site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2896 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for March 22, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I have been having strange nights lately. Waking up at 4am, unable to go back to sleep even when I feel super tired physically etc. Not particularly stressed about anything that keeps me awake. Trying the most low risk advice online nowadays like cutting before-bed screen time and magnesium citrate supplements. Haven't seen the results yet but it has been relatively little time. My bed is comfortable I suppose.

Anyone who has been in this situation before? Any advise would be appreciated. I want to avoid waking up in the middle of the night if possible in the first place and if not then fall asleep back quickly again.

I go through this occasionally, too. Something I've found helpful is lowering the air temperature.

The following comes from an interview with Matthew Walker, a sleep scientist:

The second is keep it cool. Your body needs to drop its core temperature by about 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit to initiate sleep and then to stay asleep. And it's the reason you will always find it easier to fall asleep in a room that's too cold than too hot. So aim for a bedroom temperature of around 65 degrees or about 18 degrees Celsius. That's going to be optimal for the sleep of most people.

I've found his book "Why We Sleep" to be helpful. Though, you could probably pick up most of the sleep improvement tips just from interviews he's given on Youtube. Hope you can fix this.

This is something I deal with. (Since I'm still dealing with it, I might not be the best source of advice, but here we are.) I've read some pop-sci type articles that human are inclined to be bi-phasic sleepers and our monophasic sleep is a relatively new cultural practice/expectation. Anecdotally I find I tend towards bi-phasic sleep when I'm not on a schedule (backpacking trips, vacations, etc). I get sleepy in the evening, doze off for a few hours, wake up for a few hours sometime in the middle of the night, and then doze back off until just a little after dawn.

Things to consider to keep you asleep:

  1. What's your workload like right now? Are your days jam-packed? Even if you're not stressed, sometimes open mental loops will keep the brain distracted enough to wake up. Something something evolutionary psychology sabertooth tigers, I guess.

  2. Be aware of when you're intaking stimulants. Caffeine can last a while in the body so I normally cut off my caffeine intake (coffee, tea, soda, etc) somewhere around 1PM.

  3. Keep your bedroom as dark as humanly possible. Black-out curtains have made a world of different for me. (The city council recently decided all the streetlights needs to be the equivalent of automobile high beams, lest the criminals murder us all in our sleep.)

Things I've found that help me get back to sleep:

  1. Read something light and undemanding for a little while. I find about 20 minutes works for me.

  2. Ged out of bed and do something easy and mindless. Do the dishes you decided need to be soaked, pack a lunch for the next day, etc.

  3. Sleep on the couch or stretch out on the floor. Sometimes just the change of scenery helps. No idea why.

Humans are not naturally biphasic - direct sleep studies in modern hunter gatherers show they sleep mostly like we do, in a single 'phase', and for similar durations as modern humans. Biphasic sleep seems to be mostly a medieval Europe thing.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats