
Simple Ways That I Optimize My Sleep - brianmartinek
http://brianmartinek.com/2013/08/22/three-simple-ways-that-i-optimize-my-sleep/
======
kirpekar
Three Simple Ways That I Optimize My Sleep, not backed by science:

1\. Work hard and find time to exercise during the day

2\. Relax my mind towards the end of the day, have a beer, watch some TV, etc.

3\. Read a little before dozing off

~~~
cgag
There has to be some science behind exercising during the day and reading /
reading at night.

------
hdivider
I recommend _Sleepfaring_ by Prof Jim Horne.

[http://www.amazon.com/Sleepfaring-Journey-through-Science-
Sl...](http://www.amazon.com/Sleepfaring-Journey-through-Science-
Sleep/dp/019922837X/)

Reading it can put you to sleep, but there's interesting stuff there. Some
highlights, off the top of my head:

1) 'Coffee naps' are effective - i.e. if you're really tired and have to stay
awake, drink a coffee quickly and nap for 15 minutes or so.

2) If you are sleep deprived, you only have to make up a fraction (I think it
was something like 1/4) of the lost sleep - not the entire amount. It's easy
to sleep too much.

3) If you can't sleep, instead of tossing and turning it might be better to
simply get up and do a boring routine activity (e.g. puzzles), until you get
tired again.

YMMV etc. - sleep is still not that well understood.

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enoch_r
There's no need to spend hundreds of dollars on a sunrise alarm clock. Just
buy some super-bright, flat white bulbs[1] and a timer[2]. (And a lamp if you
need one, of course.) Sure, it doesn't get _gradually_ light, but the main
thing is that it's very bright when you get out of bed, which is really
pleasant!

[0]
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00198U6U6](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00198U6U6)

[1]
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0040718V4](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0040718V4)

~~~
enraged_camel
I don't think you have understood the point of a sunrise alarm clock. The
reason they turn on gradually is to simulate sunrise, which makes it the most
comfortable way for your body to wake up.

I don't know about you, but when I'm sleeping in a dark room and someone
suddenly turns on a bright light, I hate it.

~~~
enoch_r
Different things work for different people, I guess. I think the clocks have
two points, both aimed at simulating the conditions we evolved in--one, they
turn on gradually, and two, they wake you up with light rather than noise. I
personally don't care about the first point--my timed light flips on while I'm
still asleep, I wake up gradually, and at the point when, in a dark room, I'd
probably come up from a doze, roll over, and go back to sleep, I notice it
looks like daylight in my room and get up. In fact, I prefer this, because the
sunrise alarm clocks I've used haven't been bright enough to feel like dawn
instead of a lamp.

Yeah, you don't get all the benefits of a sunrise alarm clocks, and it might
not work for everyone. It's a hack to get some of the benefits at a lower
cost, that's all.

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fphhotchips
I hate these articles. Not because they aren't useful, but because I wake up a
couple hours before my partner, and she sleeps on a schedule that's so precise
I'm not sure she's human. I'm jealous, and in order to not get killed in a
domestic dispute, changes like temperature control ("It's too cold!"), sunrise
alarm clocks ("Turn that goddamned light off!") and light control ("Those
black out shades are ugly!") are not practical.

Tl;dr: if you want to use these techniques to get a good night's sleep, get
used to sleeping alone.

~~~
Kequc
Your SO is oscar the grouch?? Realistically though just alter your schedule or
ask her to alter hers.

Switch to a bucket of water being dumped on you to wake you up. After she has
a nervous breakdown that the bed is soaking wet suggest that you tried
temperature changes, sunrise alarm clocks and darker shades. But she was
against all of them.

~~~
fphhotchips
She's not if I let her keep her sleep schedule! A couple of days off of it and
I'm afraid she's going to move in to a tin garbage can though...

I am trying/have tried other methods of sleep optimisation though. I tried
Gnaural (brain entrainment software - placebo or not I found it worked
reasonably well) combined with Sleep Phones
([http://www.sleepphones.com/](http://www.sleepphones.com/)). The sleep phones
also help with an alarm that I can hear and she can't.

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azakai
> Why: Before the light bulb the only lights at night were the stars and the
> moon

Seem to be forgetting fire. Campfires were surely used by our ancestors, for
hundreds of thousands of years, and it is plausible that we evolved to adapt
to them.

> Humans have evolved to wake up with the sunrise and fall asleep with the
> sunset

Evidence? Are we sure that ancient hunter-gatherers did not hunt/gather by the
light of the moon? And after the discovery of fire, there would be even more
flexibility. Using fire to hunt animals during the night, when they are most
vulnerable, sounds pretty useful.

