I’ve been putting off writing this post for a long time. But when I read that Gordon Ryan is retiring from competition due to stomach problems, it reminded me that I have a responsibility to share what I’ve learned. Stomach problems, even when not life-threatening, can be debilitating, painful, and drag on for years. If I can help even one person recover from gastritis more quickly, it’s worth sharing this post.
Tag: melatonin Page 1 of 2
I’ve been sleeping better–much better–and it feels like a good time to do a complete roundup of all the methods that appear to have helped me, and also mention a few sacred cows of sleep tips that didn’t seem to help at all. For those of you new to this blog, my sleep went to hell in mid-January after the deaths of two family members within a single week. It’s been a slow climb back to a more-or-less normal sleep pattern ever since. Here’s what worked:
I saw two dead bodies in the same week, and I stopped sleeping.
The first body was my father-in-law, at his viewing. He looked natural, as if peacefully asleep. But his total stillness betrayed this illusion.
My uncle died a week later, at an assisted living facility in Concord. He’d been estranged from our family for more than twenty years, but he’d reached out recently, and we were all getting to know each other again. He’d been ill for a long time, with COPD, but that week he had a stroke, and died a few days later. The morning he died, my mom and I drove to Concord, and waited in his room for the mortician. My uncle was emaciated, and pale, and obviously dead, but still warm. I helped move his body from his bed to the gurney. He weighed almost nothing.
This is the last week of summer for Oakland Public Schools — school starts on Monday. We let bedtime for our six-year-old slip a little later over most of the summer. Even on days she had camp, the camp drop-off was usually later than her regular 8:30am school day. Like many kids she gets a huge energy burst right as it’s time to go to bed, so bedtime is often a struggle.
Ever since we did our no artificial light experiment several years ago, we’ve been turning lights way down in the evening. Even so, our daughter wasn’t getting to sleep until 9:45pm up until last week. Knowing we’d all have to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 7am once school began, we started to worry about how to get back on schedule.
Luckily we remembered how well turning off the lights had worked in terms of getting all of us to bed earlier, so we tried that. If our daughter hadn’t already brushed her teeth before the sun went down, we allowed her to bring her flashlight to the bathroom, but no overhead lights, no lamps, etc. When it’s dark, it’s time for sleep … so get the book reading in early while you still can.
We’ve added some fun rituals: lighting candles, a few minutes reading by a low-lumen wind-up flashlight, the adventure of getting to bed in the semi-dark.
Short explanation: blue-wavelength light (emitted by light bulbs and screens, but not candles) prevents serotonin from converting into melatonin. The latter makes you sleepy. So keeping lights off in the evening helps you get sleepy (and thus go to sleep) earlier. Think camping.
The other factor is FOMO: fear-of-missing-out. With all the lights off in the house, our daughter is less concerned with what we are doing while she’s supposed to be going to sleep. A dark house seems more boring, which in this case is a good thing.
So the experiment is working … we’ve shaved 15 minutes off of bedtime every night since we started, and last night she was asleep by 8:45. The goal is 8:30 so we’re getting close. Most kids her age need at least 10 hours (at least if you want a kid in a good mood who can pay attention to stuff), so that works.
As for myself and Kia, we’re still staying up late on the laptops, or reading. I’d like to be getting to sleep a little earlier myself (if for no other reason than to get up before my kid and get some writing in), so I’ll probably put a “devices off by 10pm” rule in place for myself. Even with f.lux installed, computers keep me up later than just reading by lamp light.