I’ll give it a go… anything to support ( Science and intelligence in the digital world. -Edited: I didn’t get the best score but admittedly I was multi tasking whilst listening. 😊
One thing that consistently helped me fall asleep is reading a book on theoretical physics. I think it has something to do with the fact that physics books are often difficult to understand. I believe this eats up all the energy that was left in the brain and kept me awake and so I fall asleep.
My two cents - I sleep pretty well, but tend to do better after taking calcium, magnesium, and a little later melatonin. I do wake up in the middle of the night. If I get up and do something like pace around in the basement or jump on the minitrampoline, I quickly get drowsy and go back to sleep. If I stay in bed staring at the ceiling, then it's more difficult to get back to sleep. I do take naps during the day, almost faithfully. They last about 25 minutes. If I'm at the office, then I go to the car to take a nap at lunch. If at home, and if my wife is home, we'll usually cuddle together and take a nap. Maybe there are health risks with this, but I can tell you it is refreshing and I'm better able to concentrate afterwards. One of the best things about sleep, if you have time, is lucid dreaming. Some people do it naturally, some have beginners luck, but usually it takes some work.
Excellent video! Anecdotally, as someone who has suffered from insomnia for years I will say that "brown noise" (I haven't heard that term before) aka listening to waterfalls, rain, gentle thunder (my favorite) was the biggest aid for me to fall asleep.
I haven't slept a night in 15 years. I can manage 30-90 minutes at a time, and it takes at least an hour to fall back to sleep. I do 3-4hrs/night + little naps during the day. I'm constantly tired, my memory is that if a geriatric (as is most of my health tbh) I have anhedonia because of it so I can't even enjoy anything while awake. All that because of chronic drug use when I was younger. Know your limits and don't touch hard drugs people! The annoying thing is that all of these issues started *after* I stopped using. The few times I fell of the wagon at the beginning I slept like a teenager and my health improved. I could at any moment become a productive member of society and fix my many health issues, but I value my 15 years of sobriety so I'll continue to be a depressed shut in for now 😁
@VikingTeddy find a sleep specialist who knows more than this video. Hard to say from what you posted but you have several modifiable factors that can improve your sleep. It may never be perfect bit it can be improved.
Every night when I get into bed, I add a chapter to a very boring story in my head. It puts me to sleep pretty fast. It focuses my mind away from the daily events and into a world that doesn't include interruptive thoughts. One story I tell involves hiking or backpacking along a forest trail. Basically, I visualize putting one foot in front of another while imagining the landscape. Works for me.
I thought I had sleeping problems until my family went to another city for a couple of days and left me alone in the house. I had the best sleep in decades. Turned out if you don't have any noise, lights or stress you can sleep like a baby.
Who also goes to sleep listening to some podcasts or lectures? I know that I shouldn't do that but it works for me. I even once had a dream that I'm on stage with Lawrence Krauss while listening to his lecture. And that I help him answer during Q&A section of this lecture.
I suffer of interrupted sleep for few years now, I fall asleep at around 22.00 and wake up between 01.00 and 03.00. Contrary to what you said, watching TV in bed before sleeping and to return to sleep always helps me, I frequently fall asleep with the TV on. It helps my mind stop wandering in thoughts, that’s what keeps me awake in the middle of the night.
Same here. Realize that we are all different. I've slept without TV in my bedroom for quarter century and had the worst sleep. Today, with YT and adblock, I am having best sleep of my life. Wake up naturally and rejuvenated, even if it's just 3-4 hrs of sleep (I take naps every day and schedule work and chores around naps). In the end, you have to listen to the signals your body gives you. Your doctor doesn't live in your body, he merely parrots what works for most people and whatever BS they were fed at medical school. Trouble is, if you're not one of those most people, such advice is extremely destructive... Anecdotally, The number one advice that was most destructive for me, was to "just go to bed and stop thinking" Nope. Does not work. Multiple parallel threads fighting for prime light. Inevitably leading to racing thoughts. Regardless of state of sleep deprivation.
For me flat bluetooth headphones bulit into an elastic band help me fall asleep by listening to something interesting, but far removed from daily life, as long as it is calmly presented with a monotonous voice. The key for me is to have the player set to stop after 45 minutes, otherwise it wakes we up after about 3 hours. Also, recently I've started doing ~1h walks with weighted jacket just before sleeping, that helps quite a bit too.
I have you set to always notify but I didn't get a single science news last week. Luckily I watched last last week's and knew I was supposed to get a different one all the time but UA-cam is weird.
"Better save the money and support your favorite youtuber instead" I see what you did there. 😛 It reminds me it's probably time for another "Thanks" gift. 🙂 You rock, Sabine!
Of all the things that improved my sleep, it was being at home full time, during the pandemic. The thing that most commonly interrupts my sleep is indigestion. We almost completely stopped eating out, and that alone did wonders. Add to that the fact that the world-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket situation prompted me to try to take control of something-anything!- my sleep schedule became much more regular. I forced myself to start going to bed at a regular time, and I generally wake up at the about the same time, with or without an alarm. I still have occasional sleep problems, and I deal with what I presume to be average anxieties, but I generally do not have to deal with excessive fatigue, which is nice.
@@robertAGC Experiment with finishing eating by ~11, and see if it improves things. It's worth a shot. Bryan Johnson of Blueprint fame swears by this, and gets the best sleep of anyone I know of.
Going from memory, I think it was a sleep study out of Stanford back in the early 80s that confirmed most of my personal thoughts on sleep, or at least the conditions for sleep.You said here most of their findings already, though possibly from other sources and studies. I think I will add some detail that may help. Keep your sleeping chamber cooler than your living chamber. Keep your room cool and your body warm. Make the bed for sleeping, and not for watching TV. Stop engaging with the world. Keep your sleeping cycle throughout the week and weekends. If you stay up late, still get up at the correct time, and return to your cycle that night. Make physical activity a priority. Being active will make you sleep better. Or, to quote the famous wilderness recluse Richard Proenneke, "A hard bed feels pretty good after a day on the mountain."
Thanks for all you do to educate all of us on things that help us understand ourselves, our world, the universe... And for making me laugh every day! :-)
I can say only based on my experience. As a light sleeper living in a noisy city, I use white noise to mask the exterior noise, and it does a really good job, because it adjusts the overall sound to a more monotonous one, which the brain can adapt very quickly to. On the contrary, for deep sleepers and people living in quiet places, it probably won't have any beneficial effect.
@@benjaminfranklin329 Thanks for the feedback! I actually also have a mild Tinnitus too, but it started much before this habit of using the radio (I actually use an out of sync radio for the white noise). After some study on the theme, I came to the conclusion it was probably developed through a sugar rich diet at the time. I use earplugs while I sleep too in order for the noise not damage my ears. Since I became using the radio , I haven't noticed any changes to my (nowadays) mild tinnitus.
Funny you say that, it reminds me of the show How To with John Wilson, season 3 episode 2, "how to clean your ears" he goes to the National Radio Silence Zone and a woman who lives there uses a white noise machine bc it's too quiet xD
I sleep near my server which quietly hums all the time. Interesting thing about that is: when it occasionally crashes - that quiet hum sound is lost and "complete silence" then begins. That very complete silence IS the thing what wakes me in that moment, almost instantly!
I find that taking melatonin very helpful, it doesn't help sleep better nor longer, but it does helps fall asleep faster. So occasionally, like the day before a job interview, going on a travel, or a big event that keeps you too excited/worried to sleep, this is a good solution.
I dont think my brother has sleep issues, but my mother, father, and me all have some sleep issues. This is maybe the only UA-cam video I'll share with my folks my parents are long retired, watch TV, and play Mahjongg online. Thanks a million, Sabine! You always rock!
I recently put low wattage yellow (blue light blocking) bulbs in two lamps and only have them on in the evening instead of normal lighting. We are both sleeping better.
Great video. I have lucid dreams where I can choose what I am going to do next, so feel wide awake. Whilst I often remember a dream in detail and so presumably have woken up, I can usually return to sleep, often to resume the dream.
I do this expert move where I go lucid, eventually bail out of dreams manually and am then put into sleep paralysis combined with hallucinations of false awakenings. 4/10 experience would not recommend the lucid. It's a mixed bag though. Like there seem to be multiple levels of control, most of my dreams I am aware that I am dreaming, but not fully conscious and only affecting the "story" knowing things are not real. Some people may consider that lucid. However, I seem to have another "type" of dream that feels distinctly more realistic, like a deeper level. These I am typically not aware that I am dreaming. However, when you go lucid there it's a much more lucid experience. Touch, looking say details of things up close, pain, taste, smell - it all checks out, I've experimented with this consciously. But then waking up from that is the worst, it's like reality ending. That paired with paralysis in a dark room is rather uncomfortable... Funny times
What works for me is not to think. Just lay down, confortable, relax all muscles, and then just clear my mind and breathe deeply once (learned this looking at my dogs funnily enough) and that's it.
