Count myself among the many who wish their sleep patterns were better. Short of a formal sleep study, a form of excessive medical care for me, I've engaged in a lot of interventions. I am aware of sleep hygiene principles, which I commit myself to periodically. My bottle of melatonin from the shelf at Walmart gets judicious use. My card of diphenhydramine gel caps, obtained from the Dollar Store, allows me to get drowsy but at an unacceptable cost the next morning. Unlikely that I will finish the remaining aqua capsules. I've used Ambien samples, four of them conserved over several months. That stuff works, and offered to me by my doctor, but not the direction I should be taking in my senior retirement years. Sleep Hygiene is the way to go.
The principles are very easy. Lights out at a predictable time. Avoid zonking out early. Put away the blue lights from the smartphones and tablets a couple hours in advance. Big Screen TV causes fewer disturbances. Arise on time. Avoid snooze button. I've also had sleep trackers. I found the free apps on my cell phone intrusive. The Apps themselves periodically failed. My smartwatch has a basic program that works consistently, if not all that accurately. Often I have two half-nights sleep when trying to adhere to fixed sleep and wake times. The most difficult advice for me has been how to deal with the middle of the night wakening that creates those two half-nights. Professional sleep organization advice recommends getting up if not back to sleep by a certain interval. My smartwatch has a timer that allows me to create that interval. I am rarely back asleep. However, the sleep app of the watch shows the wake time to be not that much longer than the recommended allowable in-bed wake time. If I feel groggy I stay in bed. If I feel wired, I head to My Space where I turn on the big screen TV to Modern Marvels or How the Earth was Made to maybe learn something. By the end of the show, if not dozed in my recliner, I usually find myself loopy enough to return to bed for a successful second half of the night.
Wake times occasionally challenge me. My smartwatch has an alarm set to my wake time with a snooze feature for ten minutes. I am rarely jolted awake by the buzz. My internal timer has me either awake or dozing lightly when it signals my left wrist. By then I have already read the red numerals on the should be obsolete clock radio behind my bed. I rarely arise with the buzz but nearly always am able to head to the bathroom for dental hygiene before the reminder buzzes ten minutes later. Then to the kitchen to begin the day. Make k-cup coffee, retrieve the newspaper from the end of the driveway for my wife, then bring that brew back to the laptop in My Space.
Recent weeks have changed my internal pattern. The middle of night awakening still occurs at a predictable time, but my smartwatch indicates that light sleep resumes within a few minutes. And if I am awake within a half hour of the alarm set, I just get up early to begin my day. My internal rhythms seem a reasonable guide. My energy has improved, as has my ability to stay awake past the designated lights out time most nights. I rarely doze off before that, something I used to do most nights. Time to falling asleep does not seem unduly long.
So the sleep hygiene protocols seem on target. While they can sometimes be disruptive to follow, consistency seems to pay off. While these recommendations make people subservient to the clock with its timers, biological signals remain recognizable. It pays to follow them if not predictably destructive. So now my wake times have become longer, my activities within those daylight times more productive. That was the intent. Sleep study not needed yet.
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