Sleep Hygiene
If you search for the term sleep hygiene, you get articles like THIS and THIS which talk about having a regular bedtime routine, keeping to a consistent schedule and so forth. This is not that kind of an article.
A lot of this is about actual hygiene and how it impacts sleep. Cleanliness of your sleep area seems to be a largely overlooked issue in such articles and I think that's a huge mistake.
When I have talked to friends on the internet about sleep issues, the first thing I have suggested is just thoroughly clean the bedroom -- vacuum, dust, pull the bed away from the wall and vacuum under it, strip the bed and wash absolutely everything on it the same day.
Sometimes, just thoroughly cleaning the bedroom and bedding helps tremendously to improve sleep quality. People sometimes didn't realize how dusty and dirty the area was.
If that is not enough, there are lots of things you can try while still staying within some kind of "normal" bed arrangement for your typical North American household.
These options are generally aimed at eliminating allergens and reducing dust mites in the bed and bedding. I've tried many of these things over the years and found them helpful.
I also have no upholsetered furniture in the house and no particle board furniture. I try to avoid or limit things like carpeting and curtains to the best of my ability.
So if just cleaning up your sleep area is failing to get you a good night's sleep, you can go LOTS further in your search for a good night's sleep, but I'm trying to not freak people out and this is intended as kind of "first steps" that should be more generally applicable, even if your issues are not extreme.
I also had to do some nutritional intervention on my brain chemistry after doing 22 months of withdrawal from about nine different prescription medications.
The first thing I did after getting off most of those drugs was a yeast cleanse diet. For about three or four months, I ate a lot of yogurt, plain salads, raw or grilled veggies and grilled meats (no breading) while avoiding yeasty foods, like bread or cheese, and limiting my consumption of sweets and carbs.
I also began taking Co-Q-10 in the morning about 12 to 14 hours before I wanted to go to bed and I sometimes took a very small dose of melatonin about 30 minutes before bedtime. I'm very sensitive to Melatonin and had to look for very low dose pills and took like a tenth the recommended dose that I had read about because a normal dose made me feel like I couldn't fully wake up for two days.
Below is what someone told me which I acted on and then repeated all over the internet for years. It was only later that I tried to look this stuff up online and found myself wholly unable to find citations to back up a lot of what my source had told me which fit with my actual first-hand experience of acting on their advice.
Co-Q-10 is the co-enzyme of Melatonin and it is made in the body in a 17-step process, which means it is easy to become deficient because if you are missing a component at any stage in the process, you can find yourself short. You tend to become deficient as you get older and it gets recommended as one of those things you should probably take some of after age 35 or so.
It does the opposite of Melatonin and wakes the brain up. If you take it, your body will have a small spike of Melatonin about 12 to 14 hours later, so you can take it without also taking Melatonin in the evening as a gentle means to straighten out your internal circadian clock.
You probably need to experiment with exactly when you take it and track it in your journal. I kept hearing 12 hours, but for me it seemed like 14 hours later was when the Melatonin spike occured.
I took a whole lot of it for years to straighten out my fried brain chemistry from taking so many prescription drugs. I just had gotten to the point where I couldn't sleep properly and I was also having lots of nightmares to the point of being afraid to sleep and it was a really horrible experience. Co-Q-10 really made a big difference in helping me turn that around.
My recollection is that it is also heart and lung support and I needed it for those reasons as well. I took just a WHOLE lot and it's not cheap (which I'm not recommending -- I have a genetic disorder and my body is weird, so I am just saying what I did, not what YOU should do). I kept stocking up when I would find a good sale.
I think magnesium is one of the key components and I haven't taken Co-Q-10 in years, but I try to stay on top of my magnesium status. I get light and noise sensitive when I'm deficient in magnesium, so when I start reacting strongly to noises and lights, it's time to get some magnesium-rich foods in me.
The other big thing that can really interfere with sleep is mold in the home. Mold is more active at night and you are more vulnerable when you sleep, so your body may put off sleeping until the sun comes up to protect itself.
When I find myself going to bed at dawn, it's generally a mold issue. So look for mold issues if you find you tend to be up most of the night and then sleep until noon or later.
Sleep is very important to getting healthier. This is especially true if you are trying to heal neurological issues. As I've talked about elsewhere, the brain only "takes out the trash" when you sleep and it is on a separate system for that process than the rest of the body.
So if you are trying to heal the brain, you need to work at getting a good night's sleep. It's essential to the ability to do repair work on the brain.
A lot of this is about actual hygiene and how it impacts sleep. Cleanliness of your sleep area seems to be a largely overlooked issue in such articles and I think that's a huge mistake.