Indeed every person is different. I suffered with sleep problems from early adulthood to age 35. Then i was prescribed antipsychotics. Since then i barely have a bad sleep night even though i work in shifts. 😴
I started sleeping better after I finally accepted that the graviton may never be confirmed. “ It’s ok”, I told myself. Kind of like forgiving oneself for past mistakes.
worked 12am to 12pm for 15 years had to have afib heart surgery at 37. some night jobs are important but she's right people need night sleep. it needs to be fixed
I have found that this is by far the best channel here on youtube that discusses science. It is very precise, well-structured, and covers a wide variety of topics.
Just beware her awful, misinformed takes on gender affirming care, economics, capitalism and more. She's got dunning Kruger outside of her field of study.
as a 60 something full night owl my problem is going to sleep early. always has, always will. not an insomniac just my sleep pattern is shifted a few hours later than everyone else. my problem has been trying to fit my body into what society thinks is right.
I have issues with tinnitus, this light noise buzzing in my brain when its quiet, i listen to your videos when i fall asleep (i just turn off the screen), it helps to listen to something not to high pitched or extremely "active". ^^
I love Sabine's videos so much, informative and funny. I wish the "sound effects" were not so loud, they are so distracting when you're listening intently to her presentation and there are these seemingly arbitrary *LOUD* popping noises that overwhelm her voice and demand that you look at the screen just to see - *a graphic depiction of something* ..!! Attention is a rare commodity. These essays are interesting and worth understanding. Please stop poking us in the ear randomly.
Hi Sabine, I wish you out the same level of effort when working with sponsors, the galaxy lamp might be amazing but their site is a scam. Keep up the amazing work and taking for making science so accessible and easy to understand.
I've found that I can sleep better when I don't think about what's going to happen the next day. It's better to think about things that have already happened
That's why I have quite a number of Todo lists here. Whenever I can't continue with something, I write down notes about what still needs to be done or where to continue. This way I no longer have to remeber this, clearing the brain.
Ancillary to your suggestions--a written journal can help to quiet your mind before bed and a warm shower or bath before bed helps your body to cool down. I also think there's research to establish that getting more sunlight during the day, particularly in the morning, helps to maintain circadian rhythms.
I’m a night time worrier. I tend to grind on problems not when I go to sleep initially, but after I wake up in the middle of the night. I sleep with headphones on and find that space documentaries do wonders to shut down the worry machine. I’m not looking at the screen. The screen is face down and the headphones are wireless and the volume low. But it seems to work. Also, if I’m really worried about something in particular, I find it helps to get out of bed to check on it if that’s possible, or write a note to myself to do so in the morning. I had a teacher who defined stress as responsibility without control. Either get control of the situation, or let go of it. Action is the best antidote to fear. If something is bothering you, do something about it. It gives you a better chance of getting through it and makes you less of a victim of the problem.
I have found that I am no good at solving problems in the middle of the night. It's amazing how much easier the same problem becomes when solved in the daytime while fully awake. So, when I am up at night and worrying about something, I make a plan for how I will tackle the problem during the day, and that allows me to relax and fall back asleep. I get the feeling of getting control of the situation without actually having to solve it in the night.
@@robertkomar3257 Hence the expression, "Let's sleep on it" meaning decide later after a period of rest and reboot. I don't actually try to solve a problem the same evening I'm being kept awake by it unless it's something simple like do I have enough money in a certain account to cover a bill. These days, that's easy to check on. If it's something that requires leaving the house, then it's a matter of making a note to myself to deal with it in the morning. Just the act of making the "to do" list takes it off the loop. This is what I put in the category of "trash" thinking. It's those self incriminating thoughts that are on a perpetual loop, but don't conquer any new territory toward solving the problem. Self doubts and worries that haunt us until we find a way to get past them. Sleep is part of that equation since it reboots our computer and helps us approach a problem with a fresh perspective. The irony is that the problem itself often deprives us of this unless we can find a work around. I'm a contractor, and it's funny because no matter how many jobs I've done, when I start a new one, I always feel nervous beforehand. It's not unusual for me to not get much sleep the night before starting a new job or having to travel somewhere. When I need the sleep the most is often when I'm deprived of it.
I try to cram as much into a day as I can so I am usually still at the computer right before bedtime. I've had chronic sleep problems since the days of the VIC 20. I've tried glasses, to block blue rays (they don't work), and software programs to adjust the monitor's blue light, which have always made the screen too dark for me to read. Then, by accident, I discovered the Samsung 4-K TV, I use as a monitor, can automatically reduce blue light at night. Now I use that and have found it very helpful in being able to fall asleep quickly.
Coincidentally, I got the results of my polysomnography exam yesterday and the result was that I suffer from apnea. The funny thing is that I decided to take the exam not because of this problem, but because I had a phase of insomnia a few months ago, for psychological reasons. I hope the treatment will improve the quality of my sleep.
This vid was not boring for insomniacs, thanks Sabine. Now what about tinitis. This is a problem for many people. It can negatively impacting sanity if one lets it become a problem. Can we have a vid on what practical things can be done to reduce tinitis. My GP told me there was no cure. The hearing specialist, who I expected to have better knowledge, could not enlighten me. Even the causes of tinitis are obscure. Thanks Sabine.
@mayflowerlash11 Tinnitus is generally a neural problem, or maybe a "defect in the sensor" = some neural termination in the cochlea, in the inner ear (that keeps firing for no good reason). Neural damage often cannot be traced to a particular source/cause/reason. It can be a result of a previous or latent infection. And it may as well be irreversible :-/ Indeed there is no miracle cure for tinnitus, and the statistics don't support an outright optimistic prognosis. While trying to counter some mild rheumatoid trouble with my joints, I have experienced small improvements to my "overall neural balance" (including the noise background in my ears) after some particular meds: I recall a herbal tea, nominally sold as support for the kidneys, consisting of Horsetail (Equisetum arvense - careful, many relatives in the genus are poisonous), Goldenrod (Solidago) and Knotweed (Polygonum aviculare - careful, may have a mild vasoconstrictive effect, potentially dangerous if you have high blood pressure or blood clotting problem). In this vein, I'd also recommend trying a dilute (half a teaspoon of the mix in half a liter of water) mixed tea of general anti-inflammatory herbs: Plantain, Marigold, Chamomile, Salvia/Sage and maybe Agrimony. If it doesn't help, it should not hurt... actually, unless you are allergic to some of those herbs. Maybe test a few drops first in your mouth, ready to spit, check for any itching or burning response. I've met such people before - I've met someone who got an itch from a tincture of those herbs (used externally as a dermal disinfectant). The herbal teas are generally safe to try for a week. And if there's no effect in a week, it won't come later. Other than herbs, I'd also try a supplement of B12 to see if that makes a difference. People are often deficient in B12. This particular vitamin helps protect the myelin coating of nerves. Might improve your tinnitus, if the cause is neural and reversible. In my case, B12 did seem to have a slight positive effect. Without knowing anything about you, and I'm not a doctor, for overall immunity, I'd mention supplementing vit. D (and Zinc with that) and a bit of vit.C - but I cannot promise that these will have an effect on tinnitus in particular. Not very likely. Boosting your immune system may in fact have an adverse effect, if your tinnitus is a neural problem and has a localized auto-immune inflammation as a background... If you try to give this a shot, test it separately (in time) and observe if it has any effect. If there is a response, it should come within a day to a week. Again without knowing anything about you, I'd recommend physical activity, as far as is practical or permitted by your overall shape. Getting your cardiovascular system revved up generally helps transport oxygen into your brain, flush "oxidant waste" out of your tissues, and may thus also have an effect on your tinnitus - but beware of any subjective risk factors on your part, such as overall high blood pressure or arteriosclerosis. Your physical activity must correspond to what you can generally tolerate. You probably have a clue. If you have some of the risk factors mentioned above, you aren't likely to get inspired by me to suddenly try sports in suicidal doses :-) but I have to warn you anyway. Physical activity is good, but if you're sedentary and you decide to do something about it, start gradually. In some scenarios, even taking long walks is the right start... you probably get the idea. Keeping your cardiovascular system somewhat trained is a boon on several fronts.
I can tell if I'm sleeping well when I naturally wake up at around 7:15am where I also remember multiple dreams each night. Keeping the room colder definitely helps. Eating at night and especially alcohol ruins it. Watch out for ear plugs as they can increase bacteria build up. My mum swears by white noise and other soundscapes.
My sister has constant insomnia. She's been taking Ambien and Seroquel to sleep for years. She takes an Ambien and a Seroquel pill and then goes to bed with sublingual Ambien in her mouth. She's given me the sublingual Ambien a few times in my life. Really strong stuff.
I went for decades averaging about 6 hours a night. In crisis mode less. But it was good solid sleep. Contrary to the norm I now sleep more up to about 7 hours. Waking up doesn't really bother me per se, but I sometimes can fall back to sleep. I don't tolerate noise, but a full moon through the woindow is often cery relaxing and hence helps me fall asleep. Now that I am old (74) I find I have less tolerance for missing sleep. It shows in my concentration the next day. I have believed that sleep is the offline maintenance cycle for the brain (YES, I'm in IT). Many IT analogies seem very applicable. Particularly the old saw of "Just sleep on it and something may come to you" has worked. Sometimes any idea needs to be left alone in an idle brain for a while. This was a good video, with that sprinkling of you great humor. I realize that I don't seem to fit the norms, but I also don't have any real sleep problems. I can get up early and stay up late when necessary and add an hour or very rarely two to my sleep schedule when needed. MY biological clock seems to work fine for me. I've had to learn that taking an occasional nap id fine. Music does not normally help me relax to sleep. But being absorbed in a piece of music can help me relax. When the music's over turn out the lights. (Line from a Doors song. But relaxing to a stopping point especially one that sonicly winds down works for me. The universe has taught me that there is usually more than one way that works. That's fine with me. I clear the chaos of the day from my mind and embrace the void of dark and silent.
