalhead

Video game and movie addict. All for gay pride.
V.I.P Member
Four hour afternoon naps. Then staying awake until 2am playing Xbox or PlayStation. Then waking up at 7am and hitting the snooze button repeatedly until I finally have to shower and get ready for work, sacrificing breakfast most of the time.

These are set habits for me that I need to break.
 
Hey, it could be worse, you could have my rotating sleep cycle. I went to bed at... er... *looks at notes* 9 AM today and got up at, uh... 4 PM. It is 5:30 here now and I just had "breakfast", in sarcastic quotes. Tomorrow I'll do those except one hour later. And so on...

But anyway... might sound odd, but have you tried asking a doctor about this? Sleep stuff can sometimes be caused by, or at least influenced by, medical stuff (like chemicals in the brain or whatever) so maybe a doctor might have a bit of advice to help you change it.

I can make one suggestion though: Dont try to change it all at once. Ease into it. Sudden sleep cycle changes can be a shock to the system, and that aint gonna help anyone.
 
I stay up most of the night and go to bed when a lot of people are getting up
and sleep until noon. Then usually take a 1-2- hour nap in late afternoon before
dinner.

A doctor once told me if you don't go to sleep around 10pm, you'll miss out on
some type of healing brain chemical release.
She didn't say what the chemical was.

Has anyone else been told this?
The chemical is only released in the brain around 10pm and you must be asleep?
 
SusanLR said:
A doctor once told me if you don't go to sleep around 10pm, you'll miss out on
some type of healing brain chemical release.
She didn't say what the chemical was.

Has anyone else been told this?
The chemical is only released in the brain around 10pm and you must be asleep?
Click to expand...

Eh?

Honestly, that one doesnt make logical sense to me. "10 PM" is just a convenient number used to keep track of things, right? It's not like it means "that specific time of night when MAGIC HEALING POWER floats through the air to trigger the chemical".

Wouldnt it just be triggered by, well, sleep in general? Perhaps a specific phase of sleep.

I've mentioned my own spectacularly nonsensical sleep thing to my doctor before, with the shifting times, she wasnt even mildly concerned. She was much more bothered by the fact that I couldnt quite read the hieroglyphics on the eye test thing (yeah, I needed a full eye exam not much later to get my driving/reading glasses upgraded).
 
I was doing stuff like that when I genuinely couldn't fall asleep at night. Maybe it's true for you (or not), but appearances can be deceiving; people might see you as lazy, unmotivated or undisciplined, even if it's not your fault.

If things are in sync, it's actually very hard to stay up late, even if it's just for the sake of doing things you love (or at least it is for me, anyway). When things are working correctly, I'll be passed out by 10 PM despite my best efforts to stay awake longer and spend extra time with my wife. At that point, waking up full of energy at 5 AM is pretty easy.

But as always, I'll slip back into a bad routine at some point and have to fight my way out of it again.
 
SusanLR said:
I stay up most of the night and go to bed when a lot of people are getting up
and sleep until noon. Then usually take a 1-2- hour nap in late afternoon before
dinner.

A doctor once told me if you don't go to sleep around 10pm, you'll miss out on
some type of healing brain chemical release.
She didn't say what the chemical was.

Has anyone else been told this?
The chemical is only released in the brain around 10pm and you must be asleep?
Click to expand...

The only thing I've read that's remotely similar to that is that I read that melatonin levels are at their highest around 9pm.
 
Misery said:
Hey, it could be worse, you could have my rotating sleep cycle. I went to bed at... er... *looks at notes* 9 AM today and got up at, uh... 4 PM. It is 5:30 here now and I just had "breakfast", in sarcastic quotes. Tomorrow I'll do those except one hour later. And so on...

But anyway... might sound odd, but have you tried asking a doctor about this? Sleep stuff can sometimes be caused by, or at least influenced by, medical stuff (like chemicals in the brain or whatever) so maybe a doctor might have a bit of advice to help you change it.

I can make one suggestion though: Dont try to change it all at once. Ease into it. Sudden sleep cycle changes can be a shock to the system, and that aint gonna help anyone.
Click to expand...
My doctor suggested I do a sleep study to test for apnea. Lovely.
 
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