Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Sleep

Snore it, don't pour it.

Palerale — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:54:19 -0800

What is this mysterious puddle on my side of the bed? It's a small lake. The last week or so (since WoW 3.3, I admit) I have not been getting sufficient sleep. This morning I woke up after only a few hours and the wife had left the house early for a meeting. Lonely, I got up and jumped on the internet, but I was exhausted. Around 1:30 or so, I took a nap. I slept about two hours, and it was the heaviest sleep I have ever felt. I felt in some sort of dream state that I was trying to awake myself, but I could not. The air was keeping me down, I felt like I was underwater, partially dreaming, but on the brink of awake and fighting to bring myself out of the nap. Eventually I pulled myself up, though my whole body felt as though it weighed twice as much.

Tonight, when putting the wife to bed, we found both of my pillows to be quite soaked through, as well as a good chunk of the blanket, the sheet, and through to some of the mattress.

Our thoughts: It's possible, however unlikely, that our dog, Maverick (about 2 yrs.) jumped up and let himself go on my pillows. This is not like something he would do, he seems to have been housebroken for some time now with very few accidents. In my history of owning dogs I have never had one empty itself onto a bed. As far as we can tell, the bedroom door was closed anyway, as it always is.
It also does not seem to smell like pee, mostly just wet cloth. There was, however, a slight discoloration in the mattress below.

So is there a chance that this is drool? Could a person drool that much in their sleep? It was a lot, like a bucket full. Factors considered are the deep, heavy level of sleep I was in, lifetime sinus issues (though not severe for years), poor dental hygiene, and a bit of a binge drink on Tuesday night, with a horrendous hangover to match on Wednesday. I also went down for the nap right after a large bowl of soup/noodles.

The only other thing I can think of is sweat, but honestly my wife keeps it somewhere around 45-50 degrees in there, so I can't imagine this was the case.

I need to know if this is me or the dog, one of us has to go.

I'm having real strange sleeping issues. I can stay up 2 days straight, sleep one night, then 2 days again. And I'm complete opposite.. sleep during day, awake at night.. Is it age or the fact I lost my job and am stumped, yet oh so happy?

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:46:14 -0800

I'm having real strange sleeping issues. I can stay up 2 days straight, sleep one night, then 2 days again. And I'm complete opposite.. sleep during day, awake at night.. Is it age or the fact I lost my job and am stumped, yet oh so happy? Well, see what happened or has been happening is all these years I been working, say since 2001, I could never adjust to sleeping early, say 11pm to 1pm, and wake up early.

I still went to sleep around 3-4am almost everynight, woke up like 10am.. which was in fact late. Habitually. I had to you know.. make sure I had bosses that really liked me.. as in personally.

I purposely stay up all night so I go to work having been up, so I could crash as soon as I get home and hopefully reset my internal clock.

But instead, after work I "wake up" again and end up still going to sleep at 3-4am.

It's as if something is telling me, either I have somehow associated the night sky with the beginning of the day, or I just really hate society or something. Subconciously, my body wants to sleep while the rat race is out there. And it wants to be UP when they're asleep. I love late nights..

I think I just really really really love late nights.. because the world is asleep and I just.. I need to be away from that mess in that way, yet I live in a big city.. always have, and want to live here. I can't live in the boonies..

Is this just the price I pay?? Is it age? Mid 30's (despite this being a problem since early 20's)

Is it due to being fired? (Maybe, post-fired syndrome, despite me actually loving it because I feel so free. I feel like I just been released from Death Row after found wrongfully charged)

I'm so tired.

peanut_mcgillicuty — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:11:19 -0800

Please help me sleep through the night again. I have read other questions on here, but they've dealt with what almost anyone would consider to be an irritating noise (barking dogs, yowling cats, aboveground subways outside the windows). I'm struggling with something a little different.

I have always been a very light sleeper—I need almost total darkness, quiet, constant temperature. I typically wake several times during the night for one reason or another, but in general I have no problem falling asleep or falling back asleep. I usually go to bed around 11:30 and get up at 7:30.

However. The steam pipe in the bedroom makes a dripping noise. It’s a quiet tink...tink...tink that starts when the heat in the building kicks on, anywhere between 3 and 5 a.m. It is driving me CRAZY.