Falling asleep has never been a problem for me. But I wake up too early such as 3 am or 3.30 am. I consider it a lucky night if I get six hours sleep. By nine in the morning, I feel drowsy and take a brief nap. In the afternoon, after lunch, if I feel sleepy, I take another nap for twenty minutes to half an hour. Once or twice a month, Mother Nature blesses me with seven hours sleep!
Classical music helps me most of the time, keep the volume low. Insomnia has been a lifelong companion. Your do's and do nots list is 10 out of 10 score. Good luck to any of you who does not have good sleep.
I agree with your list in all other points than the cold room. I absolutely cannot fall asleep if I am shivering. Not only that, but if by a miracle, I do fall asleep (after getting an extra blanket), I typically still wake up in a couple of hours, again shivering. What works great for me is a decent warm room and trying to solve the daily Sudoku on my iPad Mini. When I stop making progress, that is the time to turn the light off and leave the rest of the Sudoku to morning, 7 to 9 hours later.
My experience is totally the opposite, I turn the furnace off at night in my house. Recently, it’s been 57° inside when I wake up. But I’m not shivering because I use blankets. It’s the room that needs to be cold, not you. In fact, the weight of the blankets can help with sleep as well.
I think you forgot to mention that sleep is also cultural. For example, I grew up with free afternoons until high school. I basically always had the option to sleep in the afternoon if I wanted too. Also, in hot countries, being active during the hottest hours of the day is definitely not recommended. Now, I have been living in Europe for 20 years, I know I will never change, always get sleepy in the afternoon, and that's okay. Lastly, many workplaces accomodate rooms to nap after lunch. So I am pretty sure sleeping a little bit during the day is totally normal. The other thing, is that it's much easier to be intellectually productive during the night, when there is less light and everything is quiet. In my opinion, it really depends what kind of job you do, how you grew up, how hot the country is, etc.
In the weekend I always wake up to do a long run of a few hours, so that generally means waking up after only 6 hours of sleep, which in general is too little for me. However the rest of that day I feel much more awake and energetic that on week days when I do not run after waking up. I always find that peculiar
I think the discrepency in popularity of misinformation is twofold. One factor, as you said, is that the truth "is boring". And the other is that the misinformation channels tend to leverage angst just like marketers, to generate more views.
The crucial role of fatigue (you have to earn it) is what i was missing. It took 58 years (that was 3 years ago) but i finally curried my life-long insomnia by realizing the caloric floor for my body was much much higher than i assumed. That is, i can easily get eight good hours of quality sleep but i have to go to be tired enough. To get tired enough i have to burn a massive amount of calories. It took months of incrementing the amount of exercise to find the level that is required, now do that amount each day and i sleep great. For my body it takes about one hour (time under load) of resistance, 2 minutes peak (zone 3), 20 minutes cardio (zone2) and 100 minutes zone 1 bordering on 2. So i'm talking about a few hours of exercise each day. if you wake before the alarm, you're underdoing it, you need to increment (exercise), if you wake with tightness in your finger joints you need to back off (or you will give yourself arthritis). Using those two markers, finger joint tightness and 'sleep to the alarm', will allow you to dial in the personal floor of your day
When you said "soon you have to pay for add-free dreams" I was so terrified that I could not fall asleep anymore afterwards. Wishing you all the best, sweet dreams and best regards, Markus
My mother sleeps with blinds and earplugs and sleeps 5-6 hours. My primary care physician informed me that a scheduled sleep is best and no TV or screen time improves sleep. She also said that if you don’t fall asleep in 30 minutes, get up and read until you feel sleepy. This seems to coincide with what Sabine says.
@hordechess7629 supposedly, regular lighting isn't an issue the way that a screen's light affects a person. I read before sleep every night when I was young. I never had trouble sleeping.
I spent my entire life taking two hours or more to get to sleep (if at all). I noticed that audiobooks helped me sleep in about 10 minutes and now UA-cam videos. More than an hour and they will wake me again so shorts with no autoplay. I can sleep with noise but not as deeply and _nothing_ will wake me faster than someone in the room trying to be quiet!
Again amazing job!!! Thanks a lot for all your hard work. If I may make a request, I would love to see a video about the more and more popular protein powders made out of grained whole insects. Are there studies about their absorption by the human digestive system, what are the pros and cons, are they getting popular only in the US and Canada or it is a worldwide? I know that there are cultures which consumes insects regularly, but would love a more scientific and deep analysis of the topic. Thank you in advance!
Our modern sleep patterns of 8 hours of 'uninterrupted' sleep reflect industrial society. In the past, the sleep pattern was different - typically with a two-part sleep pattern. Reference Professor Roger Ekirch about sleep
Using the built in Shortcuts app, I have my iPhone turn on color filters to cut out nearly all blue light an hour before bedtime. It’s a soft reminder to wind down and it also reduces the blue light hitting my eyes. Yes, apple products have ‘Night Shift’ but I’ve found it’s not aggressive enough to filter out blue light. This also only works well on OLED displays like the ones in many phones, but not most laptops, computer monitors, or TVs.
I have a health tracker called "Whoop Strap" which does a great job tracking general health stats, exercise, and sleep. You can log different things you do and at the end of the month it gives a report, it can tell you which "factors" lead to better health. The top three factors that give me better sleep (I forgot the order, just a list). #1) Low stress day #2) Listening to "nature sound" like rain noises. or a waterfall at night #3) Melitonin. (But I only take this on high-stress days or if I have trouble falling asleep, but it takes 3 hours before max effect). These factors are consistent over the two years that I have been using the Whoop Strap to collect data, and am confident it works for me. I don't drink and have a regular schedule including exercise, so had a good baseline of habits to start with. Those are the improvements.
I've recently found out, to my amazement, what an improvement a comfy bed can bring. For years, I used to sleep under a relatively light blanket, 200x140 cm format. Recently, also related to some back pain problems, I started paying attention that I'd often feel cold, the blanket would slip and produce a draft etc. Actually I'm struggling with terminology here a little... in our country in the moderate climate, from mid fall to mid spring we sleep under stuffed quilts/duvets. These consist of a stuffed "body" and a removable "cover", like a sack that gets washed more often than the inner stuffed thing. Traditionally, the stuffing used to be made of goose feathers, nowadays it's all hollow fiber. That said, in the way of experiment, I got myself a longer duvet: 220x140 cm. The one I ditched had like 500g of stuffing. When shopping for the new one, I was scratching my head a little - the hollow fiber stuffings in the range of 900-1000g are already called warm, but compared to my childhood memories, they actually still feel relatively light. So, as an experiment, I stuffed *two* duvets, 900g each (bought in a sale) into a single cover, 140x220 cm - and that's already close to the feather duvets of my childhood. And, after decades, I had a wonderful night's sleep! In the winter, with a window just next to my bed opened a crack (around 0*C on the outside). The window is actually a related topic. Again where I live, residential buildings often have botched or non-existent ventilation. Airtight and thermally insulating double-glazed windows in plastic frames are a relative novelty here, of maybe the last 2-3 decades. And, while the buildings got retrofitted with these airtight windows, which (fortunately) often goes along with thermo-insulating the whole building, ventilation is hardly ever tackled. The modern window frames have some micro-vents built in, and the buildings tend to have e.g. ventilation exhaust from the kitchen and the bathroom, but no dedicated permanent exchange of air, complete with heat and moisture recuperation. When the blocks of flats we now live in were built, heating radiators didn't have thermostatic valves - they hardly had working valves at all. Rather, they just ran at full throttle 24x7, and, as heat consumption was not metered and charged per apartment, opening a window was the easiest thing to do. Smaller stand-alone family homes were perhaps slighly more sparing with just opening the windows, because coal and firewood did cost something, but overall the situation was not very different. Fast forward 2-3 decades, and we now have metered heat consumption, thermostatic valves on radiators, energy prices soaring, airtight windows, and, typically, no central ventilation - because in older buildings, there's no room left for the additional vertical distribution ducts, nor for the horizontal ducts within each apartment. Even in newly built family homes, people often neglect getting a proper ventilation + aircon system (saving heat and regulating moisture) because that's "a couple grand extra" in EURO/USD prices. Thus, people tend to ignore the fact that people need oxygen to breathe. Including at night, while asleep. If that's your situation, keeping your window open a crack is the easiest thing to do - definitely not conserving heat, but what else can you do, right? Spending a night in an air-tight room, vs. having a waft of fresh air to breathe while asleep, that makes a hell of a difference. You get people moralising all the time "nooo, don't keep your windows open in winter, you lose heat". Come on. You need some oxygen to live in the first place. Oxygen deficiency makes you sleepy at work and prevents you from sleeping when you need to. Feeling cold sure doesn't help me fall asleep. Sweating hot doesn't help either. You get the idea - one has to find balance, and "dress for the occasion" :-) You have to adapt your blanket to the period of the year and the weather outside. The trouble with an open window can be, that you hear noises from outside. In the city, you can hear drunks yelling their lungs out while drifting back from a bar. Or, early in the morning you are woken up by someone starting an old diesel clunker and letting it warm up before departing. Or, the trailer truck parked next to the shopping mall down the street has started the engine of its freezer compressor and lets it run all night long. During the winter you may have neighbors who use sub-prime/"alternative" solid fuel or cannot operate their furnace properly (or both)... and tend to load the furnace for the night just as you go to sleep and open the window. Actually the rural areas are more severe in this than the cities, which often enjoy central heating from an industrial-scale heat plant. But, even a residential area with blocks of flats and clean central heating may have the odd shabby family house on the outskirts (or a scrapyard with a night watch cabin) that generates a perfect smoke screen, on a quiet winter night, starting shortly after sunset... (so what do we have today? Rubber tyres? Or just the good old sulphurous coal?) It also helps a lot, not to be stressed when trying to fall asleep :-) Obviously that's not something you can command, lots of the stress remains subliminal, and the objective causes are normally beyond your immediate control. I have an experience that I don't sleep well before some major task ahead (spanning a day or more), I run on adrenalin for a few days - but when the thing is over, the subliminal stress level drops through the floor, and I'd fall asleep before my kids even start to feel tired in the evening. As a relief for disrupted digestion, perhaps due to elevated stress, I can recommend the following: - a dilute herbal tea of Peppermint and Melissa - followed by probiotics (lactobacillus, white yoghurt) And, taking a nap during a saturday afternoon is not a sin. The question is, if your family let you. This is actually a no-brainer. If you have kids, you know that you need to work when you get a chance, and sleep when you get a chance. The question if it's appropriate, to sleep during the day, is academic. Detached from reality.
