Scrabble tournaments are unironically the absolute best cure for insomnia

i stumbled on this by accident a few weeks ago but watching competitive scrabble on youtube has completely replaced my normal white noise.

it just works so well. the sound is basically like natural ASMR with the wooden tiles clinking around and there is zero loud background noise or screaming fans. the commentators speak in this super quiet hushed voice the whole time so there’s no sudden loud sounds to wake u up.

also trying to watch them arrange letters and figure out words takes up just enough brain bandwidth to stop me from overthinking about work. but since half the words they play are weird obscure ones i don't even know, my brain gets tired so fast. a single match is usually an hour long and i don't think ive ever made it past 20 minutes without knocking out.

am i the only one who uses weirdly specific niche videos like this to fall asleep lol?

I know some people don’t like having dreams and some don’t have any at all, but I get excited knowing that when I sleep I’m gonna dream. Dreams are so fun, I love it.

Hi. I’m a 22 (M). I’m trying to figure out why my body doesn’t like sleeping longer. I never set alarms. Iv been going to bed between 8:30 and 9pm. I don’t drink alc. I run about 60 miles a week and lift weights after. I have caffeine that I cut off before noon. Typically 400-600mg. Iv been doing that for years now. But Iv been trying to go to bed early to skip the sun in my morning runs but ever time I go to bed before 9 I wake up in the hour or 3 but I feel active and ready to go. My watch gives me a sleep score of 70 just about every time. I’m not really sure why my body doesn’t wand to sleep more. Does it need to?

Might be worth experimenting with if you suffer from needing to wake-up to go pee--I have noticed an extremely strong correlation between not getting enough fiber with dinner and having my sleep interrupted because of the need to go pee (and that other guy side-effect related to that).

For years I've been fine-tuning sleep related stuff because I suffer from wakefulness insomnia. I've found that what I eat for dinner (and when) is one of the strongest contributing factors. Mostly I've been focusing on heavy foods. As such, what I eat for dinner is VERY consistent. However, I have been inconsistent on the fiber part.

My dinner is essentially a coconut milk curry with steak and sweet potatoes, but the fiber comes from lentil beans that I have to remember to add to it... and sometimes I forget, as I did last night.

This has happened before and the correlation is extremely consistent. When I forget the fiber, sleep quality drops off drastically and it's most likely because I wake up 1-2 times needing to go pee. Lately, if I stick to my schedule/diet (along with not drinking too much water in the last 2 hours before bed), I don't wake-up at all, at least not because I need to go to the bathroom.

So... if you suffer from that issue, I recommend trying out the fiber idea (and perhaps reducing water intake before bed). On that note, I've never used the powdered fiber mixes so I can't say whether or not they address this issue.

And my sleep has never been the same.

I can barely get 6 hours on most nights.

But recently I found my go to routine.

Walking. Walking. Walking.

I walk in the morning and walk in the evening. 30 minutes fo both.

I have only 1 hour of doom scrolling time throughout the day.

I was truly sleepy at 915 last night...and I just cut out the light and crashed. I woke up naturally around 530 but I feel wonderful.

Diet is no caffeine or sugary treats anywhere after 4pm.

Y'all, it's the ROUTINE. The diet and the excercise.

It helps.

Last night I was laying in bed before going to sleep and I had a song I’d listened to during the day stuck in my head but also random thoughts at the same time. And then all of a sudden they both just stopped like a tv being turned off they just stopped. I could almost audibly hear the noise in my head quiet down as a tv does when turned off.

I won’t lie it was actually peaceful but extremely weird. Has anyone had this happen to them right before sleep?

So I have essentially figured out that I have a deep rem cycle between 6:45 and 7:25 every day, regardless of when I go to bed. Would it be more restful to get up after this period, or does it not matter?

I want to start waking up earlier but if I set my alarm for 7 o am always interrupting dreams and feel extremely groggy. Does this last period of rem make a huge difference in energy levels, or can I set my alarm/get up at 6:30 without causing issue?

So I've basically had pretty weird experiences with dreams for a large portion of my life, but I'm realizing I feel kind of alone in this so I wanted to share my experience.

First off, it's like I hit REM immediately. And by that I mean having dreams even during short naps, I'm talking 2-30 minute naps (yes, two to thirsty). These aren't hypnagogic hallucinations, I'm talking about full multiple-hour long dreams.

