What they never tell you when you’re young is that your days of sleeping a full eight straight hours are over by the time you’re 40. Guaranteed.
And that sucks.
The two types of insomnia I’ve experienced over the years are can’t-get-to-sleep insomnia, which is the worst, and often reflective of sleep hygiene, medicine, or stress. The second type is when you wake up at 3, 4 or 5 and just can’t get back to sleep.
That’s not as bad as the other type of insomnia, in my estimation, because at least you got some sleep.
However, 4-5 hours of sleep for a night is really only sustainable for a night or two, despite what the president or football coaches suggest. It leads to physical ailments, depression, lack of motivation — everything suffers.
Well, I may have stumbled onto a trick. I’ve only tested it one time, but it worked really well.
And it was a total accident.
This morning, I woke up and saw 5:15 a.m. on my Apple watch. We had gone to bed at midnight, and my alarm is usually set for 7:30 a.m. This would have made the third night in a row that my sleep got cut short.
It was super frustrating in the moment.
I got up. I turned the dim light on in the bathroom. I showered with the full intention of starting my day.
But when I got out of the shower, I turned off the dim light and reconsidered.
And got back into bed.
I was out in 5-7 minutes like a light, and it might have been the most restorative 90 minutes of sleep I’ve had in some time. It felt like a massive relief, as I have a podcast to record today and I want to be sharp for it.
I looked it up, and the science is pretty simple: Showers raise core body temperature, and getting out of a shower lowers it, signaling the body that it might be a good time to rest.
Combine that with how awesome it felt to get into a bed not yet (completely) dry, and it was a recipe for knocking myself out.
And if that is helpful to anybody on the interwebs, it would make me feel good because, as I said, insomnia sucks.
Leave a comment if this has ever worked for you, or share your life hack for getting back to sleep.
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