Sleep

[Hellfire]

I sleep like crap. I take a lot of time to fall asleep, I'm always dreaming and I wake up constantly. That's why I'm always tired. Meh...

[RoadKill]

My sleeping patterns are almost always fucked. This is all.

[|Laguna|]

I've been tending to fall asleep almost instantoesly recently due to this horrible cough thing I have and I'm just exhuasted at the end of each day.

 

In these cold times a hot water bottle also helps me sleep.

 

Strangely I drool a whole lot in my sleep, I also talk/shout/murmer and for some strange reason in my sleep I take off my clothes.... which is disturbing to wake up to.

[AshMat]

Go to bed at 10, takes me at least half an hour to sleep. If i wake up int he middle of the night, i play my ds.

[mario114]

Over the last couple of days i have gone to bed early (say 10:30-11) due to exams, but normally i would go to bed some were between 12 and 1:30, which makes me really tired when i have to get up at 7 the next day, normally i would aim for about 6+ hours on a school night, 7 is prefferable. The problem is i can read for ages while in bed, which means i get up late, miss my bus and arrive late for school.

[Letty]

Normally I sleep great -gloat gloat-, but recentley I've been getting these ridiculous nosebleeds, and wake up in the middle of the night with blood on me. so, yeah - sleep.

[Cubechris]

I advise going to sleep, instead of posting about a lack of it on a forum...

 

PS: I'm tired.

[jayseven]

.. woo! more sleep stuff.

 

Jav; you can get alarm clocks that you put under your pillow that just vibrate instead of making noises. They're awesome, I have one because i can't hear alarms.

 

Ash; Pills are not good. Your body comes to rely on them, stops producing the melotonin that you need in your system, so without the pills you'd find it harder to sleep.

 

The way sleep works! Inside your brain lives the suprachiasmatic nucleus - the SCN. In here live some tasty glands which like to release some hormones from time to time.

 

Our sleep/waking cycle is a circadian biological rhythm; it's a cycle that lasts roughly a day (surprise, surprise!), with the sleep cycle itself being an ultradian cycle; less than a day.

 

By default, our sleep/wake cycle is around 25 hours. Everyones is different, but most are above 24 hours. This is why we rely on zeitgebers to reset our clock daily.

 

This rhythm can be reset by internal (endogeneous) and external factors (exogeneous). The external factors are, pretty much, light. Light gets to the internal one, the SCN via the optic chiasm. When light levels are a lower, the SCN then sends a signal to the Pineal gland and says "hey, let's have some of that Melatonin jizz!" and thus, you begin to feel sleepy. You are usually asleep 2 hours after the release. If you're not sleepy, this is being screwed.

 

Now, being internet geeks, the problem could be due to a resistance to darkness; you spend so much time indoors online that your body adapts. It becomes resiliant to the external cue for 'sleep' - the lack of light. Thus, your body finds it harder to know when to release the hormones.

 

Poor diet maybe. Perhaps your body is lacking in protiens that it needs during tissue-rebuiding that occurs when you're asleep.

 

Going for a Run every day, or just being generlaly active, helps sleep, perhaps because your body realises it needs the protein synthesis to occur and thus requests some melatonin to be administered.

 

Seratonin, the HAPPY HAPPY hormone, is the antangonist to melatonin. Too high a level of this and you'll have difficulty sleeping. However, the two hormones are linked in production levels; if the body senses too much seratonin it will release more melatonin, which could explain why exercise helps sleep. It also explains why I have this period every night, just before i get real tired, where i get a little hyper.

 

JET LAG! Jet lag is worse when you travel east because making your body clock go faster to catch up is harder than making it pause, to slow down. IT's suggested taht it takes a day per time zone travelled eastwards to recover sleep patterns properly.

 

SHIFT WORK! god, you guys are awesome at testing me. Shift work. It's better to have constantly rotating shifts than long periods of mornings then la long period of nights then a long period of mornings... Because the faster you change it the less chance the body has to adapt. That may sound bad, but it's better because rotating shifts slowly means your clock is constantly being disrupted.

 

We do need sleep to live, but we can survive for ages without it, with some not-hugely bothersome side effects. Lack of concentration, paranoia, delusions, micro-sleep, etc. THe last one is cool - it's those little 3-second phase-outs you get which are actually short bursts of REM sleep type brain activity, which is your breain catching up on lost sleep.

 

After a long period of no sleep, it's relatively easy to catch up on lost sleep. You do not need to catch up on the total number of hours of lost sleep, instead your brain dedicates more sleep time to the REM stage of sleep.There ar 5 stages of sleep and throughout the night you are constantly moving through them.

