Aa
Insomniac Heavy Sleeper
Hello! I have quite a problem in my hands. I have always had trouble falling asleep - I started noticing it around the time I was 14. After going to bed it is normal for me to take 1~2 hours before falling asleep, despite being busy or not. IF left on my own, I will sleep from 6 to 8 hours straight, and wake up very well. However, alarm clocks have always failed me, since I am a very heavy sleeper. For a long while it was not a problem - I lived at home with my parents, and normally the alarm clock would wake up them before me, and they or my brother would come in to wake me up and turn the alarm off (Our bedrooms were about 20 meters apart, by the way!)
Right now I am 23, and everything was OK, until I moved from my home country (Brazil) to study in Japan. Since them that kind of stuff have been my personal hell. I can't wake up on time at all! As I said, I am a very heavy sleeper - I have slept through 2 fire drills and was never woken up by earthquakes. I can't keep a schedule at all, and I hate what that is doing to my reputation.
Bellow is a list of all the things I tried to do in order to fix my sleep:
1-) Go to bed every day at the same time each night (around midnight) - no avail. I am kept wide awake for random periods of time. Some times I fall asleep in 30 minutes at most, some times I can't sleep until 5 AM! I kept that up for 5 months without fail, but my body refuses to adapt.
2-) Reduce caffeine intake - I admit, I am a coffee addict. Back in my country I would drink almost 1 liter a day, besides chocolates and other caffeinated stuffs. I went without coffee for 1 week, but it didn't have any effect. I wanna try something more radical, cutting all my caffeine intake for 1 month, but have yet to conjure the willpower to do so.
3-) Sleep at weird times - As an experiment, during my vacation time - no schedule to speak of! - I decided to stop sleeping at regular times and only sleeping when I felt tired. It was the strangest experience of my life. I wound up adapting to being awake for about 20~22 hours each day, and then sleeping for 8 hours. I didn't feel tired at all, but on one or two occasions, I would simply not feel the need to sleep for over 48 hours! And then I slept just 8 hours and went back to those 20~22 hours cycles. I felt great, but I can't do that normally.
4-) Not doing anything exciting before bed - I also tried doing boring stuff before bed - no gaming, or TV, or fast music (I love metal), or reading books. It is hard because my interests are very broad, but I wound up reading science papers or studying Kanji and listening to slower paced things before bed (more "soothing" classical pieces and the like). Despite being good for my studies, it had no effect on my sleep.
5-) Other random things - Sleeping with calm music, sleeping with white noise, reading in bed, stretching, light meals at night, heavy meals at night, changing sleeping positions, changing pillows, sleeping with no lights or sounds, sleeping with lights on, Meditation before bed, exercise before bed. All of those for 1 or 2 weeks!
As for waking up on time:
1-) Loud alarm clocks - No avail. My current alarm clock sends a flying thing across the room, so you must get up to pick it in order to turn the thing off. It is loud of hell, and if I leave it on and I am up already, it startles the hell out of me. It turns off after about 10 minutes of ringing - and I still don't get up!
2-) Vibrating cell phone - I strapped my phone to my arm with one of those exercise bands. Again, I can feel it when I am up, but I ignore it while sleeping
3-) Natural sunlight - My window receives the sunrise. I tried sleeping with the blinders open, but the sun had no effect on me. Besides, it made sleeping a lot harder, since outside is pretty bright even at night.
4-) Lights on a times - I tried putting my bedlight on a timer, so it would turn up when I wanted to wake up. Again, it had some marginal effect at best.
It is not that those can never wake me. They simply fail to wake me at a significant rate. Using all in tandem had no representative effect.
Besides that, I tend to have the following characteristics:
1-) I don't nap. If I nap I wind up sleeping for several hours, so it is not a good idea, and I only resort to it if I am extremely tired and there is someone nearby to wake me up.
2-) Lectures make me feel sleepy. I feel sleepy at meetings too, and watching TV, even if the content interests me. However, I was never able to use those to my advantage for sleeping when I want to sleep, and those naps tend to be short - 10 minutes long at most.
3-) I am not depressed as far as I know. I have a positive outlook on life, and if anything people tend to complain I am too positive about things.
4-) I have chronical asthmatic bronchitis and chronical rhinitis. However, the sleep problems come even when those are not afflicting me, and I am not in any medication. I have the habit of mouth breathing - acquired since I was about 5 - and I can't breathe just through my nose without concentrating. I take Symbicort for the bronchitis whenever I have an episode, or will do physical activities before hand.
5-) I don't drink or smoke or use any drugs. But I do like coffee more than I should. I have reduced how much coffee I drink by about 1/3 lately, and I would be willing to let go of that habit it it made my sleep better.
6-) Sometimes I talk during my sleep. People have reported to me mumbling, monologues, and sometimes dialogues with myself. These tend to come in portuguese (My native language) or english.
7-) I don't feel tired. Indeed, I sleep very well when left to my own devices. The problem is on the social acceptance of my sleeping schedule. I don't want a bad reputation on this aspect, but i simply can't help it!
8-) I am a 23yo male, a little overweight (85kg with 1,75m), have a balanced diet and a little sedentary.