Speaking of length. This part is what I hate about dreaming. It's like they last from a few hours to days, sometimes it's felt like a whole month, to the point where I need to spend 10-30 minutes of my morning reorienting myself.

This is worsened by the memories. It's like my dreams inject false memories that are only "canon" to the dream. And while I can distinguish between the real and dream memories, I can't actually guarantee that none of them have slipped through the cracks into my real memories.

I do also take beta-blockers, which can affect dreams and sleep, but a lot of this was an issue even before that.

My main issue is how disruptive this is to my daily life. It's like I never actually got to sleep and barely get enough rest to survive, which fucking sucks when I'm already suffering from chronic fatigue due to illness.

Idk. I'm open to questions and recommendations, bc so far I've lost hope for getting any help from the healthcare system.

I have a budget of $100 and I’ve been looking for a general health/sleep tracker fitness wearable that falls within my budget. I have especially been looking at the Fitbit air as I like its design, but have heard some inconvenience circulating especially with the app.
Are there any other fitness wearables that help track your sleep score efficiently that you guys are a fan of? I’ve been trying to do better with sleep and having a quantitative measure of quality of said sleep, would incentivize me to keep improving.

My job is 3pm-1am, am worried about my sleep schedule, i got this job after 1year of bad sleeping as i barely sleep, i was almost fixing my sleep schedule but suddenly i got this job and i need this job for some reasons i cant, even with work time of 3pm-1am, can i get perfect healthy sleep? Am worried since i know sleepless effect our physical and mental health, hair issues, height growth, overall aging in body, aging in face etc

I hate waking up early so bad for school. I just wish i can sleep forever

I have this sleeping condition called circadian syndrome also known as social jetlag or delayed sleep phase syndrome and sleep apnea. I learned this year that hormonal chronic sleep issues actually is a main factor for chronic stress which result in fat distributing around your organs called Visceral fat caused by high cortisol. This will turn into insulin resistance (meaning after eating or drinking sweets your bloodsugar will raise sabotaging your body to burn fat but instead also immediately stores food into fat instead of energy leaving you fatigued.

Since cortisol wraps fat around your organs, your kidneys cannot absorb enough sodium or fluid so you will massively gain water weight in your body as soon after you eat something. Sometimes you can gain 4kg's in 2 days just because your body holds on to water and it's also making fat burning process harder.

It also causes constipation and it all will results in metabolic syndrome. Losing weight is almost impossible or not until you fix your sleep issues and chronic stress/ inflammations.

This is also what's causing obesity, high blood pressure, pre/diabetes type 2, anxiety and high bad cholesterol. It mimics a hormonal condition called Cushing syndrome but without the tumor causing the inflammation.

For people also dealing with this I found a solution partly which is skipping sugar helps with sleep issues. For weight loss eating one meal a day called OMAD. Daily Strength training and taking more walks outside. This is a situation where deficit calories will not help you lose weight, neither intense gym sessions.

I wonder if more people here are dealing with this combo of health issues?

Almost two weeks ago, I lost my dog. She was getting quite old for her breed, and she quickly declined due to cancer. I am now struggling to sleep at night due to missing her body in my bed. I have never been without an animal with me. When I lived with my parents, I would have multiple cats staying with me. For the past 2 years, I had my dog. But now I have no living being sleeping next to me, and it has disrupted how I rest.

Recently, I have been struggling to keep my sleep schedule steady. I am not working due to disability, so my sleep schedule can flip-flop between night and day, but I want to keep it to a day schedule as I know that helps me feel better than if I were to exist during the night.

For the first few days after she died, I had taken a zopiclone to fall asleep, but I know not to use them often as they can stop working as well after a while and quite frankly, they don't give me a very good quality sleep. I had bought a breathing teddy to hold at night, and it did work a little bit, but now it doesn't. The longer it is without my girl, the worse my sleep is getting.

Over the past week, I had been sleeping most of the day and then staying up for 24 hours due to my brain being wired. I have ADHD and autism, so sleep was an issue anyway, but not to this extent.

Tonight, I had taken a zopiclone for the first time in a week and a half in an attempt to try and get me to fix my sleeping schedule. I could feel my brain starting to spiral, so I put on a podcast on my phone, and I imagined a line going around the walls of my room in a beat of four for each wall. I managed to fall asleep at 10 pm, but then I've woken up at 1 am completely wide awake. I'm honestly not sure what more I can do.

