get more sleep while sleeping?

[Mint_Sauce]

If you want to sleep better during the night then just eat and drink healthily (cut out caffeine and all that). Don't eat or drink anything for at least 3 hours before sleeping either. Also, if you have streetlights outside or any light pollution think about fitting blackout blinds so it's pitch black in your bedroom. I would think that by just doing that you'll find you awake feeling far more refreshed and the sleep you do get will do more for you.

 

[Smiley Man]

thats bad. I only get it a bit after a heavy weekend with some nasty nightmares.

Eating oranges is suppose to help with sleeping as it 5thp (get from health food store) this stuff is suppose to help builbup of serotonin which controls mood, emotion and stuff. Not tried it but you could try some if you cant sleep that well.

5htp is bad before sleep - gives you nigthmares

sleeping after being awake for 48+ hours is fun, i can slowly feel parts of my body switch off, first is the visual bit so the room is moving all over the place

hallucinating in the period between awake-asleep and alseep-awake is perfectly nornmal, can be a bit scary thohgh when you dont expect it

i get it every night so im used to it now, lying in bed trying to sleep and BAM paralysed and seeing and hearing things, i get it worse when i wake up though, can get the sleep paralysis and hallucinations about 5-6 times, usually i find the auditory ones dont come on instantly so if you can shake yourself out fo it you do get em. the visual ones are only really if you open your eyes, ive seen some strange things i can tell you luckily cos you're faily sedated its not too bad

even though i get all that crap and wake up a few times i still seem to sleep well enough

edit - as for sleeping in a room with no noise or light at all - i can never seem to sleep if its like that, the lack of sensory input makes me start to hallucinate

edit 2 - alcohol induced coma and sleep are totally different one is where you're not fully unconcious and your body repairs itself and you can be aroused and the other is where your concious mind switches off totally, its like *blink* "where'd 4 hours go?" and you'd still be out cold if the space shuttle took off from your desk

 

[scaramanga182]

I've looked into this a little because I work awkward shifts and I'm trying to optimise my sleeping.

Sleeping is a surprisingly active event. It's not like going into standby, which I sort of assumed it was. I had the idea that the higher functions of your brain went on standby while physical maintainence was stepped up (you heal more when asleep). In fact, there's more brain activity during some parts of sleep than when you're awake. In that respect, the OP is wrong about how much energy is used.

There are 5 distinct stages of sleeping, which can be detected by medical scanning kit, particularly brain scanning. Stages 1 and 2 are light sleep, stages 3 and 4 are deep sleep, stage 5 is REM sleep. The stages repeat in cycles that usually last between 80 and 100 minutes. The routine is 1,2,3,4,3,2,REM. That routine takes the 80 to 100 minutes in total, then it's back to stage 1 again.

If you sleep for more than 1 cycle (as you should), the total length of a cycle remains pretty much constant, but the length of stages 3, 4 and REM varies. The longer you sleep for, the more REM and less stage 3 and 4 you get.

I saw a documentary on this sort of thing and it claimed we have these different stages because of evolution. Apparently it started when we were living in caves as there were more preditors about so we evolved this sleeping pattern so that there were periods where we could quickly become active again, basically so we didn't get eaten!

 

[Bones]

I woke up paralysed once and looked at my door and saw Death walk into my room, slowly made his way over to bed and extend his hand towards me. The next day i was so paranoid i was gonna die or something.

now back to the topic

 

[mishima]

It's funny you should say that - he's always coughing and spluttering like he's got a constant bout of flu. Never really though anything of it until you said that.

He runs a web hosting business that he built from the ground up, he has some important customers and runs it mostly alone so he's always running around restarting servers/writing webpages so I can understand why he does it.

I do worry about his health though, it can't be good for you at all.

When you think about it the average person sleeps 12-8 roughly, so around 7-8 hours sleep. The other 17 hours is spent awake, active, using energy. Some of the energy we use isn't always physical it can be mental. That's why students when they have exams are encouraged to get plenty of sleep because revision and exams can be really draining to the body and mind. I think sleep isn't just a rest for the body it's rest for the mind also. So when you balance it 8 hours sleep against 17 hours activity isn't very balanced. Just imagine someone who has 3 hours sleep - they are active for 21 hours!!

Sure enough your body does adapt and get used to it but the long-term effects are unknown. Those who I know who have 3-4 hours sleep have had quite serious health problems - whether this is related or not I don't know exactly. But one of them has motoneuon's disease which started developing around 3 years ago he's in his 60s now and in a pretty bad way.

 

[Putty]

As far as I can tell from my reading, light sleepers spend more time in stages 1 and 2, whereas heavy sleepers spend more time in stages 3 and 4. If you're woken during stages 3 and 4, you'll be in a mess. Ever had one of those days where you know you had 7 or 8 hours sleep but you're still a zombie for hours after you wake up? You were woken during stage 3 or 4. If you're woken during REM sleep, you will probably remember vivid dreams. You may also wake up paralysed, as you are always paralysed during REM sleep so that you don't move to match your dreams. It's happened to me - scared the hell out of me.

Thats happened to me a few times in the past before, quite unnerving! That was a good read by the way

 

[badgermonkey]

Sleep with a beautiful woman, that brings much good sleep.

Haha, I actually sleep a hell of a lot better if I sleep in bed with anyone hot

 

[Sirrel Squirrel]

I find if I watch something funny in bed before going to sleep I can sleep sound until my alarm goes off, if I just go straight to bed I get restless and keep thinking about things, which makes me wake up easily if I hear something.