So that is it. Someone got any tips or the like? As a Master's student, getting professional help is a little outside my current financial capabilities, but I can seek it if needed. I also would like to avoid doing drugs, for fear of future effects and addiction. Someone got any tips - at least so I can understand why all of this seem to happen to me?
Right now I am 23, and everything was OK, until I moved from my home country (Brazil) to study in Japan. Since them that kind of stuff have been my personal hell. I can't wake up on time at all! As I said, I am a very heavy sleeper - I have slept through 2 fire drills and was never woken up by earthquakes. I can't keep a schedule at all, and I hate what that is doing to my reputation.
Bellow is a list of all the things I tried to do in order to fix my sleep:
1-) Go to bed every day at the same time each night (around midnight) - no avail. I am kept wide awake for random periods of time. Some times I fall asleep in 30 minutes at most, some times I can't sleep until 5 AM! I kept that up for 5 months without fail, but my body refuses to adapt.
2-) Reduce caffeine intake - I admit, I am a coffee addict. Back in my country I would drink almost 1 liter a day, besides chocolates and other caffeinated stuffs. I went without coffee for 1 week, but it didn't have any effect. I wanna try something more radical, cutting all my caffeine intake for 1 month, but have yet to conjure the willpower to do so.
3-) Sleep at weird times - As an experiment, during my vacation time - no schedule to speak of! - I decided to stop sleeping at regular times and only sleeping when I felt tired. It was the strangest experience of my life. I wound up adapting to being awake for about 20~22 hours each day, and then sleeping for 8 hours. I didn't feel tired at all, but on one or two occasions, I would simply not feel the need to sleep for over 48 hours! And then I slept just 8 hours and went back to those 20~22 hours cycles. I felt great, but I can't do that normally.
4-) Not doing anything exciting before bed - I also tried doing boring stuff before bed - no gaming, or TV, or fast music (I love metal), or reading books. It is hard because my interests are very broad, but I wound up reading science papers or studying Kanji and listening to slower paced things before bed (more "soothing" classical pieces and the like). Despite being good for my studies, it had no effect on my sleep.
5-) Other random things - Sleeping with calm music, sleeping with white noise, reading in bed, stretching, light meals at night, heavy meals at night, changing sleeping positions, changing pillows, sleeping with no lights or sounds, sleeping with lights on, Meditation before bed, exercise before bed. All of those for 1 or 2 weeks!
As for waking up on time:
1-) Loud alarm clocks - No avail. My current alarm clock sends a flying thing across the room, so you must get up to pick it in order to turn the thing off. It is loud of hell, and if I leave it on and I am up already, it startles the hell out of me. It turns off after about 10 minutes of ringing - and I still don't get up!
2-) Vibrating cell phone - I strapped my phone to my arm with one of those exercise bands. Again, I can feel it when I am up, but I ignore it while sleeping
3-) Natural sunlight - My window receives the sunrise. I tried sleeping with the blinders open, but the sun had no effect on me. Besides, it made sleeping a lot harder, since outside is pretty bright even at night.
4-) Lights on a times - I tried putting my bedlight on a timer, so it would turn up when I wanted to wake up. Again, it had some marginal effect at best.
It is not that those can never wake me. They simply fail to wake me at a significant rate. Using all in tandem had no representative effect.
Besides that, I tend to have the following characteristics:
1-) I don't nap. If I nap I wind up sleeping for several hours, so it is not a good idea, and I only resort to it if I am extremely tired and there is someone nearby to wake me up.
2-) Lectures make me feel sleepy. I feel sleepy at meetings too, and watching TV, even if the content interests me. However, I was never able to use those to my advantage for sleeping when I want to sleep, and those naps tend to be short - 10 minutes long at most.
3-) I am not depressed as far as I know. I have a positive outlook on life, and if anything people tend to complain I am too positive about things.
4-) I have chronical asthmatic bronchitis and chronical rhinitis. However, the sleep problems come even when those are not afflicting me, and I am not in any medication. I have the habit of mouth breathing - acquired since I was about 5 - and I can't breathe just through my nose without concentrating. I take Symbicort for the bronchitis whenever I have an episode, or will do physical activities before hand.
5-) I don't drink or smoke or use any drugs. But I do like coffee more than I should. I have reduced how much coffee I drink by about 1/3 lately, and I would be willing to let go of that habit it it made my sleep better.
6-) Sometimes I talk during my sleep. People have reported to me mumbling, monologues, and sometimes dialogues with myself. These tend to come in portuguese (My native language) or english.
7-) I don't feel tired. Indeed, I sleep very well when left to my own devices. The problem is on the social acceptance of my sleeping schedule. I don't want a bad reputation on this aspect, but i simply can't help it!
8-) I am a 23yo male, a little overweight (85kg with 1,75m), have a balanced diet and a little sedentary.
So that is it. Someone got any tips or the like? As a Master's student, getting professional help is a little outside my current financial capabilities, but I can seek it if needed. I also would like to avoid doing drugs, for fear of future effects and addiction. Someone got any tips - at least so I can understand why all of this seem to happen to me?
