For those of you with sleep issues, what are your go-to coping or ameliorating tricks?

Eating dinner at 6 pm dramatically helps a lot. Also not drinking soda or coffee later in the day.

Unfortunately my work schedule these days keeps me from doing that. So the sleep issues are back.

I’m chronically and severely sleep-deprived due to the cycle of depression and untreated sleep apnea. For normal people, practicing good sleep hygiene supposedly can do wonders. Matt Walker is apparently the current expert on sleep. He has a book, but he has done tons of really informative interviews (this one is 3 hours long).

The general recommendations for good sleep hygiene include:

- routine – go to sleep at the same time every night.
– reduce coffee
– don’t exercise late in the day
– quit alcohol
– create a nighttime routine (wind dow, read, lower the lights)
– don’t eat late at night, and avoid drinking water a couple of hours before bed
– get sun early in the day
– reserve the bed for sleeping
– no devices in bed (or even a couple of hours before bed)
– avoid lying in bed for long periods if you can’t sleep. Get up and read a book with low light, then go back to bed when you’re tired.
– keep your bedroom around 65 degrees

I have had some luck in the past by following many of these. But I have also had luck doing some of these dumb things in the middle of the night:
– think of a movie I’m very familiar with and go through the entire story in my head.
– try the alphabet game (pick a category and try to come up with something for each letter. For example, “fruits”: Apple, Banana, etc).

I skipped my coffee altogether, throughout all of the day.
When that (alone) didn’t help much I started ousting my chocolate from my diet.
Instant better sleep (not perfect though).
Lately I thought f#&k it, and started eating chocolate again, and bam, back or the problems…

I hardly got more than an hour of deep sleep, about two to three hours of light sleep, and almost no REM sleep.

@product, yeah, I’m familiar with the lists and recommendations, I am more interested in your last section. I have also done the boring rote thing with some success.

My problem is usually waking up too early and being unable to go back to sleep (as opposed to having trouble falling asleep initially—though that also has happened to me, it usually corresponds with stress and a pounding heart and is rare). One thing that works for me is not eating late. I find that often when I wake up too early, it corresponds with digestive distress, which happens at a much lower rate if I stop eating several hours before going to bed. I also agree with not lying in bed too long. If I do wake up early and can’t go back to sleep, I will get up and read for a bit and then get back in bed. That has sometimes allowed me to go back to sleep. If I just continue to lie in bed, I won’t be able to go back to sleep at all (at most I might experience sleep paralysis after a couple hours of lying there).

in addition to @product great list and @rebbel note of skipping coffee completely:

warm bath or time in the hot tub prior to bedtime
meditation prior to bedtime
Proven in sleep studies – Listen to Weightless – Marconi Union at a low volume level

I too have always had great success with the memory trail game usually in some order. This has worked for me for years.
try to recall all the employers/jobs/bosses your have had over time
recall all the vehicles you owned
All your past significant other relationships
Trips you have taken over time
the names of all your relatives
the layout of the home you grew up in

Take a dose of night time cough medicine that contains 10% alcohol and 30 mg. of dextromethorphan.

^^Interesting.

I do Kegels and eyeball motion exercises while in bed. With my eyes closed I move my eyes as far as they will go in each direction: up down, side to side, diagonally, 10 reps in each direction. That makes them tired and potentially strengthens the muscles.
Most of the time I don’t finish the exercise.
And kegels are good for many reasons.
I have not seen this routine anywhere. It works for me though.

^^Even more interesting. Might try it.

I have had some luck with regulated breathing, mostly because I bore myself back to sleep.
@kritiper, you do that often? Any drug use of that type really screws up sleep quality for me.

I have no problem falling asleep. I have a lot of trouble staying asleep. A sleep psychologist told me it’s maintenance insomnia or difficulty maintaining sleep.

Some nights, I simply get up when I wake after only 6 hours of sleep, even though I do not feel rested. Some nights, I try medicine I know makes me drowsy. Other nights, I read in bed.

I’m a daily mediator, and that helps occasionally.

The sleep psychologist’s best help was to simply tell me not to get upset when I wake at 6 hours. It’s only 1 or 2 nights like that. Good sleep returns for some nights, and then I’ll have a few nights of early waking. Just accept it. That helps me the most. I have changed my attitude about waking early, and it has made a world of difference.

Like @Hawaii_Jake I have worked at accepting my sleeplessness. I do find that when I am at peace and not anticipating a rough day the next day, I often sleep better – or at least enough. Almost every night I wake up several times and turn over but on the good nights I go back to sleep. If I am stressed, I may have real trouble falling asleep – so on those nights, I do take a generic for ambien. I also take one every night when on vacation when I believe I want and need good sleep. I am careful when I get home to stop the zolpidem and I don’t let myself get dependent on it. If I have muscle pain, I’ll take one or a couple Motrin before I go to bed.

My bedtime routine is a hot bath and then read in bed for an hour or so culminating with checking the news stories on my iPad. No wonder I can’t sleep!

I don’t have any magic bullets as you can see.

I tried all manner of things to no avail. I used a small mouthpiece to stop snoring but it eventually stopped working as I got older. I finally had a real sleep study and got diagnosed with sleep apnea. A CPAP has done wonders for me. After a few weeks it was like flipping a switch.

I just remembered to add that I do have a mouthguard to stop grinding.

@product why is your sleep apnea untreated? That’s not something you should suffer through. I did for years and I now regret not doing anything until recently.

@Jeruba may have fallen asleep while crafting her response!

I have a rather complicated menu of things that I use sometimes, that work sometimes, and no one or two things that are reliable. So I’ll just toss my ideas on the heap and you can pick over them as you please.