Things I have tried but that aren’t working:

1. Earplugs. I have a phobia of having things in my ears, thanks to a doctor’s scope puncturing my eardrum when I was three years old. Nonetheless, I have been trying this for about a month, but even the slim-fit earplugs are painful and give me anxiety about having something in my ears. I can’t sleep all night with them in, so I’ve tried putting them in when the noise starts, but the coordination I need wakes me up fully and it’s hard to then get back to sleep with such discomfort. (I’ve also tried a pillow or blanket over my head but it either doesn’t drown out the noise enough or falls off and wakes me back up.)
2. Moving to another room. I’ve tried training myself to stay half asleep and go to the couch in the living room. It’s a little better—the couch is comfy. But the entrance to the apartment opens into the living room, and the apartment across the hall runs a daycare, so starting at 5:30 or 6 the squeals of arriving kids keep me up.
3. White noise. The speed a fan needs to be at to drown out the dripping noise is stress-inducing on its own—it’s something I can’t tolerate even while wide awake. My experience with white noise machines in a therapist’s office leaves me expecting the same outcome—we decided that I’d rather risk people overhearing private stuff than deal with the sound the machines made, if that tells you anything.

The problem is coming from a steam pipe, not a radiator, and it’s not going to go away until the heat shuts off for good—as late as May 31! The entire boiler system in the building was serviced within the last month, and the pipe is not “broken” so it’s not going to be “fixed”. Our radiators are all turned off, and I have no control over when the boiler comes on or over this pipe at all.

I have lived in many New York apartments, each with their own quirks, and have gotten used to all of them (one of them had crazy banging pipes that I got used to, and this isn’t nearly that bad!). But after two solid months of this, I’m despairing that I will ever just get used to this noise and be able to sleep more than a few hours at a stretch again. We’re six months into a one-year lease. If I can’t find a workaround, I will definitely consider moving when the lease is up but it’s not an option right now.

I feel like this is ridiculous. The noise is not that loud—I notice it during the day but it’s not aggravating then. My boyfriend can sleep right through it. I hate that I am such a light sleeper but I don’t know how to fix it. The lack of sleep is catching up to me, affecting me at work, causing me to be forgetful and cranky. People work midnight shifts or train themselves to sleep while travelling—this is something I should be able to overcome! How do I do it? Or if I can’t, what are other noise-masking options I’m overlooking?

Caffiene snooze

divabat — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:58:53 -0800

Why does one cup of coffee make me sleepy? I've seen this thread, but it was more about confirming the effect rather than explaining it.

I've had an interesting history with coffee. I like the taste, and when I was a teenager I regularly had a cup of 3-in-1 coffee a day with no particular effects. In my late teens I was diagnosed with panic disorder, and I could no longer take any coffee without feeling jittery and anxious. Within the past five years I've slowly reintroduced coffee into my life, and now I can comfortably have a cup a day.

However, instead of either getting a buzz or being jittery, coffee makes me really really sleepy. As soon as I have a cup I have a deep need to take a nap, and I can be knocked out for a couple of hours. It's not particularly restful or refreshing sleep, but it's hard to fight back the urge to snooze. This is a recent development (and slightly annoying because there are times where I could use the buzz!!).

I'm usually described as "hyper" by my friends and peers, though that usually depends on the situation - in fun energetic environments I can be very vibrant and exuberant, though when I'm at home I'm usually sloth-like and lazy. I sleep about 7-8 hours a night; the sun awakes me, so I'm usually up just before 5, and for the first few hours (if I'm not having to be awake early for any particular reason) I vacillate between mucking around on my laptop and snoozing. I don't deal well with late nights - if I'm not distracted by something I usually clamour for my bed by midnight at the latest.

Guarana, ginseng, and other energy drinks & supplements of that ilk give me a headache. There is one particular Aussie brand of energy drink (can't recall the name offhand) that hasn't effected me either way; however I've only had a small tin so I don't know if it's a fluke. I have been suspected of having ADD but have never been on treatment for it or tested professionally.

What's happening with my hormones and my brain that makes me have the opposite reaction to caffiene? Is it something I need to worry about? If caffiene makes me tired, what can I do to get a buzz (assuming that I haven't already scared people off by being highly energetic!)?

