How well do you sleep?

It varies. Usually I make it through the night, but sometimes I go on jags where I wake around 3:00 and stay up a couple of hours Nd them return to sleep. I sleep fewer hours now than when I was younger.

Also, once my thyroid went haywire my sleep did too. I don’t regulate very week, so depending on whether I’m over-medicated, under-medicated or properly medicated affects my sleep. Still, overall I sleep less than when I was younger, which to me means I’m on the downhill towards death. Oy.

I sleep pretty well once I’m actually asleep.. but unfortunately I have a horrible time GETTING to sleep. Valerian Root, an herbal supplement I take, has been a God-send. It calms my brain down so sleep can come naturally on its own. My mind tends to think about life’s deepest questions when I need to get to sleep and that can be quite bothersome. Especially during stressful points in my life.

I’m turning 31 in a week, and my sleep routine is pretty typical. I have a mini human I get to school every morning and then I have to head to work right after. Ideally, I would like to be in bed by 11 pm but being a single momma with three jobs, sometimes I don’t get to bed until midnight or 1 am trying to get everything done. Alarm is going off at 6 am six days a week.

Stress is my usual indicator when sleep seems patchy. As hectic as my life is at the moment, I try to do a lot to keep my stress level to a minimum. Again, Valerian does wonders for me.

Really well. I go to bed, and once I turn out my light, I’m asleep within five to ten minutes. I hardly ever wake up before my alarm goes off. In fact, I have to time my alarms just right, and change them up…otherwise, I will sleep right through them.

My issue is going to bed on time. Not good at that.

I’m in my twenties, and I don’t take anything. Hope you get a good night’s sleep later on.

Like shit. I recently got a fitness tracker and it shows my sleep patterns. I wake up and am restless multiple times a night. I’ve lived this way most of my life.

I have an irregular sleep pattern. I sleep fairly well. But occasionally I read past the point of sleep and then I can be awake until 2 or 3 am. If I wake up I take a long time to get back to sleep again also. I rarely nap even if I have slept badly. I like my bed though, especially reading in bed

I think I have the most upside sleep pattern ever. I rarely go to bed before 2 am. Then I will wake around 6 or 7 hours later. I seem to need a lot of sleep compared to other people. As I feel ‘unwell’ if I get less than 8 hours. (Which I have always found really odd. When I say unwell I mean really unwell).
What did your Doctor mean about normal for your age? The waking up, the early sleep or the interrupted sleep?
I have heard that our circadian rhythms change when we hit 50. Which, means we want to go to bed earlier. I wonder why?
I used to think it was good to sleep when the sun went down and rise when it went up, however, this theory in Scotland would mean I’ sleep my life away in winter and hardly sleep at all in summer!
I think having an ordered sleep pattern must be amazing and far healthier. I’ve also heard that those suffering from adrenal fatigue, which can lead to fat belly, tiredness and general stress symptoms do better to sleep before midnight. Sleep is so interesting in so many ways.

Much better, now that I have embraced the concept of first sleep, second sleep. When I wake up after a few hours, I am no longer upset, and I no longer stress about not sleeping to the point of adrenaline release and jittery wakefulness. Now I just relax, maybe read a bit, then slide back into slumber. It’s really nice to be able to do this.

I sympathize, @Hawaii_Jake.
I have the same issues, and they only continue to worsen as I get older. I read tons of sleep literature and none of them help.

I know when I’m ready to sleep which is around 11:00pm at night and I fall asleep right away. The trouble is I tend to waken around 4:00am for half an hour or so before getting back to sleep. Until recently I would sleep right through until the morning. I sleep better in the colder winter months than in the summer.

I sleep very well most of the time, unless I am upset about something in which case I will be restless. This doesn’t happen often, thank god. The last time was a few months ago when I had a tiff with my daughter, she really pissed me off. haha
I do have to wake up for several bathroom trips most nights.

I drink a lot of water and try to cut myself off by about 8 pm so if I am lucky I might only have to get up once. I also need 9 hours to feel optimum,sometimes 10, but not less as “they” say people need as they get older. I am pretty active and outdoors a lot doing chores around the property and animals.
This time change has screwed me up, as it does every year and lately I have been awake til about 11ish and only getting about an 8 hour night.

I really prefer to be asleep by about 9:30 to feel my best.

I sleep like a log. I can sleep standing up in a thunderstorm.

Not well enough, so busy that I barely get enough sleep.