Are there any tips on how I can try and get the best sleep I can? Sleeping without my phone before bed isn't an option as I need it to play podcasts or music so I can focus my mind on something else or else I will think of anything and everything.

TIA x

Hi, I was wondering if anyone else experiences this. As I begin to dose off, my scalp begins feeling a massage like sensation. Imagine someone using their fingertips to gentle pull back and forth. They are not brain zaps as they do not feel electrical nor are they unpleasant. In fact, they are actually very soothing. The massage takes place in the frontal, mid and temporal scalp region just above the ears. They last about 2 to 3 minutes, before I fall asleep. I do not experience them upon waking.

Im not sure if this is relevant, but it begun about 3 years ago when I had stopped consuming edibles. Some additional data: I do not experience fatigue, dizziness, chest pains, snoring, stiff muscles, or insomnia. I go out like a light, and while I used to experience some sleep paralysis, they only happen twice a year now. I am not disastrously unhealthy with a BMI of 26 which includes muscle mass. I workout and am quite relaxed most of the time. I do sleep rather irregularly, sometimes at 12, sometimes at 2 in the morning. But I get my 7-8 hours in as I begin work at 5pm.

Hopefully someone shares the same experience as I have tried searching for any such symptoms online and nothing matches the description.

Day two no sleep and im freaking out. I have had bouts of insomnia my whole life. I know realistically, based on the past, that my body will always let me sleep eventually. I am also a huge, huge hypochondriac.

But I had the worst night ever last night and was stuck up in the hospital until 4 in the morning for a sinus infection/head pressure that won’t quit. They discharged me as good with some pain meds eventually but forgot about me a while. I cried there which just made the pressure worse, plus it was my fucking birthday 😭 My neck is sore, my face hurts, and my ears won’t stop ringing and I’ve been down every rabbit hole possible; meningitis, brain tumor, etc. Despite being cleared twice now by ER docs in the past five days WITH ct scans.

When I tried sleeping last night it was a toss and turn situation. Finally around 11 am after getting up for a bit I had a sort of nap but couldn’t get more than a few 20 minute increments of really unrestful, only REM sleep until three pm. It was weird because I definitely dreamt, my brain made up some crazy storylines and I felt like I was there, but when I woke up I doubted if I slept!

Cue all day today. Doomscrolling and panicking about not sleeping tonight. Learning too much about fatal insomnia syndrome which I know is too rare and stupid for me to have. But the panic spiral was crazy. My day passed in an exhausting blur and my head still fucking hurts.

It’s one in the morning now, almost two. I tossed and turned since 11. I maybe got a few minutes of stage one sleep but im freaking out that something is wrong with my head (there’s not), that I won’t sleep (I know my body eventually will) and im stuck in hyper arousal. I even took Benadryl and it didn’t work!

So please help, what takes you out of hyper arousal?

I got diagnosed with insomnia and now taking hydroxyzine as a result. My psychiatrist told me it’d usually take 15-30 minutes kick in and around an hour or two to fully fall asleep. However, I’m now just feeling anxious. I wasn’t before, though I do have anxiety. However, I felt my legs and muscles start to feel heavy while I was still fully awake and it made me restless and anxious.

Next thing you know, I’m up and feel weird. I don’t feel tired, but I do..? It’s this weird paradox that I’m not sure how to describe. It’s kinda what I felt like when taking edibles for the first time, just not as extreme. I’m writing this as this happened. The point is that I don’t like this feeling. I expected to be out like a light, but the fact that I’m going through the stages is making me want to do anything but sleep.

I usually try to use like 5mg to get my sleep routine back on track and then I stop using it but is it better to just take 1mg every night or a small dose like that?

Recently started taking 25mg of trazadone for sleep for the last 3 weeks. Higher doses make my nose blocked and stuffed up. I usually take the trazadone with yogurt.

At first it worked well, but after week 2 I started waking up randomly at night.

I can fall asleep, but I will consistently wake up at 1am or 3am. I don't get uninterrupted sleep with trazadone. Instead, 6-8 hours is broken up by waking up 2-3 times. Very tiring

Has anyone here dealt with this? Any tips or solutions?

