Sunday, December 27, 2009

Caffeine, white noise, etc.

One more benefit of the new sleep plan that I forgot to mention: 8 hour awake periods allow me to continue enjoying my caffeine. I know I sound like such a stereotypical geek saying this, but I'm not going to give that up anymore. I enjoy the occasional caffeine high too much, as well as all of the wonderful delivery methods of it. I got many delicious flavors of tea and a new teamaker for Christmas. I love tea, and I think it's good for me. I also really enjoy the occasional espresso or cup of coffee (although I limit myself to about one a day to avoid making myself sick from it), and caffeinated candy as well. Sometimes I crave a good Nuka-Cola. The only thing I don't like are those horrible tasting energy drinks with their aspartame and ginseng and ginko. All that stuff tastes terrible, and is worse for you than any bottle of soda could ever be. Too concentrated a dose of caffeine is not good, either, and some drinks have enough caffeine in them to give a person of small stature a heart attack. The only energy drink I ever liked the flavor of was Vault, and it gives me such an adrenaline rush that I feel like time has slowed down. I used to consume quite a bit of caffeine, but I never really became desensitized to it the way that some people do.

After trying it for several weeks, at varying times of the day, I've concluded that white noise tracks, such as the Placebo sleep track that many people use for napping, are virtually useless for me. It's not that they don't cause me to fall asleep. More times than not, if I'm tired, I will sleep with the track -- but it's not a normal sleep. It is more like falling unconscious for several minutes. Falling asleep to the track goes like this for me: the white noise will give me some degree of sensory deprivation and allow my mind to drift, and I will become unaware of my surroundings, and eventually the track, and just be lost in my thoughts -- then I hear the noise signalling the end of the track, and I wake up, not realizing I was asleep and not feeling like I'd fallen asleep. I will wake up tired and feeling like the nap was totally unsatisfying. I have never dreamed with these tracks. It just feels like I've blacked out for a few minutes while lost in meditation. If I'm not tired, it's a rather interesting experience, but if I am tired, it leaves me tired and cranky, because I didn't actually get restful sleep in which my subconscious took over and I dreamed. It's like a twilight sleep, not fully aware, but still consciously thinking. I never oversleep with the track, but my sleep is totally unsatisfying.

What does work for me is simply relaxing and falling asleep on my own, and trusting an alarm to wake me up (which my cellphone alarm always does, although a traditional buzzing alarm may not). If I lay down on my bed and clear my mind, relax my body, relax my facial muscles, and ignore my senses, I will fall asleep. It may take a while, but it will happen. And I will receive refreshing sleep, and I will dream for almost every nap. I can sleep as little as 20 minutes this way, and still wake up feeling like I've slept and dreamed and at least recharged some. This is the only way to sleep that I've found restful and acceptable, and so I need to build my schedule around allowing that to happen. I need time to let myself fall asleep under my own power and to sleep naturally. While I sometimes fall asleep while trying to nap somewhere away from home, it's not the same. If I'm not comfortable in a bed, I won't really get the most from my sleep. It'll do if I've nothing else, but it's not ideal. So, I need to plan my schedule around being able to sleep at home, even if it means I have to go longer between sleeps and get more sleep in one go.

The schedule that I will loosely follow, allowing some flexibility to deviate as necessary, will be something like this: napping with the alarm set for up to 90 minutes at the hours of 4 am, 12 pm, and between 7:30-midnight. I selected these times because I'm busy during a solid chunk of time between 2 - 7 pm, so ideally, I should sleep right before then. I know I'm going to want to do different things in the evenings, so I can't rely on always sleeping when I would normally get home at 7. So I need some flexibility there, but will still plan to work in an evening nap. I always experience a dip in energy and a rise in sleepiness early in the morning and in the afternoon, so trying to channel that sleepiness into naptimes during the early morning and about noon would be good. Theoretically, this sounds like it should work. Based on my experiences with trying to find a schedule that my body and my mind find acceptable, this should work. I have much more of an idea of what I need and what I can reasonably shoot for than I did back at the start of the fall term, so I feel more confident in my ability to find something that works for me now.

I've been trying to follow this schedule since the 23rd of December (in hopes of becoming fairly adapted before the start of the spring term, if I am going to be adapted), and while I've been averaging about 5 hours of sleep a day (about what I would get if I slept 90 minutes at each naptime), it hasn't gone to this schedule yet, due to being too busy to nap much during the day. On the night of the 22nd, I went to sleep at about 4 am and woke up at about 7 am on the 23rd, tired but alert. I then slept again for about an hour at noon. I was unable to fall asleep again until about 2 am that night, and slept off and on until about 11 am, my longest sleep (although not in a solid chunk). On the 24th, I was up until about midnight, and then slept until about 2 am. It wasn't a restful sleep. I gave the 26-minute white noise sleep track one of its final trials, trying it three times in a row, and not really getting any satisfying sleep during that time. However, on the 4th trial, I was wide-awake and fed up, so I simply got up and went about doing some things for a while. I was excited about Christmas, so I was able to do a bit of preparation work and then relax and read a book until about 6 am, when I decided it would be good to sleep again. I slept from about 6:30 - 8 am, and then was up until about midnight, hardly feeling tired or sleep deprived during the day. Exhausted then, I slept in a solid chunk from about midnight to 5:30 am, when I got up to do some shopping, tired but alert. I was out and busy for most of the day, not having a chance to nap again, although my energy never really dipped much. In fact, I felt very energetic and light-hearted. I noted that I wasn't very hungry that day; whether that was due to the sleep, or due to having eaten plenty the day before, I'm not sure. That night, I was sore and exhausted, and decided a longer sleep may be in order (and perhaps unavoidable), so I slept from about midnight to 7:30 am. After that long sleep, I didn't feel like a nap again until about 4 pm, when I set my nap alarm for 30 minutes and had a very refreshing, dream-filled sleep.

My plan tonigh will be to bed down again at about 10 pm, and 4 am, and then noon tomorrow. I'll see what kind of reaction this brings.

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