
Why We Sleep, and Why We Often Can’t - anuragsoni
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/why-we-sleep-and-why-we-often-cant
======
mortond
If you don't have, or don't think you have, a concrete reason for your
insomnia then try this.

When you yawn or feel drained go to bed, take a nap, or find a quiet toilet
cubicle and close your eyes for ten minutes. Don't ignore your body.

If your at home and have the option to sleep what I find works for me is lying
flat on my back. Then relax, in sequence, your forehead, shoulders, upper
arms, lower arms, fingers, chest, stomach, groin, upper legs, lower legs,
toes. Take around 1 minute to relax your whole body. If you can't relax
something tense it up, then release it.

Once your fully relaxed close your eyes and clear your thoughts. What works
for me is trying to focus on a spot in the dark directly in front of me. As
your mind wanders pull it back to focusing on the spot in the dark. Sometimes
I need to repeatedly relax my forehead and eyes while doing this, just let
your eye sockets go limp.

Occasionally when you are pulling yourself back from your thoughts to focusing
on that spot in the dark it can be jarring. Just keep trying. Eventually I
fall asleep.

I've noticed recently that this is meditation, except without the sleep part.

~~~
dominotw
I've tried so many things to go sleep

\- warm milk

\- meditation

\- room for sleep only

\- go to bed only when sleepy( I am not sleepy anymore once i get into bed)

\- melatonin

\- counting sheep

\- sleep sounds, sleep talking youtube videos

\- ambien ( sigh)

\- clean sheets

\- low room temperature

\- body pillows, weighted blankets

\- daily excersise / yoga

\- Ice cold showers/ hot showers / no shower

\- no food after 8 pm, no coffee after 12 pm

\- no alarms/alarms

\- no screens

None of these had any consistent results, you simply cannot "trick" your
brain. Then I observed my (then new) girlfriend how she would fall asleep in <
2 mins. I realised I had strained relationship with sleep at some point in my
life and never corrected that relationship. My problems started when I was
teenager in residential school where you had to wake up at 5 am.

My girlfriend associated sleep with cozy, warm, relaxing happy space,I
associated it with stressful battle. I've had good success trying to mend my
relationship with sleep. Ironically the thing that worked the best for me is
'sleep restriction', sleeping less and less everyday till my brain associated
sleep with something it needs to chill, not something foisted on it by a
strict schedule.

~~~
beagle3
I tried a mostly similar list, with little success. I've since found some
success (not perfect, but much better), so if you are still willing to
experiment ...

\- 10,000 IU of Vitamin D3 before 10am

\- 400-1000 daily milligrams of Magnesium chelate (or magnesium citrate, if
you are ok with liquid stool for a while until you adapt)

\- Make sure you have sufficient protein in your diet - rule of thumb is 1gr
protein for 1kg of body weight (or 0.5gr per 1lb). That's often more than non-
athletes are getting.

Do your own research about D3 and Mg - both are way above the RDA, and some
people will tell you that D3 in this amount is bad for you (and they'd be
wrong unless you spend all day in the sun, but don't trust me on that - do
your own research)

I still have the occasional 3-4 day streak of unable-to-fall-a-sleep a month,
but this combination has reduced it from 25-30 days a month ...

~~~
MegaDeKay
I think you might have scrambled up your protein recommendation of 0.5/g/lb.
The RDA for protein is 0.8g/kg of body weight. Maybe you meant 1g/lb?

[https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-much-protein-do-
you-...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-much-protein-do-you-need-
every-day-201506188096)

~~~
beagle3
A 100kg person (so 220lb) would require 80gr protein with this RDA; so 1gr/lb
would be 3 times RDA (whereas 0.5g would be 110g protein so only 1.4 RDA)

The 1g/kg is easy to remember, as is 0.5g/lb ; they are 120-140% of
recommended for a sedantry lifestyle, but only 60-80% of what’s recommended
for an athlete - so I use them as an easy to remember back-of-the-envelope
numbers.