I quite lucky with how I sleep. I’m a very deep sleeper. I don’t suffer from insomnia in any way at all.

I can sleep on a rock….anytime and any day.
Even after a long nap.
I am addicted to sleep!

Sleep was never a problem for me when I was younger. I was doing well on 6 hours minimum a night, and slept right through. When I was your age (52), I had a newborn in the house, who needed a 2 am feeding. I’d wake up, sit in a recliner while feeding her, and then sleep a few more hours with her in my arms.

I always thought that had changed my sleep habits, but reading your post, I guess it’s just a coincidence that it happened at that age.

Not well. My body doesn’t seem to want to go to bed at 10–11pm. It wants to go to bed at 3–4pm.

Once I get to sleep, I usually sleep well. Getting to sleep has always been a problem. Reading helps… unless what I’m reading gets too interesting. It got worse at about 50 and I had the option of going on prescription meds. I opted for OTC meds at first: L-tryptophan, benadryl, melatonin. But they would only work for a few nights in a row and then I would have to double the dosage. Not good.

So, I began finding reasons to get more exercise. Things I liked to do when I was younger, like cycling, kayaking, hiking, diving, sailing—things that can fall by the wayside in a marriage to a person who comes from a different lifestyle. It worked. I had less trouble getting to sleep and my sleep was deep and refreshing.

Until recently. But that is combination of an acute sooon-to-be-solved illness and not enough exercise. I highly recommend finding a pleasurable excuse to increase your physical activity. LIke last Saturday night. Like that, maybe.

@Espiritus_Corvus I powerwalk 2 miles daily. :) I could also repeat Saturday.

I don’t have trouble falling asleep. I have trouble staying asleep for 7 or 8 hours. Some nights I wake up after just 5, and that’s a problem. I really think age is my biggest culprit as to why my sleep patterns changed. Often when I wake up, I can read for half an hour and sleep again, but last night I couldn’t. It just didn’t work. I don’t worry about it too much. I know I’ll sleep well tonight as a result.

When I was younger, I needed 7 to 8 hours and that meant from around 11 or 12 to around 7 or 8.

Now I just hit 50. I had to cut out caffeine in the afternoon and evenings and that still does not always work. If I’m lucky, I get 5 hours straight and I’m good with that. If I’m not lucky, I may wake up in the middle of the night for a few hours, tossing and turning, and then when the sun is coming up and I should be waking up, I’m falling back asleep for another hour or two. What screws me up is that would be ok if I didn’t have to go to work, but on those days, I’m then running late.

If I’m really tired, I’m dozing off around 10 but that screws me up, too.

My weekend sleep is about the same as my work night sleep.

I bought Melatonin but only took it three times. I’m really the type that tries to get by with a minimum of drugs. Since I fall asleep ok, Melatonin is not something that is on my mind. Once I’m up at 3, then it’s too late for any sleep aid.

@jca This could be part of the peri-menopause scene. certain hormones spike around 3–4 a.m.
I went through a phase where I would wake up at like 3 a.m. and not be able to go back to sleep. Once I just got in my car and was grocery shopping at an 24 Safeway at 4 a.m. haha

@Coloma: Sometimes I don’t get back to sleep, and then I just go through the day having been awake since 3 a.m. I’m always amazed I can do it.

It seems normal to me that older people need less sleep. We don’t need as much time for recovery and grow. When we are younger our cells are dividing and multiplying and the body needs sleep to fuel these things. Children are growing new skin, hair, bone, everything. As we age we are losing some of those cells and not replacing them.

Everything changed when I got to be 48. I’m now 52. It started off with mild insomnia, which grew much worse. I had really bad insomnia for about 2 years, it’s not as bad now, partly because I stopped drinking caffeine after 5 pm (I used to be able to drink coffee up until 10 pm with no sleep problems for most of my adult life) and I’ve also been taking Valerian for about 2 months, on an off, which helps a little (not enough). For the last 3 weeks or so, I’ve been waking up with terrible pain in my right shoulder. I tend to roll over onto my right arm, and I think that’s been taking it’s toll. I also wake up and have to tinkle 3 or 4 times a night, for the last 6 months or so, and it’s worse if I have a drink of water past say 6 pm, so I try to limit that, even though I drink lots more water in the last 2 years since I started my new eating habits and exercise routine. You’d think the exercise would help me sleep better. Maybe it does, it would probably be 10 times worse if I didn’t exercise, but who knows.

