How I Cured my Insomnia
I've had insomnia for many years and finally fixed it
I have had insomnia for years. It’s interesting how little time it will take to write this compared to how long it to me to figure out what now seem like simple principles to keep my insomnia at bay.
Insomnia is one of the most difficult things I’ve dealt with in my life. I would often lay in bed over 2 hours eyes closed doing nothing but waiting to fall asleep. Then three hours later I would wake up and not be able to fall asleep again, so again I would just lay in bed for 3 - 5 hours until it was morning time and I gave up on getting any further sleep.
If this happens to you one night, you have a tough day but you can get through it, when you get 3-4 hours of sleep two nights in a row, the next day is tougher, when it happens everyday it is debilitating. I felt like a zombie everyday, unable to focus on anything, having no energy. About once a week I would finally crash and get a nap in during the day or get a good night of sleep in, and I would feel the great the next day, but that just started the downhill cycle over again.
There is a lot of advice out there, like go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day, make sure you are exposed to sunlight first thing in the morning, avoid electronic devices before bed, wear blue blocking glasses before bed, don’t do anything except go to sleep in bed, don’t bring your laptop or your phone with you.
None of these things solved, or even helped my insomnia at all.
There are several kinds of insomnia, I had onset insomnia and maintenance insomnia. The first one means you have trouble falling asleep and the second one means you have trouble staying asleep. They required two different solutions.
Fixing Onset Insomnia
I’ll start with the most difficult thing: Quitting coffee. This was the hardest thing I’ve ever quit, I’ve quit alcohol for months at a time, cigarettes permanently, nothing compares to the withdrawal I experienced quitting caffeine. You can read the blog here for more information on this. One of the things that made it so difficult is I really identified as being a coffee drinker. In the back of my mind I knew caffeine could be an issue but I was reluctant to give it up. However when I did, it immediately solved my onset insomnia. Instead of taking an hour or two to fall asleep I was falling asleep in 5 to 10 minutes.
I couldn’t believe I had suffered for so many years when all I had to do was quit coffee, which in retrospect seems like such a small price to pay for being able to sleep.
Quitting caffeine did 95% of the heavy lifting. If that’s all I had done, I would still be fine. However some other smaller but helpful things were buying those lights you can control with your phone and have them automatically start dimming over a couple hours until they eventually turn off. Recreating the sunset in my bedroom really helps give your body the signals to start falling asleep. Sometimes if I lay down and I feel the urge to keep moving around, taking some potassium fixes that. I think there is a good chance that restless leg syndrome can be fixed by just taking potassium supplements whenever needed.
Fixing Maintenance Insomnia
This doesn’t have a magic bullet like onset insomnia however the biggest contributor is not going to bed too early.
I had a vision of myself as someone who goes to bed at 10pm and wakes up at 6am and goes to the gym first thing but I had to abandon that fantasy because it’s not in my nature. I’ve always had a tendency to wake up later, for work I would wake up 30 minutes before I had to walk out of the door. When I stopped attempting to go to sleep early, and going to sleep more between 11am-1am helped me stay asleep through the night.
You have to be careful that the reason you’re staying up isn’t because you’re getting stimulation from things like apps, or Youtube videos. An hour or two before you want to go to bed to switch to reading a book, watching a movie or a show. A lot of people think it’s the light from the monitor that messes up your ability to get sleepy, and I’m sure that has some effect, but I think the majority of the problem with screens is that people tend to do over stimulating things on them.
A good night of sleep can be interrupted by not having to pee. Here is how to accomplish this.
Keep hydrated
Stop drinking and eating 5-6 hours before you go to bed
Stay away from salt
I find going to sleep just as I’m about start feeling hunger pain again is the best time. If you eat a lot of food, especially with salt, your body needs to process that and get rid of excess salt to keep homeostasis in your body, and that involves filling your bladder up. If you drink some water right after dinner, and go to the bathroom right before you go to sleep this will help immensely. I very rarely add salt to my food after I cook these days unless it’s absolutely necessary. Getting good night of sleep is better than salt makes food taste.
Certain foods contain a huge amount of salt, and no matter how much you try to re hydrate after eating it, even earlier in the day, you can’t get your body back in balance before you go to sleep. Eating at almost any restaurant causes this problem, they put way more salt than you might expect , especially fast food, pizza, and Mexican food, and sushi if you use a lot of soy sauce.
I have a 40 oz Hydro Flask, and on a perfect day, I drink one right after I wake up before breakfast, usually lots of chugging. Then I finish the next one sometime after lunch, then one more before and after dinner. When you first start drinking this much water you may start peeing like 5-6 times a day. If you stick with it, your body starts to adapt to it and you’ll go back down to around 3 times per day.
Keeping the bedroom cool is very important. Since it naturally cools down at night at warms up in the morning, a warm bedroom is a trigger for your body to start waking up, so I try to keep it cold enough that I’m comfortable, but not so cold than I wake up from being too cold in the middle of the night. I imagine this temperature will be different for everyone and each person would need to determine the ideal temperature.
Avoiding alcohol is good for a good night of sleep, even if you don’t wake up in the middle of the night it can really affect the quality of sleep you get. If you do drink, try to drink as far away from bedtime as possible.
When you have insomnia you are a zombie. Everyday is a struggle and every night takes an eternity. It feels like 8 hours. When you go to sleep and wake up with no interruptions it feels like 5 minutes has passed which is wonderful. It took me a long time to figure out all of these things and I don’t know if this will work on other people but this was my solution. Hopefully this can help others.