your ability to form new memories cuts out before you fall asleep. So it's easy to startle yourself awake by wondering why you haven't fallen asleep yet, not realizing that this exact thing happens every single night. People who say they fall asleep in seconds to minutes after hitting the pillow simply don't remember the part where they slowly fell asleep, but if they ever noticed it they'd potentially give themselves insomnia, so best not to think about it too much.
I can sleep fairly well with dreaming, ONCE I can get over the chronic post-surgery neck pain, when laying head upon pillow. For at least an hour or so, I've got to keep adjusting my head position and angle, as well as adjusting the pillow, fluffing it up or scrunching it up to put "pressure points" on certain painful head/neck/shoulder nerve pathways... sometimes this lasts for several more hours before resting sleep.
When I was younger and my sleep was not as broken, I experimented with different "colors" of noise. I used existing long samples of white, pink, and brown noise and mixed them in software to try variations. The best I found, balancing the relative masking of environmental noise with making sure the sound was not unpleasant to my ears the way pure white noise is, was two parts pink to one part brown. There might be a more perfect balance to be had, or it might be that you could generate this exact color directly instead of mixing waves, but it really made life easier in a noisy house and neighborhood when I did not sleep on the same schedule as others.
Dream management is something I have been playing with for a few years, and it does work. I tried it to help with my nightmares and PTSD by playing happy and positive type videos all night. When I remember a dream after I wake up I can usually relate it to a video in my list and goings on in my life. Certainly a lot less nightmares.
Blues instrumentals work well for presleep relaxation also helps if you have someone to talk to and exchange how the day went or if you both have common experiences just to reassure the other everything is as what it seems
noise discourse is super important to the tinnitus sufferers out here too. i find it easier to fall asleep with white noise because it masks my tinnitus, but i have also read that sound therapy may have a cobra effect and make tinnitus worse in the long term. is habituating really all there is to hope for? is susan shore going to disappoint us?
One thing that should be mentioned in this conversation is meditation. This needs to be said with the caveat that it isn't a quick and easy fix. It is a skill that one must practice and develop. This means practice can be done ineffectively and it can be difficult to track since there are few external ques to monitor. But if done correctly, one can develop the skill of calming their mind. Falling asleep is actually something that can happen by accident when meditating, but in this case, if it's your goal, that's not a problem
I've struggled with sleep issues for most of my life - Just a single night of having issues falling asleep leading to anxiety the next day about not being able to fall asleep again, worsening as the day progresses and time to go to bed gets closer, leading to issues falling asleep. A lovely cycle. Now... I at least have meds to calm me down when this happens and is too much to take. So there. But then, then I got diagnosed with epilepsy, and found out that poor sleep is no longer just an annoyance for the next day, but also increases seizure activity in the brain, renewing my insomnia anxiety once more. I... Really wish there was a magical "Fall sleep now" button I could get implanted to stop worrying about sleep so much...
I found a neat trick. As I'm laying there, I think of something small that I forgot to do, (empty the dishwasher, getting the morning meds set out). Then, I consciously refuse to get up and do it right now. I very shortly fall asleep.
Old age has the pineal gland reduce melatonin excretion causing some insomnia. Also, the bioavailability of it as a supplement is known to be 15%. So, 10mg has 1.5mg of effect. I use slow release from Natrol. Said to be a good antioxidant.
I HAVE to have some background noise when trying to sleep. A fan running is best because I also like the breeze, but I also usually queue up a few hours of TV shows at barely audible volume. Total quiet just creeps me out and makes my mind race. And I would argue that some heavier drinking has given me some of the best nights of sleep ever (I don’t usually get hangovers, so wake up totally refreshed). As mentioned, it’s very much an individual thing.
I had serious sleeping problems due to olanzapine causing my parasympathetic system go all over the place. I could not sleep for days sometimes. After fixing with a drug it still leftover some. Best way to sleep for me is slow deep breaths with gradual muscle relaxation it put me asleep immediately even in depression. Probably because it triggers muscarinic 2 receptors that help relaxation,bracardia and sleep which I lack.
Everyone talking about falling asleep but many insomnias are more about waking up in the middle of the night or too early and not being able to fall back, this is much much difficult to improve
This video comes with a quiz which you can take here: quizwithit.com/start_thequiz/1701125456774x434212906610630140
I got 17/21 maybe I haven't got enough sleep
@SabineHossenfelder How about making video about meditation? It's pretty wide spread nowadays and i'm curious if it's actually working.
I’ll give it a go… anything to support (
Science and intelligence in the digital world. -Edited: I didn’t get the best score but admittedly I was multi tasking whilst listening. 😊
talking helps your mind unload for the night
19/21
Anyone watching this when you should be sleeping? Go to sleep! But maybe finish this video first, and maybe just one more after that.
Story of my life, bad nighttime UA-cam addiction
12:30AM 😅
Yes, and I fell asleep while watching it xD
I love this community hahaha
2.22... A.M.? Or P.M.? 2 hour 22 minute after midnight.
One thing that consistently helped me fall asleep is reading a book on theoretical physics. I think it has something to do with the fact that physics books are often difficult to understand. I believe this eats up all the energy that was left in the brain and kept me awake and so I fall asleep.
I find listening to PBS Spacetime works similarly 😅
@@simontmnYes! I love listening to it or watching documentaries to get into a sleep mode.
@@simontmn same
Listening to Sabine rant for more than 10 minutes, helps me sleep.
In fact, one time I Zzzzzz....
My two cents - I sleep pretty well, but tend to do better after taking calcium, magnesium, and a little later melatonin.
I do wake up in the middle of the night. If I get up and do something like pace around in the basement or jump on the minitrampoline, I quickly get drowsy and go back to sleep. If I stay in bed staring at the ceiling, then it's more difficult to get back to sleep.
I do take naps during the day, almost faithfully. They last about 25 minutes. If I'm at the office, then I go to the car to take a nap at lunch. If at home, and if my wife is home, we'll usually cuddle together and take a nap. Maybe there are health risks with this, but I can tell you it is refreshing and I'm better able to concentrate afterwards.
One of the best things about sleep, if you have time, is lucid dreaming. Some people do it naturally, some have beginners luck, but usually it takes some work.
Sleeping better after taking calcium and magnesium can be a sign of tetany. Don't ask how do I know...
Ok, I won't ask you, since you aren't the person who advised me, which was my physician.@@wsciekyprosiak7993
Thanks!
Excellent video! Anecdotally, as someone who has suffered from insomnia for years I will say that "brown noise" (I haven't heard that term before) aka listening to waterfalls, rain, gentle thunder (my favorite) was the biggest aid for me to fall asleep.
The same here:
Rain&thunder
I add
Historical Podcasts (eg fall of civilisations)
and
mockingbirds
I haven't slept a night in 15 years. I can manage 30-90 minutes at a time, and it takes at least an hour to fall back to sleep.
I do 3-4hrs/night + little naps during the day. I'm constantly tired, my memory is that if a geriatric (as is most of my health tbh) I have anhedonia because of it so I can't even enjoy anything while awake.
All that because of chronic drug use when I was younger. Know your limits and don't touch hard drugs people!
The annoying thing is that all of these issues started *after* I stopped using. The few times I fell of the wagon at the beginning I slept like a teenager and my health improved.
I could at any moment become a productive member of society and fix my many health issues, but I value my 15 years of sobriety so I'll continue to be a depressed shut in for now 😁
Brown noise/fan plus 2-3 pillows on top of my head. And nobody can touch me
I hear you.@@VikingTeddy
@VikingTeddy find a sleep specialist who knows more than this video. Hard to say from what you posted but you have several modifiable factors that can improve your sleep. It may never be perfect bit it can be improved.
Every night when I get into bed, I add a chapter to a very boring story in my head. It puts me to sleep pretty fast. It focuses my mind away from the daily events and into a world that doesn't include interruptive thoughts. One story I tell involves hiking or backpacking along a forest trail. Basically, I visualize putting one foot in front of another while imagining the landscape. Works for me.
I thought I had sleeping problems until my family went to another city for a couple of days and left me alone in the house. I had the best sleep in decades.
Turned out if you don't have any noise, lights or stress you can sleep like a baby.
Who also goes to sleep listening to some podcasts or lectures? I know that I shouldn't do that but it works for me. I even once had a dream that I'm on stage with Lawrence Krauss while listening to his lecture. And that I help him answer during Q&A section of this lecture.
I suffer of interrupted sleep for few years now, I fall asleep at around 22.00 and wake up between 01.00 and 03.00. Contrary to what you said, watching TV in bed before sleeping and to return to sleep always helps me, I frequently fall asleep with the TV on. It helps my mind stop wandering in thoughts, that’s what keeps me awake in the middle of the night.
Same here. Realize that we are all different. I've slept without TV in my bedroom for quarter century and had the worst sleep. Today, with YT and adblock, I am having best sleep of my life. Wake up naturally and rejuvenated, even if it's just 3-4 hrs of sleep (I take naps every day and schedule work and chores around naps).
In the end, you have to listen to the signals your body gives you. Your doctor doesn't live in your body, he merely parrots what works for most people and whatever BS they were fed at medical school.
Trouble is, if you're not one of those most people, such advice is extremely destructive...
Anecdotally, The number one advice that was most destructive for me, was to "just go to bed and stop thinking"
Nope. Does not work. Multiple parallel threads fighting for prime light. Inevitably leading to racing thoughts. Regardless of state of sleep deprivation.
Sabine’s smile at the end of this video was so adorable it made me blush. She’s so cute.
For me flat bluetooth headphones bulit into an elastic band help me fall asleep by listening to something interesting, but far removed from daily life, as long as it is calmly presented with a monotonous voice. The key for me is to have the player set to stop after 45 minutes, otherwise it wakes we up after about 3 hours. Also, recently I've started doing ~1h walks with weighted jacket just before sleeping, that helps quite a bit too.
works for me too! Something about history or the mathematics of AOE2 by Spirit of the Law.
Works for me as well.
Been thinking of getting one, glad it works for you
I use a €30 Google Nest speaker with to listen to podcasts with a sleep timer, so it turns off. Recommended!
I have you set to always notify but I didn't get a single science news last week. Luckily I watched last last week's and knew I was supposed to get a different one all the time but UA-cam is weird.
"Better save the money and support your favorite youtuber instead"
I see what you did there. 😛 It reminds me it's probably time for another "Thanks" gift. 🙂 You rock, Sabine!
Use it too sometimes. Think she's worth every single coin, and much more.😊
@@Thomas-gk42 word. 🙂
Of all the things that improved my sleep, it was being at home full time, during the pandemic. The thing that most commonly interrupts my sleep is indigestion. We almost completely stopped eating out, and that alone did wonders. Add to that the fact that the world-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket situation prompted me to try to take control of something-anything!- my sleep schedule became much more regular. I forced myself to start going to bed at a regular time, and I generally wake up at the about the same time, with or without an alarm. I still have occasional sleep problems, and I deal with what I presume to be average anxieties, but I generally do not have to deal with excessive fatigue, which is nice.
Try eating all your food many hours before you go to sleep. It might help.
@@weksauce I generally do. I try to eat dinner at 4 and go to bed at 9.
@@robertAGC Experiment with finishing eating by ~11, and see if it improves things. It's worth a shot. Bryan Johnson of Blueprint fame swears by this, and gets the best sleep of anyone I know of.
@@weksauce how would you know what kind of sleep this person gets?
@@sethtenrec By reading what they write, and assuming that they're human.
Going from memory, I think it was a sleep study out of Stanford back in the early 80s that confirmed most of my personal thoughts on sleep, or at least the conditions for sleep.You said here most of their findings already, though possibly from other sources and studies. I think I will add some detail that may help.
Keep your sleeping chamber cooler than your living chamber.
Keep your room cool and your body warm.
Make the bed for sleeping, and not for watching TV. Stop engaging with the world.
Keep your sleeping cycle throughout the week and weekends. If you stay up late, still get up at the correct time, and return to your cycle that night.
Make physical activity a priority. Being active will make you sleep better. Or, to quote the famous wilderness recluse Richard Proenneke, "A hard bed feels pretty good after a day on the mountain."
Thanks for all you do to educate all of us on things that help us understand ourselves, our world, the universe... And for making me laugh every day! :-)
Excellent info. So I’m really doing the right things! Thanks.
I can say only based on my experience. As a light sleeper living in a noisy city, I use white noise to mask the exterior noise, and it does a really good job, because it adjusts the overall sound to a more monotonous one, which the brain can adapt very quickly to. On the contrary, for deep sleepers and people living in quiet places, it probably won't have any beneficial effect.
Yes. Moving from Pennsylvania to Vermont was quite an adjustment. Vermont was so unbelievably quiet.
Try to lessen the noise coming in the first place as well. I have a friend who drowned out noise to the point of giving themselves tinnitus.
@@benjaminfranklin329 Thanks for the feedback! I actually also have a mild Tinnitus too, but it started much before this habit of using the radio (I actually use an out of sync radio for the white noise). After some study on the theme, I came to the conclusion it was probably developed through a sugar rich diet at the time. I use earplugs while I sleep too in order for the noise not damage my ears. Since I became using the radio , I haven't noticed any changes to my (nowadays) mild tinnitus.
Funny you say that, it reminds me of the show How To with John Wilson, season 3 episode 2, "how to clean your ears" he goes to the National Radio Silence Zone and a woman who lives there uses a white noise machine bc it's too quiet xD
I sleep near my server which quietly hums all the time. Interesting thing about that is: when it occasionally crashes - that quiet hum sound is lost and "complete silence" then begins. That very complete silence IS the thing what wakes me in that moment, almost instantly!
YOU HAVE ANSWERED MY PRAYERS SABINE
I find that taking melatonin very helpful, it doesn't help sleep better nor longer, but it does helps fall asleep faster. So occasionally, like the day before a job interview, going on a travel, or a big event that keeps you too excited/worried to sleep, this is a good solution.
I actually many times slept while watching a video of yours, its like my bed time story ❤
I approve. I do this with other people's videos...
Oh yeah. Sabine or Anton Petrov on the couch makes me fall asleep in 10 minutes flat. Meanwhile actually trying to fall asleep at night...
I do the same, her voice is soothing, It's also nice to wake up and rewatch the video right away, then my brain continues the thought so to speak :)
For me it's Astrum. Alex has such a soothing voice...
I rather listen to a video than watch it, while falling asleep. Works quite well.
I dont think my brother has sleep issues, but my mother, father, and me all have some sleep issues. This is maybe the only UA-cam video I'll share with my folks my parents are long retired, watch TV, and play Mahjongg online. Thanks a million, Sabine! You always rock!
I recently put low wattage yellow (blue light blocking) bulbs in two lamps and only have them on in the evening instead of normal lighting. We are both sleeping better.
Awesome ! Thank you.
Thanks for another great video, Sabine. We use multiple floor fans, a cold, dark room, and that really helps us!
I have long dreamed of a video just like this. Thank you!
Thanks
How frequently are you getting up at 2/3am Sabina and if its chronic, are you doing anything about it?
Great video. I have lucid dreams where I can choose what I am going to do next, so feel wide awake. Whilst I often remember a dream in detail and so presumably have woken up, I can usually return to sleep, often to resume the dream.
I do this expert move where I go lucid, eventually bail out of dreams manually and am then put into sleep paralysis combined with hallucinations of false awakenings. 4/10 experience would not recommend the lucid.
It's a mixed bag though. Like there seem to be multiple levels of control, most of my dreams I am aware that I am dreaming, but not fully conscious and only affecting the "story" knowing things are not real. Some people may consider that lucid. However, I seem to have another "type" of dream that feels distinctly more realistic, like a deeper level. These I am typically not aware that I am dreaming. However, when you go lucid there it's a much more lucid experience. Touch, looking say details of things up close, pain, taste, smell - it all checks out, I've experimented with this consciously.