Why do I always get so hungry late at night?

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:32:35 -0800

Why do I always get so hungry late at night? I tend to go to bed around 12:30-1 am, though it usually takes me a long time to fall asleep. I always get hungry around 11-12, and if I stay up later than usual I get especially hungry. I usually eat something, but even then I don't feel full. I've been this way for several years, if not forever; I don't remember ever not being like this.

Maybe-relevant info: I'm 23 and male. I don't have any relevant health problems except a tendency to fall asleep late and wake up late (for which I take melatonin). I eat pretty nutritiously, mostly vegetarian. (I may lack some protein, but I try to get it from legumes; I might also lack some kind of vitamin, but I'd have no idea how to tell). I don't exercise much, though I think I had the same problem back when I did exercise more. I tend to consume a lot of caffeine, mostly tea (which I usually avoid drinking after 8 pm unless it's decaf).

Does this happen to anyone else? It seems like everyone else I know eats dinner somewhere between 6 and 8 and then doesn't eat anything after that until falling asleep, so it seems pretty weird! It's supposedly unhealthy to eat late at night, so is there anything I can do about it?

Anonymous just because I included a lot of identifying information.

Sleeping through 100mg of caffeine.

brenton — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:12:26 -0800

Why doesn't 100mg of caffeine wake me up in the morning? I have a lot of trouble waking up in the morning. I have multiple alternating alarms, a dawn simulator wake up light... and now crackheads.

Crackheads are these caffeinated dark chocolate covered espresso beans with 600mg of caffeine per box (which works out to 100mg of caffeine for 6 beans.)

I put the beans by my bed and I eat them when my alarm goes off.. I started with 5 beans a few days ago, but I fell back to sleep. I've been increasing the 'dosage' and this morning at 6am I ate 9 or 10 (I may have dropped one) but I then promptly fell back asleep until 10am. I slept 11 hours, having gone to bed at 11pm last night!

Is there something wrong with me? Caffeine normally makes me all awake and alert, sometimes jittery. Is there some secret property to caffeine that requires water, or that doesn't work while you're asleep? What's the deal?

Help me drown out this horrific noise so I can sleep, PLEASE!

Dormant Gorilla — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:14:49 -0800

How do I muffle or deal with an incredibly loud noise so I can sleep? A couple of months ago I moved to a fantastic new apartment- fantastic in all ways but one. The subway shuttle (an aboveground train) goes by every 20 minutes. Actually it goes in each direction so it's twice every 20 minutes. 24 hours a day. The tracks run alongside the building, about twenty feet from the edge of the building, directly under my bedroom window. Sometimes, when it's running slowly, it's only very loud. When it's running at full speed, like it usually does, I can't describe how loud it is. It is as loud as a train sounds when it goes by you at full speed while you're standing on the platform. Which is very, very loud.

I don't think I've slept through the night since I've been here. I don't wake up every time it goes by, I think, but at least four or five times every night I find myself all of a sudden wide awake and confused, wondering if the building's being bombed or what the hell is going on. I am exhausted.

It's so loud it makes no noticeable difference if the windows are open or closed. I tried a white noise machine- laughable. It's orders of magnitude louder than that. I've tried earplugs- no brand I find even begins to make a dent in the noise. Even in August, when I first moved here and the windows were shut and the air conditioning was on full blast, THAT didn't make a dent in the noise.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm subletting, so I can't do anything permanent or lasting to the house, but is there any kind of temporary soundproofing that I could do to the windows, maybe? Or any other ways to go with this? I am so freaking tired. I have no energy all day long because I don't think I've gotten more than two straight hours of sleep in months. Other people in the building say they just adjusted after a while, but that doesn't seem to be happening to me, and I need to find a way to live with this before I go nuts.

Thanks in advance...

I'm dreaming of a well-rested Unicorn...

Unicorn on the cob — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:48:12 -0800

Almost every dream I have is a nightmare, if I remember the dream. Is there a way to train myself not to do this? Inspired by this question, I realized that almost every time I dream, it's a nightmare. They are typically very vivid and not "anxiety" dreams, like taking a test without studying. On the scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is, say, a sex dream and 10 equals me being in a situation where I have experienced hours of physical torture and eventually am eaten alive by rabid animals (and waking up feeling nauseated, heart pounding, sweaty), I'd say the majority of my dreams are in the 6-8 range.