~~~
barbs
> Seem to be forgetting fire. Campfires were surely used by our ancestors, for
> hundreds of thousands of years, and it is plausible that we evolved to adapt
> to them.

He does lightly touch on the subject of fire:

> The blue wavelengths of light suppress melatonin production so daylight
> triggers the body to stop producing it (interestingly red, orange, and
> yellow wavelengths don’t suppress melatonin production and are the same
> wavelengths produced by fire)

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polemic
As the parent of two young children who are terrible sleepers I LOLed, then
cried a little bit, then what was I talking about again?

~~~
wiredfool
One simple way to optimize your sleep: make your spouse deal with kids in the
middle of the night.

(note, this may work for one night, after which you'll be optimizing on the
couch)

------
gte910h
And if your BMI is over 23, or you ever have been teased about snoring, have a
sleep study done to check for apnea

------
mistercow
I'm trying to branch into MC programming by building a sunrise alarm clock.
All I can say so far is _don 't_ accidentally turn on an 800 lumen LED while
you're staring directly at it.

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AceJohnny2
A white (pink/purple...) noise generator has greatly helped me sleep. I was
regularly woken up by intermittent traffic noise until I started using one. I
keep recommending it to everyone.

*there are many selections on the App Store and Play store. FWIW, I use the one by TMSOFT which provides different kinds of noise. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tmsoft.whi...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tmsoft.whitenoise.full)

~~~
deletes
I'm very keen to try this. Did you notice any side effects?

~~~
rfnslyr
Just put in ear plugs. I use generic dollar store orange ones and I sleep like
a king now.

~~~
AceJohnny2
I've used ear plugs as well, to lesser success. Many people are uncomfortable
with the pressure it puts on their ears.

I've long been used to earplugs for a while (a couple years in a boarding
school dorm necessitates them), but my ears just adapt to the lower noise
level. I suppose the noise generator raises the noise floor, so external
disturbing sounds have a lower SNR and thus you're less likely to react to
them.

------
rickdale
The number one way I have optimized my sleep lately is with The Original Bed
Band. It keeps my sheet on my mattress, which is awesome because I am a toss n
turner plus 2 dogs to boot. Try them out if you have a problem with sheets
coming off the bed.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-ORIGINAL-Bed-Band-
Adjustable/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/The-ORIGINAL-Bed-Band-
Adjustable/dp/B004I3VDWY/ref=pd_sim_hg_2)

------
thret
"1\. Sleep In A Pitch Black Room Why: Before the light bulb the only lights at
night were the stars and the moon."

"2\. Simulate The Sunrise/Sunset With An Alarm Clock Why: Humans have evolved
to wake up with the sunrise and fall asleep with the sunset. It’s only been
the last 100 years or so, basically once the light bulb started becoming
common in households, that the natural balance of the sleep/wake cycle became
decoupled from the sun."

Humans haven't been without fire, candles, lamps, and artificial light for
perhaps 400,000 years. We have evolved _with_ artificial light, not without
it.

------
jlebron2
Sunrise alarm clock = epic. Definitely need to look into getting one. Seems
like a better alternative than using my phone as an alarm, which I feel like
throwing across the room in the morning when it wakes me up :)

~~~
brianmartinek
It makes such a difference in my mornings since I have been using a sunrise
alarm clock. I still use my phone alarm but only as a backup (I am almost
always awake by the time it goes off)

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mcintyre1994
An alternative to #2 seems to be to set your alarm in line with sleep cycles.
Work out how long it takes you to go to sleep (I'm actually not sure how you
do this, 14 minutes is average and works great for me), add 6 hours or 7:30
(or some interval of 90 minutes), wake up at the resulting time. I do it using
DoubleTwist (which defaults to the 14 minute to get to sleep thing), but it's
easy enough to work out and works really well.