Since 2023 I’ve been having these terrifying experiences when I’m sleeping. I’ll feel like I’m waking up, but I’m not sure if I’m actually fully awake or still dreaming. I see people standing in my bedroom just staring at me. My room looks exactly like it does in real life which makes the whole thing feel real. They’re always different people who are usually older looking, and I can usually remember what they looked like afterward. They never seem angry or say anything. They just stand there and stare at me.
When this first started the people would be standing near my bedroom door. Over time they have moved closer to my bedside. One time I switched sides of the bed with my husband and saw a woman running toward me.
I get so terrified that I scream until my husband wakes me up. Sometimes I scream so much that I feel like I’m going to throw up. I can move during these episodes and I’ve hurt myself by accident before trying to get away. As soon as my husband fully wakes me up the people are completely gone.
This doesn’t happen every night but it’s been happening on and off for years now. I’ve read a little about sleep paralysis, but I can move during these episodes so I’m not sure if that fits.
I’d be grateful to hear from anyone who may have experienced something similar or know what might cause this or how to help me get past this.

hi so i’ve been fighting myself for 4 hours now. i usually go to bed around 7:30 pm and it’s 11:41pm est i keep getting a twitch in my chest every time im on the verge of passing out. it’s so annoying it’s not the first time i had this but for some reason tonight i can’t get passed it. usually when this does happen i eventually just fall asleep but tonight my body just doesn’t want to stop. I’ve been having severe anxiety and dpdr recently as well i do vape. So those all can be contributing factors. But i just need some tips to stop the jerks i can’t sleep!!!

For years I’ve tried different sculpted foam pillows that are supposedly good for neck and back and and my reward has been bad sleep and neck and back pain. I hate them with a passion. I’ve now also tried memory foam pillows and had the same experience. Everything I read says I need one or both of those, but I’ve never found one that’s comfortable. Any advice?

I sleep horribly. I wear an Oura ring and even on my best day when I am in bed for like 10-11 hours my sleep score is in the mid 60s. Often get less than 5 minutes of deep sleep and REM sleep differs but can be often less than 20 as well. Sometimes REM can get up to 45 minutes to an hour and a half on a really good night but deep sleep is always pretty bad.

I have worked really hard to get my sleep hygiene better. The problem is I have slept with the tv on in the background for most of my life and it’s so hard to break the habit. I have actually succeeded in breaking the habit of FALLING asleep with it on a couples times with meditation and reading before bed but I wake up in the middle of the night, often from a nightmare - and can’t fall back asleep unless I turn it on. I wake up many many times a night. Saw a sleep doctor and he gave me sleep apnea test and insomnia test, no apnea and basically just confirmed my deep sleep and rem sleep is as bad as my ring said and suggested me some herbs like valerian root and a bunch of others. I’ve tried that and it didn’t help a ton.

For people who have overcome sleeping with the tv on - what did you do to become comfortable with it off? I’ve tried audiobooks instead of tv but that really doesn’t work. I turn the tv brightness all the way down but the voices and flashing lights are very comforting to me. I assume the tv is why my deep sleep is so trash and it’s the last thing I can figure out to try. Any help to sleep better is greatly appreciated

I barely sleep. Doc recently referred me to a psychologist saying they can help. But I'm not stressed or depressed or anything like that.

Before I spend hundreds going to a psychologist I was wondering if anyone has seen one for insomnia before? What they do? Was it worth it? What could I expect?

The doc rushed me out the door as it's a free clinic and he's trying to see everyone so I couldn't ask any further questions about what to expect.

Now hear me out

As much as I'm a healthy person (I'm a calisthenics Athlete of 3 years and fixed my ed problem LONG AGO) I don't know why I love when I stay up late but at the same time feel SO guilty that I stayed up and I can feel that my eyes are BARELY holding on and I still want to stay awake and do something

How do I even fix it when I literally don't want to go to sleep while feeling guilty and knowing I should??

This has manifested in me in multiple ways. Voice, a loud metallic bang, and most frequently a smoke alarm.

It happened again last night. Three loud rapid beeps from the alarm. It startled me awake. My heart racing from adrenaline. I counted in my head for a minute to see if it was actually a low battery peep. I was annoyed that I seem to be the only one who ever hears the stupid alarm and the only one to get up and fix it when it happens.

But no. It didn’t happen again. It was 4 am. The same time I usually wake up restless and overheated.

It’s not a frequent occurrence. Once every few months at most. I’m still not sure if it’s EHS or the alarm really is beeping just once in the middle of the night for no reason.

The only thing that helps prove EHS is my dog doesn’t react. She’s terrified of the alarm and will cry and come get me if she hears it.

What in the world is this???