But then waking up from that is the worst, it's like reality ending. That paired with paralysis in a dark room is rather uncomfortable... Funny times
What works for me is not to think. Just lay down, confortable, relax all muscles, and then just clear my mind and breathe deeply once (learned this looking at my dogs funnily enough) and that's it.
Indeed every person is different. I suffered with sleep problems from early adulthood to age 35. Then i was prescribed antipsychotics. Since then i barely have a bad sleep night even though i work in shifts. 😴
Very interesting video, I'll try out some of the suggestions tonight.
Excellent video! Danke! 🌼
I started sleeping better after I finally accepted that the graviton may never be confirmed. “
It’s ok”, I told myself. Kind of like forgiving oneself for past mistakes.
Great video!
Confirmed much of what I suspected.
Screen time and meal timing my Achilles heel.
Thanks Sabine 😊
worked 12am to 12pm for 15 years had to have afib heart surgery at 37. some night jobs are important but she's right people need night sleep. it needs to be fixed
Did a lot of night watches un my life. It's harmful for a heathy sleep. Big problem for the crowd of shift workers 😢
This was the video I needed, Sabine is a champ, one of my fav's
I have found that this is by far the best channel here on youtube that discusses science. It is very precise, well-structured, and covers a wide variety of topics.
Just beware her awful, misinformed takes on gender affirming care, economics, capitalism and more.
She's got dunning Kruger outside of her field of study.
Thank you, Sabine. Very pertinent information for me and my family!
Great video, thank you!
as a 60 something full night owl my problem is going to sleep early. always has, always will. not an insomniac just my sleep pattern is shifted a few hours later than everyone else. my problem has been trying to fit my body into what society thinks is right.
Don't bother.Night Owls are a rare valuable breed.Whooo
I have tinnitus, and sometimes can't get to sleep unless there's some background noise. Thankfully YT has videos especially for that.
i always have background noise on to sleep, filters out annoying sounds.
If you work shift work and sleep in the afternoon and evening, a fan helps cover up the outside noises, that and blackout shades.
Good video, thanks!
I have issues with tinnitus, this light noise buzzing in my brain when its quiet, i listen to your videos when i fall asleep (i just turn off the screen), it helps to listen to something not to high pitched or extremely "active". ^^
I love Sabine's videos so much, informative and funny. I wish the "sound effects" were not so loud, they are so distracting when you're listening intently to her presentation and there are these seemingly arbitrary *LOUD* popping noises that overwhelm her voice and demand that you look at the screen just to see - *a graphic depiction of something* ..!! Attention is a rare commodity. These essays are interesting and worth understanding. Please stop poking us in the ear randomly.
Hi Sabine, I wish you out the same level of effort when working with sponsors, the galaxy lamp might be amazing but their site is a scam.
Keep up the amazing work and taking for making science so accessible and easy to understand.
I've found that I can sleep better when I don't think about what's going to happen the next day. It's better to think about things that have already happened
That's why I have quite a number of Todo lists here. Whenever I can't continue with something, I write down notes about what still needs to be done or where to continue. This way I no longer have to remeber this, clearing the brain.
Ancillary to your suggestions--a written journal can help to quiet your mind before bed and a warm shower or bath before bed helps your body to cool down.
I also think there's research to establish that getting more sunlight during the day, particularly in the morning, helps to maintain circadian rhythms.
I’m a night time worrier. I tend to grind on problems not when I go to sleep initially, but after I wake up in the middle of the night. I sleep with headphones on and find that space documentaries do wonders to shut down the worry machine. I’m not looking at the screen. The screen is face down and the headphones are wireless and the volume low. But it seems to work. Also, if I’m really worried about something in particular, I find it helps to get out of bed to check on it if that’s possible, or write a note to myself to do so in the morning.
I had a teacher who defined stress as responsibility without control. Either get control of the situation, or let go of it. Action is the best antidote to fear. If something is bothering you, do something about it. It gives you a better chance of getting through it and makes you less of a victim of the problem.
I have found that I am no good at solving problems in the middle of the night. It's amazing how much easier the same problem becomes when solved in the daytime while fully awake. So, when I am up at night and worrying about something, I make a plan for how I will tackle the problem during the day, and that allows me to relax and fall back asleep. I get the feeling of getting control of the situation without actually having to solve it in the night.
@@robertkomar3257 Hence the expression, "Let's sleep on it" meaning decide later after a period of rest and reboot. I don't actually try to solve a problem the same evening I'm being kept awake by it unless it's something simple like do I have enough money in a certain account to cover a bill. These days, that's easy to check on. If it's something that requires leaving the house, then it's a matter of making a note to myself to deal with it in the morning. Just the act of making the "to do" list takes it off the loop.
This is what I put in the category of "trash" thinking. It's those self incriminating thoughts that are on a perpetual loop, but don't conquer any new territory toward solving the problem. Self doubts and worries that haunt us until we find a way to get past them. Sleep is part of that equation since it reboots our computer and helps us approach a problem with a fresh perspective. The irony is that the problem itself often deprives us of this unless we can find a work around. I'm a contractor, and it's funny because no matter how many jobs I've done, when I start a new one, I always feel nervous beforehand. It's not unusual for me to not get much sleep the night before starting a new job or having to travel somewhere. When I need the sleep the most is often when I'm deprived of it.
Entertaining and helpful, thanks
I try to cram as much into a day as I can so I am usually still at the computer right before bedtime. I've had chronic sleep problems since the days of the VIC 20. I've tried glasses, to block blue rays (they don't work), and software programs to adjust the monitor's blue light, which have always made the screen too dark for me to read. Then, by accident, I discovered the Samsung 4-K TV, I use as a monitor, can automatically reduce blue light at night. Now I use that and have found it very helpful in being able to fall asleep quickly.
Coincidentally, I got the results of my polysomnography exam yesterday and the result was that I suffer from apnea. The funny thing is that I decided to take the exam not because of this problem, but because I had a phase of insomnia a few months ago, for psychological reasons. I hope the treatment will improve the quality of my sleep.
Hopefully you'll get a c-pap machine
This vid was not boring for insomniacs, thanks Sabine.
Now what about tinitis. This is a problem for many people. It can negatively impacting sanity if one lets it become a problem. Can we have a vid on what practical things can be done to reduce tinitis.
My GP told me there was no cure. The hearing specialist, who I expected to have better knowledge, could not enlighten me. Even the causes of tinitis are obscure. Thanks Sabine.
@mayflowerlash11 Tinnitus is generally a neural problem, or maybe a "defect in the sensor" = some neural termination in the cochlea, in the inner ear (that keeps firing for no good reason). Neural damage often cannot be traced to a particular source/cause/reason. It can be a result of a previous or latent infection. And it may as well be irreversible :-/ Indeed there is no miracle cure for tinnitus, and the statistics don't support an outright optimistic prognosis.
While trying to counter some mild rheumatoid trouble with my joints, I have experienced small improvements to my "overall neural balance" (including the noise background in my ears) after some particular meds:
I recall a herbal tea, nominally sold as support for the kidneys, consisting of Horsetail (Equisetum arvense - careful, many relatives in the genus are poisonous), Goldenrod (Solidago) and Knotweed (Polygonum aviculare - careful, may have a mild vasoconstrictive effect, potentially dangerous if you have high blood pressure or blood clotting problem).
In this vein, I'd also recommend trying a dilute (half a teaspoon of the mix in half a liter of water) mixed tea of general anti-inflammatory herbs: Plantain, Marigold, Chamomile, Salvia/Sage and maybe Agrimony. If it doesn't help, it should not hurt... actually, unless you are allergic to some of those herbs. Maybe test a few drops first in your mouth, ready to spit, check for any itching or burning response. I've met such people before - I've met someone who got an itch from a tincture of those herbs (used externally as a dermal disinfectant).
The herbal teas are generally safe to try for a week. And if there's no effect in a week, it won't come later.
Other than herbs, I'd also try a supplement of B12 to see if that makes a difference. People are often deficient in B12. This particular vitamin helps protect the myelin coating of nerves. Might improve your tinnitus, if the cause is neural and reversible. In my case, B12 did seem to have a slight positive effect.
Without knowing anything about you, and I'm not a doctor, for overall immunity, I'd mention supplementing vit. D (and Zinc with that) and a bit of vit.C - but I cannot promise that these will have an effect on tinnitus in particular. Not very likely. Boosting your immune system may in fact have an adverse effect, if your tinnitus is a neural problem and has a localized auto-immune inflammation as a background... If you try to give this a shot, test it separately (in time) and observe if it has any effect. If there is a response, it should come within a day to a week.
Again without knowing anything about you, I'd recommend physical activity, as far as is practical or permitted by your overall shape. Getting your cardiovascular system revved up generally helps transport oxygen into your brain, flush "oxidant waste" out of your tissues, and may thus also have an effect on your tinnitus - but beware of any subjective risk factors on your part, such as overall high blood pressure or arteriosclerosis. Your physical activity must correspond to what you can generally tolerate. You probably have a clue. If you have some of the risk factors mentioned above, you aren't likely to get inspired by me to suddenly try sports in suicidal doses :-) but I have to warn you anyway. Physical activity is good, but if you're sedentary and you decide to do something about it, start gradually. In some scenarios, even taking long walks is the right start... you probably get the idea. Keeping your cardiovascular system somewhat trained is a boon on several fronts.
thank you for your response I will look into some of the suggestions you have made.@@xrysf03
I can tell if I'm sleeping well when I naturally wake up at around 7:15am where I also remember multiple dreams each night. Keeping the room colder definitely helps. Eating at night and especially alcohol ruins it.