I have also experienced cyclical nightmares every night for up to 10 months. By this I mean I can wake up 6-10 times a night and pick right up in the nightmare where I left off, or experience the same nightmare every single night for almost a year. I mostly dream like this:

- One night per week I'll have a fantastic, amazing, vivid dream that is weird/fun (it's never more frequently than that)

- Two or three nights per week I won't dream at all

- Three nights per week or more, sometimes up to six nights a week, I will dream about unpleasant things like going to jail for something I didn't do, having my teeth disintegrate slowly and painfully while I try to get them fixed, dying from painful and irreparable injuries, trying to run away from something but being pulled back slowly in an unbearably long, thin trail (like the spaghettification effect of a black hole)

Not sure if this matters, but about 3x per week I have to rely on Ambien to sleep at all and have suffered chronic insomnia since I was 11. The Ambien appears 100% unrelated to my dreaming patterns, as I have had happy dreams, no dreams, and nightmares all on Ambien.

Is there some kind of meditation, visualization or medication I could try to break this? I frequently feel physically and mentally exhausted and DO get sleepy, but dread sleeping knowing that I most likely will wake up terrified. I handle the nightmares fine if another person is in the house with me, for some reason.

If I could break cycle, I think I'd be able to feel rested. Has anyone else experienced this and been able to change it?

Never had a nightmare

Anonymous — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:25:29 -0800

I've never had a nightmare. Why? Is this normal? I can't fully account for when I was a small child, but in recent memory I cannot remember ever having had a nightmare, or even a truly disturbing dream. I've had exceptionally vivid dreams as well as the usual anxiety dreams of being naked or falling on rare occassions, but never anything close to nightmarish. Amongst my friends and family I can't find anyone else who has never had a nightmare. It feels weird.

Googling "never had a nightmare" shows I am not alone, I just wonder if there might be a cause, or an article or some sort of insight into this. I've had a normal-to-difficult life including problems with depression and anxiety and a fair share of waking problems, I can't think why I might be immune to having nightmares. Is there a cause, or am I just lucky? Any tips for inducing a nightmare? I guess I am coming from a view of nightmares being an accepted part of everyone's life, perhaps they aren't?

FWIW I'm not on any medications or diet, I drink moderately, no drugs, exercise daily, eat healthily. Slept in all sorts of environments home and abroad and no other sleep issues. Mid 30's.

Help me pick a mattress

TorontoSandy — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:19:33 -0800

We're shopping for a new mattress and thinking about an Ikea mattress. Does anyone know how Ikea mattresses are compared to a brand name one like Sealy? Is there a difference in quality and/or price? We have to drive about 100 miles to get to an Ikea store vs 15 minutes for a Sleep America. Is it worth the trip?

Better living through chemistry

prunes — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 10:23:08 -0800

I need to get up at 3:00 am. Can ambien help? Next week I have a 6:00 am plane flight followed immediately by a job interview. I'll need to get up sometime around 3:00 am. Would taking ambien at 6:00 or 7:00 pm enable me to get the full eight or nine hours I need? I did a test run of ambien the other day, taking it at 9:45 pm when my normal bed time is 11:00 pm, and I woke up feeling great. Your experiences are appreciated.

Do I start working the graveyard shift?

hiteleven — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:28:36 -0800

How do I get better sleep on Cipralex/Lexapro? I've been taking a 10mg daily dose of Cipralex (Lexapro) for around 5 weeks now. It has yet to "kick in", and the side effects are pretty minimal, all told. But since I've been on the drug I've been getting terrible sleep, and it seems to be getting worse.

I'm having a number of issues sleep-wise. For one, no matter how much sleep I get, I never feel rested. I've tried sleep intervals ranging from 7-9+ hours and no matter how much I get, getting up and out of bed is tortuous. A cup or two of coffee usually boosts me for a short time, but by late morning I'm back to being tired again.