RDA is much less precise and scientific than one would think; it basically
means “we know there are no serious defincies or overdoses if you keep this
forever” - but they are not optimized for anything else; e.g. higher dose
vitamin C was shown to shorten common cold recovery, and higher dose vitamin D
with generally better everything.

------
zeta0134
New Yorker has wised up to content blockers, and appears to be postfixing
their class IDs with random gibberish. This is a common trend; I can't say I'm
terribly surprised by it.

Fortunately their _prefixes_ are relatively sane, and CSS supports wildcard
matches. I like to block the sidebars on article sites like these because they
usually contain the bulk of the distracting content, and this rule works
wonderfully:

    
    
      www.newyorker.com##div[class*=ArticlePageSidebar]
    

Just thought I'd share.

~~~
delinka
I’m out if touch with HTML & CSS, and I use something like umatrix instead of
an ad blocker so I’m curious...

How is it that the entire web isn’t already obfuscated to make this as thorny
as possible? If we’re passing our JS through minifiers, why aren’t we doing
similar to HTML such that element IDs are randomized/hashed every time the
page is generated?

~~~
fredsted
It's been happening for a while, but it makes it harder for developers to
debug their sites. We'll see full minification of css soon, but of course
we'll probably also see machine learning systems for blocking ads, too.

------
0xcde4c3db
Man, this article really set me up for disappointment.

> It is a beguiling idea, that one might transform one’s sleep, and the rest
> of one’s life, with a few virtuous acts of renunciation—no electronics in
> the bedroom, no coffee after 2 P.M.—and a few dreamy self-care rituals
> involving baths and tea.

Okay, great. I'm ready to cut through the bullshit. Let's go.

> Aristotle called sleep “a privation of waking,” and a simultaneous longing
> for and resistance to that privation seems to lie at the heart of insomnia’s
> torment.

Oh.

~~~
jccalhoun
Agreed. That was a terrible article. With a headline like "why we sleep and
why we often can't" I thought it would be about why we sleep and why we often
can't.

------
interlocutor
I have seen many doctors, including sleep specialists, regarding insomnia.
They all pointed to one source as the reason for the sleep issues: stress. And
they all wanted to put me on prescription sleeping pills. I said no to that.
Sleeping pills are addictive and you have to take them for the rest of your
life. As a software engineer, I am used to finding and fixing the underlying
problem as opposed to the quickfixes these doctors were offering me.

After much research I figured out the underlying problem, and the fix for it.
The underlying problem is magnesium deficiency. As a software developer I am
using my brain more intensely than most people. This is the stress the doctors
are talking about. Stress depletes magnesium. The cells in our body depend on
two essential minerals for normal function: Calcium and magnesium. Cells go
into ON state when calcium goes in, and OFF state when calcium goes out.
Calcium doesn't go out on its own: magnesium has to go in and displace the
calcium. When you are low on magnesium, cells can't go into OFF state. When
that happens your muscles become stiff and you need massages, and your brain
can't turn off and you can't sleep. The solution is magnesium supplements.
This fixed my muscle stiffness issues and my sleep issues. A special compound
of magnesium called magnesium l-threonate is especially helpful for sleep
because it can penetrate the "blood brain barrier".

Scientific sources for this are hard to come by. I had to piece together all
this from multiple sources. Here are some:
[https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of-
nutrition...](https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/abcs-of-
nutrition/magnificent-magnesium/) [http://www.drsinatra.com/benefits-of-
magnesium-supplements-f...](http://www.drsinatra.com/benefits-of-magnesium-
supplements-for-heart-health/) [http://paleoforwomen.com/soul-crushing-stress-
and-the-miracl...](http://paleoforwomen.com/soul-crushing-stress-and-the-
miracle-of-magnesium/)

~~~
jxcl
I feel like this could easily be read as "software engineer finds placebo
sleeping pills".

