Sleep: the final frontier

These are the dreams and nightmares of the starship Lethargy. Its nightly mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.


Morpheus and Iris, by Pierre-Narcisse Guerin

Sleep has been the bane of my existence since I was a young child.  I had 3 different recurring nightmares as well as almost nightly sweat drenching nightmares.  Also, I have onset insomnia, most likely caused by the stress of the nightmares.

For as long as I can remember I struggled to get 4-6 hours of sleep every night.  I've since learned from Sound Sleep, Sound Mind that this is a common form of "self-medication" to avoid the last couple of hours of sleep which are commonly the worst hours of sleep for those with sleep issues.

My whole system went through a change with my fourth and fifth children.  For a few years I couldn't wear any sort of metals on my wrists, fingers, and neck as I would blister.  I became overweight and the weight didn't fall off me like usual.  And my sleep changed.  Instead of the 4-6 hours I began to sleep 8-10 hours. 

After contracting Lyme disease my sleep patterns changed even more.  I began to sleep a minimum of 12 hours a day and it wasn't uncommon for me to be awake only for 4 hours a day.  I am still not healthy, but I am learning tips and tricks that have helped me to become healthier.  Did you know that any sleep over 9 hours can suppress your immune system?  Talk about a merry-go-round.  My immune system was causing me to oversleep and my overdose of sleep was suppressing my immune system. 

I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.  I began hacking my sleep using every tip and trick that was easily incorporated for a bit over a year now.  There was a period of around a week last year where my sleep cycles were healthy and I had a memory again.  I was able to hold conversations without stuttering, losing track of my thoughts, and it felt amazing.  Then those tricks wouldn't work through my bad sleep periods.  So far I haven't found anything to help with my bad periods, but the hacking continues and I will succeed! 

In The 4-Hour Body Timothy Ferris hacks all sorts of aspects about the body.  Ferris is a lot of fun and instead of feeling like a failure when something didn't work he has helped to make me feel more like a mad scientist.  Instead of reviewing the book, I will tell you what I've tried from the sleep section so far and my thoughts on it.

Ferris recommends an Iphone app called Sleep Cycle .  It isn't available for droid so I went on a hunt.  There are quite a few apps available and many of them you can test out before buying.  My favorite is Sleep as Android and in second place is SleepBot .  These apps do not improve sleep.  They track your body movements and chart them for you.  This can be a helpful tool to help you decide if a tip or trick is helping.  It isn't as informative as the Zeo Coach, but it's in my price range :) . 

Power naps have definitely helped with physical and mental fatigue.  Ferris has a section on polyphasic sleep.  I found this section written in a style and format easier to understand than the referred to group Poly Phasers.  I am enthralled with the idea of 2 hours of sleep, I mean who wouldn't be?  I have found that 1-2 power naps has greatly reduced the amount of sleep my body thinks it needs. 

A power nap is a 20 minute nap.  It hacks your sleep cycles so that it is refreshing.  A nap much longer than this can leave the body and mind lethargic.  Not so good.  I have tried a few different binaural audio tracks and my favorite is Hibernation, the track Power Nap is 30 minutes long and it really seems to work for me.  It takes me 5 to 10 minutes to fall asleep.  I should note that my fall asleep time didn't start out like that, it took time and a rigid schedule to get myself to sleep at all during the power nap time.

I have several more tips and tricks to mention and will have more in the future as I continue to study.  And since I have a cleaning project to get to and I could spend the entire day writing about sleep I think I will adjourn here.  Have a wonderful Sunday.  We have sun!