 

SO yeah, i think that's enough. Get out more, quit messing with your cycle and drink less coke! sorted.

[Ashley]

Was all but the first three lines aimed at me? If so thanks very much, I feel...thought about.

 

I don't intend to go on pills because, as others have said, I feel I'll rely too much on them. I know what im doing wrong but I can't fix it...or at least I can't be arsed to fix it really.

 

I've cut down on coke. Had some yesterday becasue I went out at night but that was the first time in like a week. Im focusing on the juice drinks right now. Boots have 2 minute maids for £1.30 so thats good, especially as its next door to work.

 

But thanks for the interesting read.

[MunKy]

Hey micro sleep! I've done that, gets annoying. Very disorientating, when it happens though I return to normal pretty quick. Another thing I cant explain is when my body seems full of energy but my eyes are on the verge of shutting.

[AshMat]

That ex[plains it. Spending hours ont he pc msot nights. Always being happy and excited, about nothing-litterally..

[kopo]

I should sleep more than i do now.

 

I'm bad at getting asleep. When i go to bed during the week i always have a hard time falling asleep, with either millions of thoughts haunting my poor head or just the fact i'm hyper. I usually get totally hyper around 11pm.

 

Lately, i've also had some nightmares, at least 1 per 2 nights. And they're always seriously fucked up and induce a fear in me so that when i wake up and remember the nightmare i still feel the adrenaline running.

 

Something weird has occured to me though. It's when i had no sleep in a while (not like only 3 hours or so, but like 48+ hrs) that i become another person. And your not gonna believe it, but i become like a much more sociable person, talking to everyone, joking and coming up with the most genius (ahem) of ideas. It's weird. Maybe it's the part in my brain that says 'stop' so that i'd be a civilsed person that gets turned off.

I'm not exactly a very talkive person, but after 2 days without sleep no-one is safe for my gibberish. Weird

 

When i only sleep for 3 hrs or so for a few days i usually get a bit irritated and score worse in school. The solution is going to bed earlier, but i just can't, i'm a nightcrawler. I can't get to sleep before 1am. Like i said i'm usually like someone with add around 11pm.

 

But when i do sleep more, and eat breakfast i'm like totally awake and hyper the next day, which is cool but happens rarely.

[rizz]

Well last night I wen't bed earlyish because I wanted to get up at a decent time to practice some stuff on my drums as I might have been going out later. So yeah, I go bed earlyish (about 1am), then sleep for 13 hours, getting up at around the the usual time. In future I will only go bed early if I feel fucking drained of energy :-/

[MunKy]

I went to bed at around 3/ half 3 last night and watched Scrubs DVDs for over an hour. Fell asleep and got woken up by my dad at 6 in the morning. Ive been fine all day Im used to having little sleep. But now like I said earlier my body feels fine but my eyes are acting seperately and feel tired.

[Sarka]

Wow, nice info Emo. I have been sleeping ok recently, but my dreams have been seriously weird, not nightmare stuff, but odd things are happening in them and I'm starting to get very freaked out.

 

Since you seem to know everything about sleep Emo, is there any way of stopping dreams? Or why does the brain make dreams up and what determines what you are dreaming of?

[AshMat]

Ah, here's one i can help with. I don't think there is a way of stopping dreams so you don't have them, but there is a way of contrilling them. Lucid dreaming. I started learning how to do it but njever induced one except by accident. Basically when you are dreaming, you realise you are in a dream and then you can do whatever you want. This includes stopping nightmares. You can pull gun from nowhere and shoot whatever the hell is wrong in your dream.

Here's a si9te with a lot of info and a good lnog tutorial:

http://www.dreamviews.com/

they also ahve a forum with a lot of friendly helpful people

[Sarka]

Ah, here's one i can help with. I don't think there is a way of stopping dreams so you don't have them, but there is a way of contrilling them. Lucid dreaming. I started learning how to do it but njever induced one except by accident. Basically when you are dreaming, you realise you are in a dream and then you can do whatever you want. This includes stopping nightmares. You can pull gun from nowhere and shoot whatever the hell is wrong in your dream.

Here's a si9te with a lot of info and a good lnog tutorial:

http://www.dreamviews.com/

they also ahve a forum with a lot of friendly helpful people

 

Oh yeah, I've been determined to do Lucid dreams, I've never actually had one, but they are really hard to get! I think I'll try once more, thanks retro-lover.

[Strider]

Ive been sleeping well, usually go to bed around 10:30-11:30 and get up around 7-10am depening on the day. I honestly cant lie in, it gets on my nerves and i just have to get up. I somtimes get a patch in the year where i find it hard to get to sleep, i havnt had one lately so hope its not soon.