You very well could be right, but those sources are not scientific. If you
want to show me that magnesium helps people sleep, show me a PubMed article on
the subject.

~~~
interlocutor
"Supplementation of 500 mg of Mg has been associated with significant
improvement in the insomnia severity index, sleep time, sleep efficiency,
sleep onset latency, serum cortisol concentration, serum renin, and melatonin"
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5637834/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5637834/)

More:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3703169/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3703169/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23853635](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23853635)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8232845](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8232845)

~~~
ThrowawayP
I'll pit my anecdata against your anecdata: Magnesium supplementation didn't
do anything for my insomnia. I used the magnesium glycinate formulation from
reputable brands at appropriate dosages.

------
codyb
I've always said to insomniacs that they should read textbooks. They'll either
end up geniuses or fall asleep like the rest of us.

Is it making light of what's probably a very serious issue, I suppose so.

This article makes me very glad that I can fall asleep easy at night. Just
another thing to be thankful for. The few nights I can't fall asleep quickly
are torture, I cannot imagine what it must be like for someone to suffer
through that frequently.

~~~
Steve44
> I've always said to insomniacs that they should read textbooks.

I'm not a good sleeper and quite like reading. If I'm in a state where I'm
very tired but also having trouble getting off to sleep then I'm generally too
tired to read. I may be able to manage a paragraph or two before my eyes start
to lose focus but that's it.

I'm not wide awake and fully functioning, I'm lying there tired but unable to
get off to sleep - these are quite different states.

The best thing I can do is to close my eyes and build 3D models in my head and
fly around them. That sometimes helps, I think it concentrates the mind.

~~~
torgian
I’ve started doing that whenever I have trouble sleeping. I start with a
random world, set it to orbit, then make another world, have it orbit the
first world, then add a third. I let them all orbit eachother.

~~~
Klover
That’s super cute!

Do people who do this 3D modelling in their mind thing do a lot of visual
things regularly? I would find it difficult to start doing that without being
distracted by the million thoughts after 10 minutes.

~~~
torgian
Well, I’m not sure. I used to do a lot of drawing when I was a kid, but now I
do more programming and teaching.

I think the exercise is really just to distract me from thinking “go to sleep
go to sleep” over and over lol.

------
MRD85
I had medication-induced insomnia a few years ago due to some drugs I was on
for another condition. It was horrible, I was so tired but wide awake and
couldn't fall asleep. I would go multiple nights with zero sleep and my mind
wouldn't function. I wouldn't even get close to sleeping. The doctors had to
give me antipsychotics to get me to sleep since I wouldn't even react to
sleeping pills.

I did learn a lot about myself and I now have amazing sleep hygiene. I don't
do math or programming before bed but I will read books on the topics.
Anything that makes me think too hard is gone. I've actually shifted my sleep
routine to 8pm-4am so I can wake early and do programming.

~~~
srean
Prescription amphetamines ?

~~~
MRD85
Anti depressants

------
wallflower
If you are having trouble sleeping or want to improve your sleep, a sleep
monitor may help your situation. While a 6-lead EEG that you would wear during
a sleep study is the most accurate way to determine your quality and quantity
of sleep, consumer-grade sleep trackers are accurate enough to give you
ballpark numbers on your sleep.

You can start with a Fitbit (Apple Watch battery isn’t robust enough for
monitoring all night). The best is to use a non-wearable sleep tracker so that
you do not have to wear or remember to do anything.

[https://amp.businessinsider.com/best-sleep-
tracker](https://amp.businessinsider.com/best-sleep-tracker)

[https://www.nosleeplessnights.com/best-sleep-
tracker/](https://www.nosleeplessnights.com/best-sleep-tracker/)

I found that adjusting the thermostat down 5 degrees Fahrenheit at night helps
from waking up in the middle of the night.

