When it comes to sleep, alcohol may as well be coffee...

[elfs]

Under the headline of "What gets measured gets managed," I've been taking notes on what I eat and drink and do, in order to figure out what works and what doesn't with respect to getting a good night's sleep.

Here's what I've learned: to get a decent night's sleep, I must stop all caffeine by 4pm, possibly earlier. That's not a surprise, a lot of people tell you that.

I was annoyed to discover that I must also cut off all alcohol by 7pm. Any alcohol at all, even one glass of wine, after that appears to disrupt the first REM cycle by a significant amount.

Since my REM cycles are about 130 minutes long, that means that I lose 1/3rd to 1/4 of my useful sleep period. That's not good. So, lovely, I can't even have that useful glass of wine at night. Not if I want to get a decent night's sleep.

I did try the so-called "elephant tranquilizer": Step into the shower set to ALL COLD just before jumping into bed. Great Cthulhu's Ghost, that worked. As shocking as the experience might seem it wasn't that painful, and when I got under the covers I fell asleep instantly.

Comments

[shunra.livejournal.com]

In me, the alcohol thing is age-related. If I have even one glass of wine, my sleep is horrible (interrupted, dream-filled with the most disturbing, and I wake up irrevocably at an ungodly hour, usually 2-3 hours before the normal wakeup time.)

It didn't use to work that way.

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, how do you know that your REM cycles are 130 minutes long?

I seem to be the opposite; a glass of wine a while before bed and I sleep like the dead. But, I'm really sensitive to light and noise and that sensitivity is dampened by alcohol, so I think that's why it works well for me.

If I sleep on wet hair, the results are disastrous

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

so showering before bed is a lousy solution for me. However, I do use cold packs--the soft refreezable Ace cold compress type are the best. I actually use Walgreens brand. Some nights, I go through three of them, as my body temperature can be quite erratic, and my husband likes the bedroom warmer than I do. I often wake up several times per night because my temperature has gone up or the room has become too hot for me. I get up, trot to the kitchen, grab a cold pack and deposit one that's warmed up, and go back to bed, plop a cold pack on my skull, and am usually back to sleep within 10 minutes. They're invaluable for middle-of-the-night migraines as well, although I get fewer of those now that I control my temperature, I find.