 

I also think i have a small bit of Ocd, my comp chair has to be facing forward and the keyboard straight and under the desk.My TV needs to have volume on 6 and my curtains completely closed (no gaps) I feel that if these things arnt done then i wont be able to get to sleep......(i had more routines, but got rid of alot)

[jayseven]

Since you seem to know everything about sleep Emo, is there any way of stopping dreams? Or why does the brain make dreams up and what determines what you are dreaming of?

Dreams are essential to live! It's not directly confounding on deaths, but there's definately a corrolation. Stopping your brain from dreaming means reducing brain activity, which people can only theorise about. Most people agree that the brain is doing something necessary when you're dreaming, that it can't really do when you're awake as it's too busy processing new information all teh time.

 

It's been shown that alcohol inflicts upon REM's occurance, which can explain why you don't seem to get a good night's sleep after drinking, and why you're tired when you're hung-over - because you never got teh REM sleep you needed.

 

If your dreams are seriously worrying you, either stop taking teh cheese or go see your doctor.

 

And lucid dreams? Waking Life, man! Greatest film evar. GO SEE NOW.

 

And MunKy... I've never been able to stop watching any of my Scrubs DVD's before the disc stops. Series 3's out fairly soon WOoooo...

 

... Now to get back to the revision! Sleep well dudes.

[|Laguna|]

Hmm, had some weird dreams lately and sleep thing occuring recently.

 

Like the last two days I've awoken to find work and books that were in my draw when I went to sleep to be open and on my desk when I wake up with my pen there with my desk-side lamp on, and I have no recolection of doing this. It's quite strange... and disconecerting to wake up to.

 

And what was also strange that I had this Japanese dream which this guy kept talking Japanese and I was secretly in this houe watching childdren watch some TV show and I couldn't understand the man, he was drawing stuff in the snow and giving me peices of paper with writing, and in the end of it I understood him, but when I was talking to him about supermarkets, weirdly enough. I then woke up but I remerberd him saying "okimasu". I was telling some friends about it later that day ad one of them was this Japanese girl and she said apparently that means "wake up" and I looked it up and it's true.

Now I did kinda birefly study Japanese but that was a year back and I only did it for a while and I don't remember coming accross that word before that dream.. So I'm kinda freeaked

[Sarka]

Dreams are essential to live! It's not directly confounding on deaths, but there's definately a corrolation. Stopping your brain from dreaming means reducing brain activity, which people can only theorise about. Most people agree that the brain is doing something necessary when you're dreaming, that it can't really do when you're awake as it's too busy processing new information all teh time.

 

It's been shown that alcohol inflicts upon REM's occurance, which can explain why you don't seem to get a good night's sleep after drinking, and why you're tired when you're hung-over - because you never got teh REM sleep you needed.

 

If your dreams are seriously worrying you, either stop taking teh cheese or go see your doctor.

 

I do eat an awufl lot of cheese. Although my dreams are realated to real life they just seem like extremes of everything all at once.

 

And are dreams very selective what you can remember. Like the dream I had last night I can remmeber a moment, and I can can remember the touch, the smell, the sounds and everyhting. However, I cannot remember anythign else fomr my dream. Why is my memory just remembering that? Or are dreams just unknown in the world of scientists?

[Infinete]

Hmm, had some weird dreams lately and sleep thing occuring recently.........

I then woke up but I remerberd him saying "okimasu". I was telling some friends about it later that day ad one of them was this Japanese girl and she said apparently that means "wake up" and I looked it up and it's true.

 

thats very freaky, dont know how you heard that, also the fact that it ment wake up, as if this man wanted you to stop sleeping, lol crazy, also i sleep badly, i cant sleep most days till at least 1-3 am, if im talking to friends i may not sleep till 4am, ony on a weekend though, an i get up like 7;30 on a college day, it never seems to affect me though, allthough when im tired, i seem to become more open and honest, like i have less controll over my bdy than usual, and for some reason if im really tired, ill barely remeber the convo i was having right befor i fell alseep, also i too can only sleep facing the right weird huh.

[Dieter]

I love to sleep but I never seem to get in my bed before midnight. Sometimes it's schoolwork, sometimes it's just browsing around.

[AshMat]

I'm due a lucid, i remembered my last 3 dreams now.

I slept shit mlast nghit though, i was palying pc about 20 seconds before i went to bed.. took me about an hour and a half

[Strider]

I'm due a lucid, i remembered my last 3 dreams now

 

I want one, im good at remembering dreams but never had a lucid one