 

[Mp4]

Every night is diffrent for me, i usuahlly go to bed at 10:30pm , then my alarm is set for 6am so a good 8 & half hours kip , at work i do am7-4pm shift and sometimes i work through my lunch (1 hour) and go home an hour early am7-3pm. By then i get home and i feel shatterd, i've been ill quite a bit the past 2 months just got shot of a cold last week. Either my immune system is dog or lack of sleep i'm a light sleeper also , any noise i wake up , or if im having an odd dream or something then i wake up. What the annoying one is waking up an hour before your alarm goes off... that winds me right up!

 

[Angilion]

Every night is diffrent for me, i usuahlly go to bed at 10:30pm , then my alarm is set for 6am so a good 8 & half hours kip , at work i do am7-4pm shift and sometimes i work through my lunch (1 hour) and go home an hour early am7-3pm. By then i get home and i feel shatterd, i've been ill quite a bit the past 2 months just got shot of a cold last week. Either my immune system is dog or lack of sleep i'm a light sleeper also , any noise i wake up , or if im having an odd dream or something then i wake up. What the annoying one is waking up an hour before your alarm goes off... that winds me right up!

It may sound counter-intuitive, but try sleeping 7.5 hours instead of 8.5 hours. 90 minutes is an average sleep cycle and you'd be better off with 5 sleep cycles per sleep than with 5 and two-thirds sleep cycles.

 

[solitude]

I watch Family Guy before going to bed, makes me feel a lot better about this crazy world around us.

Also, people have mentioned that some only sleep 3 hours etc. a night. I used to have a crazy work schedule from 9am to 3am, did this most days for a year, occasionally working over 24 hrs solid. I was fine when I did it and got used to it, occasionally took naps at lunch time too. But the moment I stopped I came down with all sorts of health problems. And now, 4 years on, simply cannot cope without 8hrs sleep a night and doing a 24hr day seems impossible.

 

[badgermonkey]

I find 4 hours and I'm awake and refreshed, at about 8 hours I'm groggy, at roughly 10 hours and above I struggle to get out of bed.

Anything in between them I'm just really tired.

 

[Sone]

I find 4 hours and I'm awake and refreshed, at about 8 hours I'm groggy, at roughly 10 hours and above I struggle to get out of bed.

Anything in between them I'm just really tired.

this thread has got me thinking, i used to sleep 10pm - 7am and be knackered in the mornings. I then switched to 11pm - 7am (college work tonight) and i'm still tired but no as bad. Might try cutting more sleep out to see what happens

 

[Atari]

I've looked into this a little because I work awkward shifts and I'm trying to optimise my sleeping.

Sleeping is a surprisingly active event. It's not like going into standby, which I sort of assumed it was. I had the idea that the higher functions of your brain went on standby while physical maintainence was stepped up (you heal more when asleep). In fact, there's more brain activity during some parts of sleep than when you're awake. In that respect, the OP is wrong about how much energy is used.

There are 5 distinct stages of sleeping, which can be detected by medical scanning kit, particularly brain scanning. Stages 1 and 2 are light sleep, stages 3 and 4 are deep sleep, stage 5 is REM sleep. The stages repeat in cycles that usually last between 80 and 100 minutes. The routine is 1,2,3,4,3,2,REM. That routine takes the 80 to 100 minutes in total, then it's back to stage 1 again.

If you sleep for more than 1 cycle (as you should), the total length of a cycle remains pretty much constant, but the length of stages 3, 4 and REM varies. The longer you sleep for, the more REM and less stage 3 and 4 you get.

As far as I can tell from my reading, light sleepers spend more time in stages 1 and 2, whereas heavy sleepers spend more time in stages 3 and 4. If you're woken during stages 3 and 4, you'll be in a mess. Ever had one of those days where you know you had 7 or 8 hours sleep but you're still a zombie for hours after you wake up? You were woken during stage 3 or 4. If you're woken during REM sleep, you will probably remember vivid dreams. You may also wake up paralysed, as you are always paralysed during REM sleep so that you don't move to match your dreams. It's happened to me - scared the hell out of me.

Your best bet is to make sure you sleep a whole number of cycles (the 1,2,3,4,3,2,REM cycle). How many cycles is less important. Nice idea, but without quite sophisticated monitoring equipment, you can't be sure what stage you're in. You can start with a guess of 90 minutes per sleep cycle, with 7 and a half hours being best for most people (5 cycles).

What you eat before sleeping might have an effect. I think a full stomach reduces the amount of deep sleep, which isn't a good idea. Drugs often have the same effect, particularly nicotine and alcohol. You'll be deeply unconscious with enough alcohol, but that isn't the same as good sleep.

Quite an interesting read, I used to get sleep-paralysis when I was younger, the weird thing was being able to feel from the waist up, but not feel my legs in some instances. I've also noticed that if I wake up when I'm sleeping heavily, I'll hear things which I presume (or should I say HOPE) are hallucinations, things like loud footsteps or doors opening.

I've also found that I wake up randomly early in the morning and am totally awake, whereas sometimes I'll wake up in the afternoon and be completely dead for a good half an hour to an hour. Quite odd really, I guess it's down to oversleeping.

 

[Toekiller]

Bought myself a Bodyclock last week, which wakes you up by gradually brightning the room over a set period. If your not awake by the end of the 'sunrise', only then does the alarm go off.

 

[Angilion]

I've also found that I wake up randomly early in the morning and am totally awake, whereas sometimes I'll wake up in the afternoon and be completely dead for a good half an hour to an hour. Quite odd really, I guess it's down to oversleeping.

I think it's what I mentioned earlier - waking up partway through a sleep cycle as opposed to waking up at the end of one.

 

[Atari]

That's actually a more feasible explanation than I offered. I have noticed when it happens, it's usually when I wake up mid-dream.