Did you find any solution to this? I am having the same issues and it's starting to become a problem. I'm 26 and work as a field service diesel fitter which is quite a physically demanding job. This issue has worsened over the last 2 years which is starting to effect my job. I have slept through hotel fire alarms and countless alarms. This weekend i realised its getting out of control. I had a business trip which was only a short 1 hr flight away. I just missed my flight there which luckily the airline put me on the next flight for no charge which work found out about because I was 3 hours late to some important legal meetings. I had a relaxing weekend and couldn't sleep the night before my return trip. I got up and stretched at 12am for about 20 mins. Fell asleep not long after that. I did not wake up until 8am. I had set 8 alarms for 6am over 3 different devices and missed 30 call over 2 mobile phones. (From my parents because they know how useless I am) and 2 from the hotel reception. This sleepin cost me $250 and I didn't dare tell work I missed it. This was my first business trip and I was hoping to make a good impression. I know 8 hours of sleep is ideal and I seem to wake up after 8 hours exactly unaided. It's not always possible to get 8 hours and sleeping this heavily is dangerous and annoying. And help would be great. Cheers.
Took me a while to get back to this - have been quite busy.
Thanks for the feedback. Some comments:
1-) I really wish to avoid medication, unless it is non-addictive and virtually side-effect free, since it is not that serious a problem.
2-) I tried calming activities for a long while before going to bed - I am not a very active person anyway - but to no avail.
3-) Sleep debt rarely works for me. I tend to feel very tired during the day, almost falling asleep on my feet, but then I feel awake during the night, and still take my costumary 1 to 3 hours to fall asleep after laying down. It is also extremely hard for me to mantain, since I have a hard time waking up on time.
I will look into finding a physician for this, or even a sleep specialist.
Thanks for the feedback. Some comments:
1-) I really wish to avoid medication, unless it is non-addictive and virtually side-effect free, since it is not that serious a problem.
2-) I tried calming activities for a long while before going to bed - I am not a very active person anyway - but to no avail.
3-) Sleep debt rarely works for me. I tend to feel very tired during the day, almost falling asleep on my feet, but then I feel awake during the night, and still take my costumary 1 to 3 hours to fall asleep after laying down. It is also extremely hard for me to mantain, since I have a hard time waking up on time.
I will look into finding a physician for this, or even a sleep specialist.
MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL
Hello and hope you are doing well.
Understand your predicament. But just stop thinking, as your get more anxious, you may face more problems with falling asleep. There is a circadian rhythm for all living organisms. It is a 24 hour cycle rhythm and the biological clock within that individual adapts to this rhythm. If you observe this rhythm, the transition happens gradually, like the daylight subsides slowly into darkness and the sounds too gradually mellow down into the night. These changes condition us and promote sleep. So, nearing bed time, do not engage in activities like exercise or dancing or other means that can keep you active.
You could be having an entity called delayed phase syndrome, where in the biological clock is reset and occurs late. It is a circadian rhythm disorder. This can be reset by bright light therapy, sleeping pills and sometimes by sleep debt. In sleep debt, though you happen to sleep late, you condition yourself to get up early; this in turn will help you to sleep early. So, try this, but if your symptoms still persist, I would advise you to discuss your symptoms with your primary care physician who may then refer you to a sleep specialist for further evaluation.
Hope this helped and do keep us posted.
Understand your predicament. But just stop thinking, as your get more anxious, you may face more problems with falling asleep. There is a circadian rhythm for all living organisms. It is a 24 hour cycle rhythm and the biological clock within that individual adapts to this rhythm. If you observe this rhythm, the transition happens gradually, like the daylight subsides slowly into darkness and the sounds too gradually mellow down into the night. These changes condition us and promote sleep. So, nearing bed time, do not engage in activities like exercise or dancing or other means that can keep you active.
You could be having an entity called delayed phase syndrome, where in the biological clock is reset and occurs late. It is a circadian rhythm disorder. This can be reset by bright light therapy, sleeping pills and sometimes by sleep debt. In sleep debt, though you happen to sleep late, you condition yourself to get up early; this in turn will help you to sleep early. So, try this, but if your symptoms still persist, I would advise you to discuss your symptoms with your primary care physician who may then refer you to a sleep specialist for further evaluation.
Hope this helped and do keep us posted.
I read through half of your question, but from the beginning I thought "high cortisol." Have your adrenals checked. I had the 24 hr. urine test and the saliva tests. "Night owls" have a problem with their internal clock. Normally cortisol is high in the morning and drops steadily throughout the day. With night owls cortisol is either low or normal on waking and rises throughout the day. Cortisol is an excitant, so you can't fall asleep until the level drops. This is not the same thing as insomnia.
Have an Answer?
You are reading content posted in the Sleep Disorders Community
Healing home remedies for common ailments
Dr. Steven Park reveals 5 reasons why breathing through your nose could change your life
Want to wake up rested and refreshed?
A list of national and international resources and hotlines to help connect you to needed health and medical services.
Herpes sores blister, then burst, scab and heal.
Herpes spreads by oral, vaginal and anal sex.