Afternoons are pretty awful. I feel exhausted, but if I nap, I often wake up feeling even worse. I sort of feel hung over, minus the nausea. And I used to be excellent at napping, in that I could take a short nap and feel rested for the rest of the day. Now, however, once I get to sleep I feel like staying there, and getting back upright feels horrible.

Lately, moreover, to compliment my exhaustion, I've been getting awful insomnia. Once my afternoon exhaustion goes away, I feel overly awake for the rest of the night, and can't seem to fall asleep until after 2am. Night seems to be the only time that I actually do feel awake. And note that even if I can get myself a full night's sleep (by sleeping in until 10-11am, say), I still wake up feeling exhausted. Cutting out the napping doesn't really seem to help, either, though I could try harder at that.

One more issue is that my dreams have become quite vivid and strange, which could be a major contributing factor.

Long story short, I was wondering if anyone on this drug has suffered similar symptoms, and if they had any success treating them and getting better sleep. I'm up for any sort of remedy that will help me either sleep at night or stay awake during the day. Thanks in advance.

Note that, on my doctor's advice, I've been taking my dose around mid-morning in order to cut back on the vivid dreaming. I am willing to change that, of course.

According to tradition, which side of the bed should a man sleep on?

Sully — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:27:42 -0800

In heterosexual relationships, is there a side of the bed that men normally sleep on? Is there any kind of tradition behind it? Like, if you're standing at the foot of the bed looking at the pillows, are men supposed to sleep on the left or right side? My dad always slept on the left side. And myself, with my last girlfriend, I also slept on the left side. Am I unconsciously re-enacting some kind of old tradition as to what side I'm supposed to sleep on? I know that there's some kind of tradition regarding walking beside a woman on the sidewalk. Men were supposed to stand between the woman and the street so that if any mud was splashed up by a passing carriage, the man would bear the brunt of the mud.

One other thing - I've noticed that in both my father's and my case, we would sleep on the side closest to the door, which just happened to be the left side. Does anyone know if any studies about this have been made? I'm not saying that these ancient customs should be upheld, nor that they should continue. I'm just curious if historically, there's a custom of some sort. Thanks.

How can I wake up faster?

Solomon — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:06:47 -0800

How can I get going faster in the morning? What tips and/or tricks do you use to get you up, bright and awake early in the morning?

I've tried coffee (which makes no difference), showering in showers of various temperatures (which is unpleasant if cold), leaving the curtains open (which just keeps me awake because of street lights) and various different alarm clocks. My current MO is to turn the computer on and sit in front of it for a while, which seems to help. I think it must be the light from the monitor hitting my eyes that wakes me.

I haven't tried exercise, because I don't have enough spatial awareness to do anything that involved. I also once updated my Facebook status without realising it.

I have no problem getting to sleep whatsoever. I know I need at least 8 hours a night, so I go to bed at a relevant time, and always have crazy vivid dreams. It's just the next morning that's the problem. I also have the problem in a milder form after napping. It seems that the longer I'm asleep, the groggier I am when I wake.

Any thoughts?

Fix my broken sleep

fucker — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:15:43 -0800

I'm on what might be called a revolving sleep schedule, where I go to sleep and wake up about one hour later every day. This means every other week or so I sleep during the daytime. This seems to be my body's natural sleep rhythm. Right now I'm going to sleep at 7-8 AM and waking up at 3-4 PM. But on Sunday morning I need to GET UP at 7 AM, and be fully awake and refreshed for the entire day. In short, I need to completely reverse my sleep schedule in under three days. I've never been able to this, so I need fresh advice on how I might accomplish it. I should note that I can't just simply "force it". In the past I've tried staying up the entire day, and then sleeping at night. What happens is I am usually not tired for about 24 hours after that, so that my schedule simply picks up where it left off. It wants to cycle naturally by about one or two hours every day.

I need to be fully awake Monday morning at the same time, so I can't just force it for Sunday, and expect that to be good enough.

Who needs sleep? (well you're never gonna get it)

decathecting — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:34:31 -0800

I can't sleep through the night anymore. Can I re-learn? And should I be worried about my sleep, given that I'm not tired? About three months ago, I stopped being able to sleep through the night. I've always had trouble falling asleep (it usually takes about an hour), but once I was asleep, I could stay asleep for ~8 hours. I slept reasonably well and was generally happy with my sleep quality.

