Tag Archives: Sleep disorder

Falling Awake

6 Nov
Awake (Julian Marley album)

OK, the Will to Win idea did not pan out for me today.  I tried, but i could not get into the winning mindset when I was sleepy.

Felt like I was stuck on the sleep train, and I wanted to just keep riding it.

I have a new plan for tomorrow, I am going to try to do the opposite of trying to go to sleep!

  • Instead of being quiet I am going to make noises.
  • Instead of being still I am going to wiggle and start moving.
  • I am going to start thinking of a million things.

All those things that prevent me from falling asleep may in fact help me wake up!

At least that’s my theory. I will post again if this idea works or not.

Fresh Edit:  It works!

I found a small drum and put it next to the bed.  I also found a giant conche horn.

Upon first consciouseness-

  • Counted to 10 silently, then again slightly faster, keep repeating until counting very quickly.
  • Grabbed the drum and pull it into the bed, started a slow beat, all I could muster up, then after a minute sped up the tempo slightly, a little more, then a little more, eventually I was jammin’ on a pretty fast beat.
  • At this point I was pretty darn awake, then I got up and blew the conche horn!
  • went to the kitchen and made coffee, brushed teeth, made breakfast etc.

I am quite surprised at how well this worked!

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Sleep Tip #2

27 Oct

Melatonin = “Mellow-tonin”

sleepy_mk

Zzzzzzzz zzzzzz zzzzzz zzzzzz!

Usually Sleep Tip #1 does the trick in about 10 minutes.  That is, alternating listening to the nothingness, and relaxing.  But on those nights that that is not enough I have another weapon.

For the last 2 nights I have tried to go to bed early only to have ideas pop into my head that I felt the need to follow up on such as:

  • looking up the caloric breakdown of peanuts vs cauliflower on the internet.
  • I know it’s kind of geeky, but did you know cauliflower has more protein per calorie than peanuts?

Anyway, I stayed up too late and was tired in the morning two days in a row.  So last night I decided I was really going to get some sleep so I pulled out my secret weapon.  Melatonin.

I buy the 3mg Melatonin capsules and break them in half, and then in half again so I get  somewhere around 1mg.  You have to experiment with the dosage yourself, too little and you don’t notice any difference, too much and you are too sleepy in the morning.  1mg seems to work really good for me.  I only rarely use this method to induce sleep, but man did I sleep great last night!

The great thing about melatonin is it is something your body naturally makes that gives you the sleepy feeling.  Also, if something/someone wakes me up for some reason, falling back to sleep is really easy.  Normally falling back to sleep after a disturbance is as hard as falling asleep in the first place!  I hate that.

So in recap – if Tip #1 is a little lacking in potency at times, try a mg or so of Melatonin and see how it goes.

Hopefully you will find yourself out like the monkey in the pic above!

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