Weekend Plans Post: On Sleeping (Specifically, On Melatonin)
When I babysat a few months back, I was told that bedtime was 8PM. This was a surprise to me because, well, I don’t tend to go to bed at 8PM.
I was offered (and accepted) a couple of Melatonin chocolate drops (“For Kids”).
I was surprised to feel like I got hit by a truck about 20-30 minutes after taking them. It was just a little after 8 and I was ready for bed like you wouldn’t believe. I woke up at 3:30 and couldn’t believe how well I slept.
So, of course, a few days later, while at the grocery store, I found myself looking at Melatonin Gummies For Grownups. What’s the worst that could happen?, I asked myself.
And, wouldn’t you know it, I took them at 10:30 PM and woke up at 4:30.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I slept pretty good. And six hours of sleep isn’t bad, I guess. It’s just that, for the most part, when I went to bed before, I “slept in” until around 6:30 or 7.
Melatonin gave me an *AMAZING* six hours of sleep. But not, like, more than that.
And, yeah, that happened pretty much every time I took it.
So I’m back to sleeping without it but getting 7 or 8 hours again.
But I kinda miss that whole “getting hit by a truck” thing.
Back to jogging before bed, I guess.
This weekend will be spent relaxing (for various reasons, I’ve made it a long weekend) and so it’ll just be spent slowly doing errands, slowly doing chores, and slowly doing laundry while slowly levelling up in Diablo II. And getting 7-8 hours a night.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “Holden HZ Sandman panel van” by sv1ambo and is licensed under CC BY 2.0)
Melatonin has some known anti-inflammatory effects. There is some modest evidence that it reduces the severity of inflammation and “cytokine storm” symptoms in Covid patients. The earliest studies were “big data” things, where computers went through tens of thousands of medical histories and found people taking melatonin for other reasons were somewhat less likely to contract Covid and somewhat less likely to have severe symptoms. Biochemists are starting to figure out how, at least in a test tube, melatonin interferes with the cascade effects.
Full disclosure: I always carried melatonin on business trips to help with jet lag. I found it worked best to take it about 4:30 pm destination time, and never had the immediate “wall” effect JB describes. I came across the big data Covid studies early on and have been taking 3 mg daily for the last several months on the theory that it might help and (unlike, say, shooting up with bleach) it’s very unlikely to hurt.Report
I wish I had known about it when I was flying to Qatar, I tell you that much.
As it is, it strikes me as something appropriate for the (blessedly rare) nights where my brain is still going 100 miles per hour even though it’s midnight.Report
If you get the time release melatonin it will come in spurts to help you sleep longer. Also, you can get lower doses and take one at bedtime, then one later on if you wake up. If the dose is low enough, it won’t make you groggy the next day. Over the course of time you’ll not wake up for the middle of the night dose anywhere near as often.
Autoimmune patients are supposed to avoid it, because it can (allegedly) rev up the immune system and cause the body to attack itself. But for many of us with AI diseases where our sleeping and waking cycles is affected by the disease, it’s a godsend because a lack of sleep can aggravate autoimmune diseases as well. Six of one, half-dozen of the other. Personally I’ve never had flares taking melatonin like I did from a lack of sleep.
It’s been the greatest thing in the world for me after going a solid year waking up at 2 am courtesy of Sjogrens.Report
The time release stuff was the worst stuff! I woke up at 4:30 in the morning awake as heck.
I tried the “roll over and go back to sleep” trick that has worked so very many times when I blurrily look at the clock and the first number starts with a 4 but, this time, it didn’t work. I got up at 5 and started my day.
Some might say “you found a cheat code! Two extra hours a day!”
I am not among them.Report
I’m told some people don’t have an inner monologue and I wonder if they sleep like babies because my inner monologue is like that bad date that keeps saying, “And another thing…”
I’m my own worst date.
But over the years I taught myself some tricks, like visualizing complex diagrams (MMO skill trees work really well), and those tricks eventually make the dialogue stop and the visuals just fade into sleep… and I wake up with really cool build ideas (that never actually work).
Then I hear there are people who can’t visualize things in their brain and I wonder how they *ever* get to sleep.
Speaking of MMO’s I bought New World (by Amazon, heh) on a whim or maybe a demon’s urging. I was curious to see what a $Tillion could do with an MMO. So far? Not much more than a $Billion, or, honestly not much more than $100M has already done. Not the worst game I’ve ever wasted money on, but unless Bezos himself is personally playing I expect this to drown in a sea of meh… but not for about 10-yrs because that’s what a $Trillion MMO can languish on.
Otherwise tomorrow is the first day of Bow Season in the Valley and I plan to head out in the AM. Not that I have ever shot anything with my bow, nor have I ever even *seen* a deer during bow season. But, we’re out of venison. Which, in a non-political way, helps me realize why I don’t care about the eating bugs or eating manufactured chemical foods disguised as chicken/beef nonsense… I’ll always have venison, lamb, cabrito, chicken and beef for the family. Y’all are welcome to stop by to remember what real food tastes like.
So later today the 7-yo and I will head out to the woods to inspect the permanent stands, look for trails/scrapes and try to discern where a deer might be or amble by some time between 6-9 tomorrow.Report
For 30-some years I have been building a screenplay in my head — no notes, no writing things down — when I have trouble sleeping. I think it’s now just a reflex thing. I start working on the screenplay and my brain says, “Gotcha. Shutting down now…”Report
Nice… is it called Gigli 2?
For me it has to be non-verbal… literally me saying, “shhh, we’re looking at pictures now”
Anything verbal would have to go to it’s complete and utter conclusion – which inevitably is everyone dead in the final act like a good Elizabethan drama.Report
Most of mine is visual as well — storyboards in as much detail as I can, photographic quality not comic book. There’s sort of a story line to tie them together. No real intent to ever finish that, it’s working on the individual pieces that put me to sleep.
Oh, and having to go back and review that I still have the earlier scenes in my head.Report
I build and furnish houses to shut up my brain.
Interesting thing: for years and years, almost since I moved out on my own, I imagined myself in some kind of somewhat-remote space ALL BY MYSELF – a lighthouse, a cabin on the side of a mountain, a remote fire station. Then, during the pandemic….I realized that being all by myself, with no chance of the human contacts I had had every day, was not that desirable. So now I imagine houses in a quiet part of an artist’s colony or something similar. (Or I just read until I’m too tired to keep my eyes open any longer)
Tomorrow MIGHT be some volunteer effort that I signed up for sight unseen (my church was doing it, I’m more able bodied than many in the congregation….) I found out the other day it’s something the city would normally pay their employees to do and I confess I have a slightly bad taste in my mouth about it now. There’s a good chance it will be rained out and if it is, I’ll continue the house-cleaning I started this afternoon – I had let it get BAD during the worst of the pandemic, and haven’t deep-cleaned some things for close to a year, so I’m going slowly and trying to work in detail. three to four hours in, I’m about 1/3 to being satisfied with the house….Report