Watch out for ear plugs as they can increase bacteria build up. My mum swears by white noise and other soundscapes.
Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and I fell asleep listening to this video. Now I'm watching it again to get the parts I missed 😂
My sister has constant insomnia. She's been taking Ambien and Seroquel to sleep for years. She takes an Ambien and a Seroquel pill and then goes to bed with sublingual Ambien in her mouth. She's given me the sublingual Ambien a few times in my life. Really strong stuff.
I went for decades averaging about 6 hours a night. In crisis mode less. But it was good solid sleep. Contrary to the norm I now sleep more up to about 7 hours. Waking up doesn't really bother me per se, but I sometimes can fall back to sleep. I don't tolerate noise, but a full moon through the woindow is often cery relaxing and hence helps me fall asleep. Now that I am old (74) I find I have less tolerance for missing sleep. It shows in my concentration the next day.
I have believed that sleep is the offline maintenance cycle for the brain (YES, I'm in IT). Many IT analogies seem very applicable. Particularly the old saw of "Just sleep on it and something may come to you" has worked. Sometimes any idea needs to be left alone in an idle brain for a while.
This was a good video, with that sprinkling of you great humor.
I realize that I don't seem to fit the norms, but I also don't have any real sleep problems. I can get up early and stay up late when necessary and add an hour or very rarely two to my sleep schedule when needed. MY biological clock seems to work fine for me. I've had to learn that taking an occasional nap id fine. Music does not normally help me relax to sleep. But being absorbed in a piece of music can help me relax. When the music's over turn out the lights. (Line from a Doors song. But relaxing to a stopping point especially one that sonicly winds down works for me.
The universe has taught me that there is usually more than one way that works. That's fine with me. I clear the chaos of the day from my mind and embrace the void of dark and silent.
I agree. I sleep best when the room is freezing cold, pitch black & there is deathly silence...
U2
That sounds like a Grave.
Agreed !
That's a very _Silent Hill_ way of describing it, but yes, ty. lol.
Falling asleep has never been a problem for me. But I wake up too early such as 3 am or 3.30 am.
I consider it a lucky night if I get six hours sleep. By nine in the morning, I feel drowsy and take a brief nap. In the afternoon, after lunch, if I feel sleepy, I take another nap for twenty minutes to half an hour. Once or twice a month, Mother Nature blesses me with seven hours sleep!
Same. Most of the info I can find is all about falling asleep, while it's staying asleep that's the real issue.
Classical music helps me most of the time, keep the volume low. Insomnia has been a lifelong companion. Your do's and do nots list is 10 out of 10 score.
Good luck to any of you who does not have good sleep.
Screeching noise helps with sleep. OK I’ll remember that.
I agree with your list in all other points than the cold room. I absolutely cannot fall asleep if I am shivering. Not only that, but if by a miracle, I do fall asleep (after getting an extra blanket), I typically still wake up in a couple of hours, again shivering. What works great for me is a decent warm room and trying to solve the daily Sudoku on my iPad Mini. When I stop making progress, that is the time to turn the light off and leave the rest of the Sudoku to morning, 7 to 9 hours later.
My experience is totally the opposite, I turn the furnace off at night in my house. Recently, it’s been 57° inside when I wake up. But I’m not shivering because I use blankets. It’s the room that needs to be cold, not you. In fact, the weight of the blankets can help with sleep as well.
Binge watching your channel on my sleepless night, thanks.
I think you forgot to mention that sleep is also cultural. For example, I grew up with free afternoons until high school. I basically always had the option to sleep in the afternoon if I wanted too. Also, in hot countries, being active during the hottest hours of the day is definitely not recommended. Now, I have been living in Europe for 20 years, I know I will never change, always get sleepy in the afternoon, and that's okay. Lastly, many workplaces accomodate rooms to nap after lunch. So I am pretty sure sleeping a little bit during the day is totally normal. The other thing, is that it's much easier to be intellectually productive during the night, when there is less light and everything is quiet. In my opinion, it really depends what kind of job you do, how you grew up, how hot the country is, etc.
In the weekend I always wake up to do a long run of a few hours, so that generally means waking up after only 6 hours of sleep, which in general is too little for me. However the rest of that day I feel much more awake and energetic that on week days when I do not run after waking up. I always find that peculiar
I think the discrepency in popularity of misinformation is twofold. One factor, as you said, is that the truth "is boring". And the other is that the misinformation channels tend to leverage angst just like marketers, to generate more views.
The crucial role of fatigue (you have to earn it) is what i was missing. It took 58 years (that was 3 years ago) but i finally curried my life-long insomnia by realizing the caloric floor for my body was much much higher than i assumed. That is, i can easily get eight good hours of quality sleep but i have to go to be tired enough. To get tired enough i have to burn a massive amount of calories. It took months of incrementing the amount of exercise to find the level that is required, now do that amount each day and i sleep great.
For my body it takes about one hour (time under load) of resistance, 2 minutes peak (zone 3), 20 minutes cardio (zone2) and 100 minutes zone 1 bordering on 2. So i'm talking about a few hours of exercise each day.
if you wake before the alarm, you're underdoing it, you need to increment (exercise), if you wake with tightness in your finger joints you need to back off (or you will give yourself arthritis). Using those two markers, finger joint tightness and 'sleep to the alarm', will allow you to dial in the personal floor of your day
Hi, thank you for this episode, will you do another more related to breathing issues on sleep, like sleep apnea etc.?
Conductive, conducive, tomato, tomaaato.. Your videos never put me to sleep!
When you said "soon you have to pay for add-free dreams" I was so terrified that I could not fall asleep anymore afterwards. Wishing you all the best, sweet dreams and best regards, Markus
My mother sleeps with blinds and earplugs and sleeps 5-6 hours. My primary care physician informed me that a scheduled sleep is best and no TV or screen time improves sleep. She also said that if you don’t fall asleep in 30 minutes, get up and read until you feel sleepy. This seems to coincide with what Sabine says.
But reading is information stimulation and it also requires you to turn on the lights. I don't get what I am supposed to do then
@hordechess7629 supposedly, regular lighting isn't an issue the way that a screen's light affects a person. I read before sleep every night when I was young. I never had trouble sleeping.
I listen too your video, never got to the end and sleep as a baby, when I get up I watch again 😊
I spent my entire life taking two hours or more to get to sleep (if at all). I noticed that audiobooks helped me sleep in about 10 minutes and now UA-cam videos. More than an hour and they will wake me again so shorts with no autoplay.
I can sleep with noise but not as deeply and _nothing_ will wake me faster than someone in the room trying to be quiet!
There’s a pretty solid and recent study on the benefits of yoga nidra on sleep, and it’s been seeming to help me
Thank you...
Sleep, so important, so much to learn.
Again amazing job!!! Thanks a lot for all your hard work.
If I may make a request, I would love to see a video about the more and more popular protein powders made out of grained whole insects. Are there studies about their absorption by the human digestive system, what are the pros and cons, are they getting popular only in the US and Canada or it is a worldwide? I know that there are cultures which consumes insects regularly, but would love a more scientific and deep analysis of the topic. Thank you in advance!
Yeah, there will probably be 10 or 20 people watch that video!
Our modern sleep patterns of 8 hours of 'uninterrupted' sleep reflect industrial society. In the past, the sleep pattern was different - typically with a two-part sleep pattern. Reference Professor Roger Ekirch about sleep
You're correct, and there are references in older literature to "first sleep" and "second sleep."
and the two part sleep pattern reflects another society, and its inadequate for today
Using the built in Shortcuts app, I have my iPhone turn on color filters to cut out nearly all blue light an hour before bedtime. It’s a soft reminder to wind down and it also reduces the blue light hitting my eyes. Yes, apple products have ‘Night Shift’ but I’ve found it’s not aggressive enough to filter out blue light. This also only works well on OLED displays like the ones in many phones, but not most laptops, computer monitors, or TVs.
I have a health tracker called "Whoop Strap" which does a great job tracking general health stats, exercise, and sleep. You can log different things you do and at the end of the month it gives a report, it can tell you which "factors" lead to better health.
The top three factors that give me better sleep (I forgot the order, just a list).
#1) Low stress day
#2) Listening to "nature sound" like rain noises. or a waterfall at night
#3) Melitonin. (But I only take this on high-stress days or if I have trouble falling asleep, but it takes 3 hours before max effect).
These factors are consistent over the two years that I have been using the Whoop Strap to collect data, and am confident it works for me.
I don't drink and have a regular schedule including exercise, so had a good baseline of habits to start with. Those are the improvements.