Also, if you want 8 hours of sleep, it means you need to be in bed for about 9
hours.

~~~
azag0
I haven’t been able to find whether the recommended 7-9 hours per night refers
to the time in bed or to actual sleep time (~1 hour less). Does anyone know?

~~~
GatorD42
I've wondered the same thing. I assume it means time in bed, otherwise the
recommendation would need a disclaimer about sleep efficiency and time in bed
vs actual sleep. Some people are able to get by with around 6 hours of sleep,
I've assumed these people have higher sleep efficiency while the 8 hour
recommendation is for people with around 85% efficiency.

~~~
dpark
If it meant “time in bed”, _then_ they’d need the disclaimer about
“efficiency”. Someone who takes an hour to fall asleep would be “inefficient”
and need more time in bed, but they wouldn’t actually need more sleep.

------
Steve44
A little while ago I read that various historical records indicated that we
would naturally sleep in two sessions overnight. This was changed by a
combination of artificial light and also the industrial revolution giving us
more regimented working hours.

"The myth of the eight-hour sleep" at
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783)
is an interesting starting point.

~~~
Tomte
That's disputed by Matthew Walker in Why We Sleep.

He writes that biphasic sleep was a cultural phenomenon with no basis in sleep
science, and that only one Western society ever really practiced it, whereas
e.g. "primitive tribes" all have one uninterrupted phase of sleep.

------
jm__87
I found CBT for sleep helped my insomnia. A good book on this is called
Goodnight Mind. I also read Matthew Walkers book while I was going through
insomnia as well, and I can say this book is likely to make your insomnia
worse. Half of it is just telling you all the ways in which you're killing
yourself by not sleeping. Not a great thing to read when you can't sleep.

~~~
purplethinking
I can second that. Got worse when I started reading it. I'm guessing it's
aimed at people who can sleep but don't think it's important. I secretly
despise those people. It's sort of like they're being perfectly healthy but
choose to smoke while I'm forced to work in a dusty coal mine. I know it
shouldn't bother me but it does.

------
coldcode
Timely article, after listening to 4 hours of constant firecrackers in the
neighborhood from 10pm-2am, I did not fall asleep until 6AM; thankfully today
is not a workday. At least once a month, and in the past year more like once
or twice a week, I can't fall asleep until right before I have to get up. Yet
other nights I do exactly the same things and sleep 7 hours or so.

When my body is in the no sleep mode (which I presume is an excess of
cortisol) no matter what I take nothing will put me to sleep until that wears
off. Working in a high stress environment writing code and managing a team in
something with CEO level visibility (in a big company) I am sure its stress
related. I can see why Michael Jackson went to ridiculous extremes trying to
sleep (and paradoxically not actually sleeping). It's a miserable experience
to trying to function one hour of sleep and do anything complex.

~~~
int0x80
Something you can try: exercise. Really. Get tired. It may work for you too.

------
hemling
This is how I fixed my insomnia. I changed three things:

1\. Before going to bed I meditate (I usually listen to the app from Sam
Harris)

2\. No more caffeine after 11 in the morning

3\. Strict "bed hygiene", meaning: when I go to bed I immediately switch off
the lights and sleep. I do nothing else. Also, I try to always sleep around
the same time, even on weekends.

I believe 3) has made the biggest difference. I used to read and even
sometimes watch movies in bed. I miss reading in bed but since I stopped doing
that and only focus on sleeping I have never had problems to fall asleep
anymore, despite going through some stressful times.

I do sometimes still wake up during the night, but since I sleep well before I
can handle those days pretty well. My life has changed a lot for the better,
one of the best things I have done recently

------
sidcool
Try the Navy Seal technique to sleep quickly. Has helped me.

------
Escolte
.

~~~
fermienrico
I understand your frustration but this isn’t a place to vent out profusely. If
you have nothing to add to the discussion, please refrain. Hope it gets sorted
out for you.

~~~
Escolte
Okay, sorry.

~~~
fermienrico
Thank you