When I have talked to friends on the internet about sleep issues, the first thing I have suggested is just thoroughly clean the bedroom -- vacuum, dust, pull the bed away from the wall and vacuum under it, strip the bed and wash absolutely everything on it the same day.
Sometimes, just thoroughly cleaning the bedroom and bedding helps tremendously to improve sleep quality. People sometimes didn't realize how dusty and dirty the area was.
If that is not enough, there are lots of things you can try while still staying within some kind of "normal" bed arrangement for your typical North American household.
These options are generally aimed at eliminating allergens and reducing dust mites in the bed and bedding. I've tried many of these things over the years and found them helpful.
- Wash feather pillows and down comforters frequently or get rid of them.
- Replace standard pillows with foam pillows or buckwheat pillows.
- Get rid of wool bedding.
- Sun your mattress.
- If your mattress is old, you could buy a new one.
- Thoroughly clean wherever you store spare bedding and wash ALL bedding stored therein.
- Sleep on 100 percent cotton sheets, no polyester blend.
- Wash your bedding more frequently than you have been.
- Make sure you are using hypoallergenic cleaning products, like peroxide in place of bleach.
I also have no upholsetered furniture in the house and no particle board furniture. I try to avoid or limit things like carpeting and curtains to the best of my ability.
So if just cleaning up your sleep area is failing to get you a good night's sleep, you can go LOTS further in your search for a good night's sleep, but I'm trying to not freak people out and this is intended as kind of "first steps" that should be more generally applicable, even if your issues are not extreme.
I also had to do some nutritional intervention on my brain chemistry after doing 22 months of withdrawal from about nine different prescription medications.
The first thing I did after getting off most of those drugs was a yeast cleanse diet. For about three or four months, I ate a lot of yogurt, plain salads, raw or grilled veggies and grilled meats (no breading) while avoiding yeasty foods, like bread or cheese, and limiting my consumption of sweets and carbs.
I also began taking Co-Q-10 in the morning about 12 to 14 hours before I wanted to go to bed and I sometimes took a very small dose of melatonin about 30 minutes before bedtime. I'm very sensitive to Melatonin and had to look for very low dose pills and took like a tenth the recommended dose that I had read about because a normal dose made me feel like I couldn't fully wake up for two days.
Below is what someone told me which I acted on and then repeated all over the internet for years. It was only later that I tried to look this stuff up online and found myself wholly unable to find citations to back up a lot of what my source had told me which fit with my actual first-hand experience of acting on their advice.
Co-Q-10 is the co-enzyme of Melatonin and it is made in the body in a 17-step process, which means it is easy to become deficient because if you are missing a component at any stage in the process, you can find yourself short. You tend to become deficient as you get older and it gets recommended as one of those things you should probably take some of after age 35 or so.
It does the opposite of Melatonin and wakes the brain up. If you take it, your body will have a small spike of Melatonin about 12 to 14 hours later, so you can take it without also taking Melatonin in the evening as a gentle means to straighten out your internal circadian clock.
You probably need to experiment with exactly when you take it and track it in your journal. I kept hearing 12 hours, but for me it seemed like 14 hours later was when the Melatonin spike occured.
I took a whole lot of it for years to straighten out my fried brain chemistry from taking so many prescription drugs. I just had gotten to the point where I couldn't sleep properly and I was also having lots of nightmares to the point of being afraid to sleep and it was a really horrible experience. Co-Q-10 really made a big difference in helping me turn that around.
My recollection is that it is also heart and lung support and I needed it for those reasons as well. I took just a WHOLE lot and it's not cheap (which I'm not recommending -- I have a genetic disorder and my body is weird, so I am just saying what I did, not what YOU should do). I kept stocking up when I would find a good sale.
I think magnesium is one of the key components and I haven't taken Co-Q-10 in years, but I try to stay on top of my magnesium status. I get light and noise sensitive when I'm deficient in magnesium, so when I start reacting strongly to noises and lights, it's time to get some magnesium-rich foods in me.
The other big thing that can really interfere with sleep is mold in the home. Mold is more active at night and you are more vulnerable when you sleep, so your body may put off sleeping until the sun comes up to protect itself.
When I find myself going to bed at dawn, it's generally a mold issue. So look for mold issues if you find you tend to be up most of the night and then sleep until noon or later.
Sleep is very important to getting healthier. This is especially true if you are trying to heal neurological issues. As I've talked about elsewhere, the brain only "takes out the trash" when you sleep and it is on a separate system for that process than the rest of the body.
So if you are trying to heal the brain, you need to work at getting a good night's sleep. It's essential to the ability to do repair work on the brain.