I head for bed at about 11, read for a while, and turn out the light around midnight. Then I usually start fretting about things: my sons, my to-do list, problems I have to solve, the things I have to remember for the next day. Sometimes, for variety, I fret about fictional characters in a book I’m reading or a series I’m watching. The ongoing stress and anxiety plus physical pain often cost me decent sleep.

Sometimes it takes me an hour or two to get to sleep, and sometimes when I have to get up in the night I will lie awake for hours or just not get back to sleep at all. So there’s nothing sure-fire about my methods.

•  I take two ibuprofen at 11 to help reduce the back and shoulder pain that often keeps me awake.
•  At midnight I take one 100mg Trazodone tablet, prescribed by my doctor to replace Zolpidem.
•  If I still feel wide awake at 1:00, I add a single melatonin.
•  My version of the memory trick is searching to recall a name from the long past, such as a classmate from first grade or a minor actor in movie.
•  Sometimes I’ll go through the Greek alphabet or the lists of German pronouns by the case they take (“aus, ausser, bei, mit…”). Or I’ll recall a poem or passage learned as a young person, such as the “quality of mercy” speech from A Merchant of Venice, or play an entire musical work as far as I can recall it. Nothing rousing: more like Erik Satie than the Hallelujah Chorus.
•  When desperate, I’ll count backwards: for no particular reason, this means counting backward from 120, repeating each number rhythmically four times. When I reach 60, I go back to 120. No idea how this one started.
•  When I awaken in the night, as long as it’s four hours after the ibuprofen, I take two acetaminophen. Lately I’ve been using CVS’s acetaminophen PM, with diphenhydramine HCl, unless it’s close to getting-up time.

The advice to get up and do something has never worked for me when I lie awake at night. I’m better off lying still and trying to doze. Not only moving around but engaging the left brain at all only makes me more wakeful.

I don’t eat anything a while before bedtime. I do have one cup of herb tea during the evening. I gave up coffee cold turkey earlier this year for the sake of blood pressure and GI disturbance, and I haven’t detected any difference at all with respect to sleep. I rarely use alcohol and don’t smoke, but I do take in some chocolate almost every day.

 
Haha, @janbb. I was thinking. And making a list.

Oh, and I don’t take naps during the day, not more than once or twice in a year’s time. So that’s not a factor at all.

@Jeruba If our coastal clocks weren’t so different we could chat on the phone in the night! But I’m with you, getting out of bed and doing something is not good for me. I usually can’t even read something when awake in the night but god, I am so bored….....

Dang. I meant German prepositions.

@janbb, yeah, if I try to read or watch something, I may get drowsy pretty quickly, but the activity of turning it off, putting it down, turning out lights, etc., wakes me up again.

For those that have trouble with falling asleep, may I offer the possible help that is audiobooks?
I listen to audiobooks on my smartphone.
It’s next to me, next to the pillow, and I put a 30 minute sleep timer in the app (audible).
Usually I can’t remember a word that’s being read, the next day when I put it on again, to help me sleeping.
My main problem is waking up several times during the night though.
So it does help me to fall asleep, but that’s about it.

You guys are all very sophisticated and complicated, I just bitch and whine and get a small snack and resign myself to the wide awakes. Most nights I can get a cumulative 7 hours, up often to pee, reading a bunch, planning for tomorrow.

When I have a really sleepless night, I seem to be overcome with manic energy in the morning and am wildly productive. I pay for a couple of days with lethargy.

I think we could get a good Insomniacs Anonymous group going!

“Hello, I’m @janbb and I can’t sleep!”

@canidmajor I don’t do it very often, just when I feel like I’ll never get to sleep.

When I was working in the office, for years I had real trouble staying asleep. I cut out caffeine any time after midday and still, I would wake up like clockwork around 3 or 4 a.m. Then, around the time I was supposed to be waking up, I was trying to fall back asleep for just a half hour or so, because I knew the day would suck after so little sleep. I realized after the shutdown that I had been chronically sleep deprived, going day after day with 3 or 4 hours.

After the shutdown, I decided (for several reasons), that it was time to retire from my full time job. Now, I wake up in the early morning to get my daughter up for school, but I can go back to sleep for an hour or two or three, which is really nice.

I still wake up some nights, but I am not stressed about it, not stressed about what time it is or that I have to get another or hour or two of sleep and am going to be late for work. I may go on the computer, which I know is very bad as far as getting back to sleep, but if I’m awake anyway, I may as well kill time in a fun way.

I used to consider taking Melatonin, and bought some and took it a handful of times, but I tend to be resistant to taking medication and am afraid of becoming dependent on it.

I’m a light sleeper and usually, once I’m up, it takes me a while (hours) to get back to sleep.

I don’t have any trouble getting to sleep but in recent years I have been waking at around 4:00am and then sometimes have trouble getting back to sleep.

If I can’t get back to sleep, I switch on my bedside radio which is tuned to the BBC World Service. I lie in my warm bed in the dark and find something interesting to listen to until I am ready to nod off. Sometimes the radio is still playing when morning breaks and it is time to get up.

I go to bed at the same time each night and read from my kindle until I am sleepy then I fall asleep almost immediately.

I sleep better when the weather is cold and I always sleep with the window open.

I forgot to add another exercise trick With eyes closed I slow move my eyes around in the widest circle I can make. I do about 5 laps in each direction. When, I start off I occasionally feel feel some dry spots. After a couple of turns everything is running smoothly.
I don’t know if it does any good for my eye sockets but it makes me tired and helps me fall asleep so that is a plus. .