~~~
brianmartinek
That's interesting. Something I've never thought about before.

~~~
glitchdout
You should try using [http://sleepyti.me/](http://sleepyti.me/)

------
ramblerman
Supplementing melatonin, even in people without insomnia is worth pursuing.
I'll allow you to do your own research on the claims for longetivity but this
is a good aggregator of studies for the other benefits:

[http://examine.com/supplements/Melatonin/](http://examine.com/supplements/Melatonin/)

It's important to get the dose right, specially if you're still <50 don't jump
in at 3mg.

------
PencilAndPaper
My partner and I sleep alone. We are both light sleepers.

------
navait
Is this a repost? I feel like I've seen this specific article on HN before.

Or maybe all of these sleep articles give similar advice and seem the same.

~~~
brianmartinek
This is not a repost, just what I find works for me. I have seen similar
articles about sleep on HN before but I'm not sure they make the same
observations I have.

------
gegtik
yeesh, Mercola

------
AndrewKemendo
I have fought the encroaching light battle for almost 25 years. It's not as
easy as the author makes it sound while still having a normal human looking
room.

Here is the pack-rat/shut in version: If you have any windows in your room the
only real solution is some combination of a lightproof sheeting (light proof
fabric, aluminum foil etc...) and light proof adhesive (black gaffers tape is
the best or aluminum foil tape). Since there are very few window frames that
give good clearance around them for affixing things, and don't have wild trim
or corners the latter material really makes or breaks your situation.

Congratulations, now you have to work on your door. Door sweeps usually do a
good enough job but those pesky door cracks can be a nightmare. The easiest
solution to this is a blackout drape hung over your door as though it was
another door. Reasonable people can disagree about whether to put this inside
the room or outside the room - as long as you have a good "seal" on the sides
and top it should be fine. This causes problems for egress if needed however.

The last and simplest thing is to just move all devices that cause light
completely out of the room or disable their persistent light sources
completely.

The good citizen version: Using your standard draping you will need to sew
blackout fabric to the back of your draping with basically no gaps. Stitch
Witchery does not work. Hot glue peels away. Sewing is the only reliable
option.

You will then need to choose your affixing method. I personally like using
neodymium magnets, but in the quantity that you need them, they get pricey.
They are also more complicated to line up. The easier version, which is still
pricey is to use industrial strength velcro. You will have to measure and line
up near perfectly where you affix the velcro on the drape to where your
hooks/loops on the window/wall go. This is way more complicated that it sounds
in practice - again because windows rarely are simple flat squares with no
trim. Affixing to the wall/window is always a tradeoff. Anything that "sticks"
will peel off eventually and take any paint with it. If you nail/staple it on,
now you have holes in your wall. So pick your poison. Even after all this
work, you will still likely have some leakage. That is where the extra fabric
comes in handy to drape over the velcro sides. In general it will cover you
night or day, but this one is really hard to get perfectly.

Treat the door the same - generally you can have the drape roll up during the
day without issue.

This option lets you open the windows and drapes with minimal amount of tell
to your mole-like behavior. It ends up being cumulatively a lot more work
however.

I have tried to think up simple consumer solutions (I see lots of aluminum
foil in windows -- watch you'll see it too now)to this, but windows are so
damn variable that it is near impossible and the only major consumer solutions
right now are not worth the price.

~~~
jakevoytko
I recently gave up on making my room blackout dark when I sleep. Instead, I
wear sleep masks. They're not perfect: they slip a little as I sleep, and the
cheap ones wear out fast. But it's still not expensive ($10 for 3), and the
masks themselves block all light. I'm happy with them. They do the job, and
they come with me when I travel. Plus, it makes some intuitive sense to block
light at the narrowest point - just in front of your eyes, versus from every
possible source.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Great point and I should have added that because it is my solution now as
well. FWIW if you have the opportunity to snag a sleep mask from an Emirates
international business or first class, do so; it is by far the finest I have
used and mine has lasted 6 years now.