I've recently found out, to my amazement, what an improvement a comfy bed can bring. For years, I used to sleep under a relatively light blanket, 200x140 cm format. Recently, also related to some back pain problems, I started paying attention that I'd often feel cold, the blanket would slip and produce a draft etc. Actually I'm struggling with terminology here a little... in our country in the moderate climate, from mid fall to mid spring we sleep under stuffed quilts/duvets. These consist of a stuffed "body" and a removable "cover", like a sack that gets washed more often than the inner stuffed thing. Traditionally, the stuffing used to be made of goose feathers, nowadays it's all hollow fiber.
That said, in the way of experiment, I got myself a longer duvet: 220x140 cm. The one I ditched had like 500g of stuffing. When shopping for the new one, I was scratching my head a little - the hollow fiber stuffings in the range of 900-1000g are already called warm, but compared to my childhood memories, they actually still feel relatively light. So, as an experiment, I stuffed *two* duvets, 900g each (bought in a sale) into a single cover, 140x220 cm - and that's already close to the feather duvets of my childhood. And, after decades, I had a wonderful night's sleep! In the winter, with a window just next to my bed opened a crack (around 0*C on the outside).
The window is actually a related topic. Again where I live, residential buildings often have botched or non-existent ventilation. Airtight and thermally insulating double-glazed windows in plastic frames are a relative novelty here, of maybe the last 2-3 decades. And, while the buildings got retrofitted with these airtight windows, which (fortunately) often goes along with thermo-insulating the whole building, ventilation is hardly ever tackled. The modern window frames have some micro-vents built in, and the buildings tend to have e.g. ventilation exhaust from the kitchen and the bathroom, but no dedicated permanent exchange of air, complete with heat and moisture recuperation.
When the blocks of flats we now live in were built, heating radiators didn't have thermostatic valves - they hardly had working valves at all. Rather, they just ran at full throttle 24x7, and, as heat consumption was not metered and charged per apartment, opening a window was the easiest thing to do. Smaller stand-alone family homes were perhaps slighly more sparing with just opening the windows, because coal and firewood did cost something, but overall the situation was not very different.
Fast forward 2-3 decades, and we now have metered heat consumption, thermostatic valves on radiators, energy prices soaring, airtight windows, and, typically, no central ventilation - because in older buildings, there's no room left for the additional vertical distribution ducts, nor for the horizontal ducts within each apartment. Even in newly built family homes, people often neglect getting a proper ventilation + aircon system (saving heat and regulating moisture) because that's "a couple grand extra" in EURO/USD prices. Thus, people tend to ignore the fact that people need oxygen to breathe. Including at night, while asleep.
If that's your situation, keeping your window open a crack is the easiest thing to do - definitely not conserving heat, but what else can you do, right? Spending a night in an air-tight room, vs. having a waft of fresh air to breathe while asleep, that makes a hell of a difference. You get people moralising all the time "nooo, don't keep your windows open in winter, you lose heat". Come on. You need some oxygen to live in the first place. Oxygen deficiency makes you sleepy at work and prevents you from sleeping when you need to.
Feeling cold sure doesn't help me fall asleep. Sweating hot doesn't help either. You get the idea - one has to find balance, and "dress for the occasion" :-) You have to adapt your blanket to the period of the year and the weather outside.
The trouble with an open window can be, that you hear noises from outside. In the city, you can hear drunks yelling their lungs out while drifting back from a bar. Or, early in the morning you are woken up by someone starting an old diesel clunker and letting it warm up before departing. Or, the trailer truck parked next to the shopping mall down the street has started the engine of its freezer compressor and lets it run all night long.
During the winter you may have neighbors who use sub-prime/"alternative" solid fuel or cannot operate their furnace properly (or both)... and tend to load the furnace for the night just as you go to sleep and open the window. Actually the rural areas are more severe in this than the cities, which often enjoy central heating from an industrial-scale heat plant. But, even a residential area with blocks of flats and clean central heating may have the odd shabby family house on the outskirts (or a scrapyard with a night watch cabin) that generates a perfect smoke screen, on a quiet winter night, starting shortly after sunset... (so what do we have today? Rubber tyres? Or just the good old sulphurous coal?)
It also helps a lot, not to be stressed when trying to fall asleep :-) Obviously that's not something you can command, lots of the stress remains subliminal, and the objective causes are normally beyond your immediate control. I have an experience that I don't sleep well before some major task ahead (spanning a day or more), I run on adrenalin for a few days - but when the thing is over, the subliminal stress level drops through the floor, and I'd fall asleep before my kids even start to feel tired in the evening.
As a relief for disrupted digestion, perhaps due to elevated stress, I can recommend the following:
- a dilute herbal tea of Peppermint and Melissa
- followed by probiotics (lactobacillus, white yoghurt)
And, taking a nap during a saturday afternoon is not a sin. The question is, if your family let you. This is actually a no-brainer. If you have kids, you know that you need to work when you get a chance, and sleep when you get a chance. The question if it's appropriate, to sleep during the day, is academic. Detached from reality.
your ability to form new memories cuts out before you fall asleep. So it's easy to startle yourself awake by wondering why you haven't fallen asleep yet, not realizing that this exact thing happens every single night. People who say they fall asleep in seconds to minutes after hitting the pillow simply don't remember the part where they slowly fell asleep, but if they ever noticed it they'd potentially give themselves insomnia, so best not to think about it too much.
I can sleep fairly well with dreaming, ONCE I can get over the chronic post-surgery neck pain, when laying head upon pillow. For at least an hour or so, I've got to keep adjusting my head position and angle, as well as adjusting the pillow, fluffing it up or scrunching it up to put "pressure points" on certain painful head/neck/shoulder nerve pathways... sometimes this lasts for several more hours before resting sleep.
When I was younger and my sleep was not as broken, I experimented with different "colors" of noise. I used existing long samples of white, pink, and brown noise and mixed them in software to try variations. The best I found, balancing the relative masking of environmental noise with making sure the sound was not unpleasant to my ears the way pure white noise is, was two parts pink to one part brown. There might be a more perfect balance to be had, or it might be that you could generate this exact color directly instead of mixing waves, but it really made life easier in a noisy house and neighborhood when I did not sleep on the same schedule as others.
love your sense of humour
Thank you enjoy your witticisms.
Dream management is something I have been playing with for a few years, and it does work. I tried it to help with my nightmares and PTSD by playing happy and positive type videos all night. When I remember a dream after I wake up I can usually relate it to a video in my list and goings on in my life. Certainly a lot less nightmares.
I watch your videos. You put me to sleep all the time!!
Blues instrumentals work well for presleep relaxation also helps if you have someone to talk to and exchange how the day went or if you both have common experiences just to reassure the other everything is as what it seems
noise discourse is super important to the tinnitus sufferers out here too. i find it easier to fall asleep with white noise because it masks my tinnitus, but i have also read that sound therapy may have a cobra effect and make tinnitus worse in the long term. is habituating really all there is to hope for? is susan shore going to disappoint us?
I hate wn.
One thing that should be mentioned in this conversation is meditation. This needs to be said with the caveat that it isn't a quick and easy fix. It is a skill that one must practice and develop. This means practice can be done ineffectively and it can be difficult to track since there are few external ques to monitor. But if done correctly, one can develop the skill of calming their mind. Falling asleep is actually something that can happen by accident when meditating, but in this case, if it's your goal, that's not a problem
I've struggled with sleep issues for most of my life - Just a single night of having issues falling asleep leading to anxiety the next day about not being able to fall asleep again, worsening as the day progresses and time to go to bed gets closer, leading to issues falling asleep. A lovely cycle. Now... I at least have meds to calm me down when this happens and is too much to take. So there.
But then, then I got diagnosed with epilepsy, and found out that poor sleep is no longer just an annoyance for the next day, but also increases seizure activity in the brain, renewing my insomnia anxiety once more.
I... Really wish there was a magical "Fall sleep now" button I could get implanted to stop worrying about sleep so much...
Now that was a real eye opening video Sabine. One thing for sure, I never/ever fall asleep watching one of your videos! Sweet dreams! 👍👍
I found a neat trick. As I'm laying there, I think of something small that I forgot to do, (empty the dishwasher, getting the morning meds set out). Then, I consciously refuse to get up and do it right now. I very shortly fall asleep.
Old age has the pineal gland reduce melatonin excretion causing some insomnia. Also, the bioavailability of it as a supplement is known to be 15%. So, 10mg has 1.5mg of effect. I use slow release from Natrol. Said to be a good antioxidant.
I HAVE to have some background noise when trying to sleep. A fan running is best because I also like the breeze, but I also usually queue up a few hours of TV shows at barely audible volume. Total quiet just creeps me out and makes my mind race. And I would argue that some heavier drinking has given me some of the best nights of sleep ever (I don’t usually get hangovers, so wake up totally refreshed). As mentioned, it’s very much an individual thing.
I had serious sleeping problems due to olanzapine causing my parasympathetic system go all over the place. I could not sleep for days sometimes. After fixing with a drug it still leftover some. Best way to sleep for me is slow deep breaths with gradual muscle relaxation it put me asleep immediately even in depression. Probably because it triggers muscarinic 2 receptors that help relaxation,bracardia and sleep which I lack.
Everyone talking about falling asleep but many insomnias are more about waking up in the middle of the night or too early and not being able to fall back, this is much much difficult to improve