Although the practice wouldn’t work in my current lifestyle, I’ve heard (anecdotally) that two or three shorter naps (2–4 hours each) will provide the rest you need. As a matter of fact, naps are an honored tradition in the family where I grew up.

@Kardamom Don’t you just HATE having to get up to go pee 2 or 3 times a night? You wake up, lay there, think maybe you can just ignore it and sleep some more, but no, gotta go.
I think our kidneys must process better in a prone position. I just checked out for all kinds of medical tests, no diabetes, kidney and liver function good.

My kidneys are working too good it seems. haha

@Coloma Good functioning kidneys would make you pee. When they aren’t working the fluids back up.

Don’t drink fluids within an hour of bedtime and make sure you pee before going to bed. If you eat a late dinner don’t include a lot of fluid. Cereal with milk, soup, all of those foods that have a lot of fluid are better for the morning and afternoon.

I think the bladder must be less elastic, and a lot of us men have that wonderful prostate bonus. But the gods have gotten even with me for bitching in my younger days about women constantly having to go. Nowadays there is no place in this town where you will find me on foot that I don’t know where the bathroom is within a 2 minute striking distance.

I just turned 55 and I don’t sleep worth a shit, thanks for asking.
I’m experiencing a lot of stress and anxiety. Often after 3–4 hours sleep I wake up like someone flipping a lightswitch. Brain fully in overdrive, heart pounding and sweating buckets.
I’m starting to realize that my conscience brain is separate from my dream brain. I can wake instantly from a fairly pleasant dream right into full bore obsessive anxiety. It’s especially disconcerting.
Forcing myself to stay up later helps some. Unfortunately, so does eating a big meal, late. I bought some Sensoril, but Fluther tells me that’s pretty useless.
Maybe making a major change in my life soon will help. I hope.

I like my room to be hot when I’m hanging out in it, but once I go to sleep, I find I sleep better when the room is cool. I also sleep better in a dark room, with dark curtains or in my daughter’s lower bunk where it’s shady.

I like getting into a hot bed when it’s cold. I turn my electric blanket up to “High” about an hour before bed and cover it with a big fluffy comforer and then, bliss out to the 10th power. last night was very warm, no E. blanket and left the window half open all night long.
I like cool on the outside, warm on the inside.

^^ I find that having a very light weight comforter over my legs and torso and arms is very nice, especially if the ceiling fan is on and the window is open. My face tends to get too warm. However, the proverbial hot flashes, seem to have run their course. The need to tinkle has not.

I also sleep better with my “rain” or “crickets” or “campfire” CD going.

I read somewhere some study said that people sleep better with a blanket on. I don’t know how good the study was, but I do know I feel odd without a cover. My husband sleeps without a blanket a lot of the time.

Oh man, I slept alright last night but the wake up scene was chaos this morning. Weed eater guys showed up at 7:15, gate buzzer intercom ringing over and over again, dog barking, geese shrieking, lord…nothing like waking up to multiple noise. lol

I need a blanket, too. Preferably sheet, blanket and maybe comforter. Only in really hot weather, like more than 90 degrees without air conditioning am I ok without any blanket but even then, probably a sheet.

“CRICKETS” CD!!”
AHHHH!! Runs screaming from the room!

I can make a wake up CD with honking geese, quacking ducks, cackling chickens, braying burros and neighing horses. haha

@ibstubro but I like Buddy Holiday

@Stinley You sure you don’t mean Buddy Holly?

^^I probably do. Or I meant the love child of Billie Holliday and Buddy Holly…

Perhaps you were thinking of spring break, @Stinley?

I don’t think so. I don’t really know what that is <—foreigner here

Spring break is when college buddies have a holiday and party? Lame US joke.

er, LOL?

I used to sleep like a rock but since starting this diet I do not sleep as well
and my husband has noticed it. I am up at all times peeing thru the night
and a few times I had heart palpatations and couldnt relax. I have cut out
all sugars for 3 weeks and that could have something to do with it.
I believe I need to be eating more….I eat (veggies & all natural meats)
but just a little fills me up these days after drinking a gallon + of water too.
Just my body adjusting you think? Got this diet and exercise down and I
don’t want to quit now as i do need to loose 25 pounds and watching what I
eat and no sugar + EXERCISE IS THE ONLY WAY i KNOW HOW TO DO IT!