Fairly gradually, I started waking up in the middle of the night. First it was once a night (about an hour before my normal waking time), then it was twice, and now I'm waking up about every 1.5-2 hours from the time I fall asleep until it's time to wake up in the morning. This happens almost every night now. It doesn't matter how tired I am when I go to sleep, or what I'm doing before bed, or where I'm sleeping (my bedroom vs. hotel, etc.).

The thing that makes me brush this off is that I'm not tired at all during the day. I feel fine. I'm as productive as I've always been, and I'm not sick or run-down. Does that mean that this is simply my body's new way of sleeping and that I'm normal?

Factors to consider/discount:
*When I was having a lot of trouble falling asleep a few years ago, I tried nearly every commercially available sleep remedy, including melatonin, Benadryl, and several prescription drugs. None of them worked. Since this new problem arose, I tried them all again and saw no change in my sleep patterns.
*About one night every two weeks, I sleep through the night. This is usually a weekend night when I don't have to be up at any specific time the next day.
*My bedroom is very dark and quiet, and my bed is comfortable.
*I am not unusually stressed out, and I'm not upset about anything.
*When I wake up, I can usually fall back to sleep within 10-15 minutes.
*I'm not hungry or thirsty and I don't need to pee when I wake up.
*I am in good health. I exercise regularly and eat a healthy vegetarian diet.
*I don't snore or have other symptoms of sleep apnea.
*I don't have nightmares or vivid dreams that might wake me up, at least not that I remember.

So, should I be worried about this? And if so, what can I do to fix it?

Help me stop stomach sleeping.

Thrillhouse — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 04:59:20 -0800

How do I stop sleeping on my stomach? When I go to bed at night I try my best to fall asleep on my back but it almost never works so I move on to my side and sometimes that works but more often than not I find that I wake up having been sleeping on my stomach. Whether I'm consciously doing it or not I need to stop sleeping on my stomach. It hurts my back when I wake up and I have to learn to sleep on a wedge pillow for reflux.

What can I do to train myself to sleep on my back?

eating to fall asleep

acidic — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:17:09 -0800

I have a new, strange work schedule, and my eating habits are making my sleep schedule go haywire. When and what should a person eat if they work from 3 pm to 10 pm, and want to be awake around 7 or 8? After a month of this new job, my sleep schedule is terrible. After arriving home at 10:30, I usually cook a fairly complicated dinner (I like to cook) and then catch up on TV shows, internet, etc. For the past two weeks I've been unable to fall asleep before 5 or 6 am. Consequently, I wake up around noon or 1, eat something light like yogurt or fruit or cereal, and head to work. 3 days a week I have a break around 6 pm and about half the time I'm famished and get a quick dinner (I'm in Korea-- so pork chop or noodles or rice). But even in those cases, I'm still hungry late at night so end up having two dinners. Other times I really crave sugar at night. I suspect that having such late meals has made it difficult to fall asleep. Before this I was on a regular schedule of dinner at 5 or 6, maybe a small snack later at night, and sleep whenever I wanted to between 12-2 am.

Ideally, I would wake up at 7 or 8, drink half a smoothie or something, go for a run, drink the other half, then prepare an elaborate and interesting lunch to be eaten around 1 or 2. However, what and when should I eat between 2 pm and my ideal sleeptime, 1 am, so that I'm able to fall asleep? I could snack at work, but I only have 5 minutes here or there and I've never seen anyone eat at work so I'd want it to be quick and discreet.

I can't really afford nuts or cheese (except ricotta and other homemade stuff) but yogurt and fruit are ok. I have a stove, grill pan, and blender and am a pretty good cook (and have a lot of time to do so). I am sort of a foodie and only eat meat a few times a week.

This question suggested quitting the computer 2 hours before bedtime and this question had some other suggestions about sleeping earlier. So I'm mostly interested in the connection between food and sleep. Thank you!

Mayo Clinic and Apnea

spicynuts — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:16:25 -0800

The Mayo Clinic and Central NS Sleep Apnea - has anyone had any experience there with any of the following: consultation, evaluation, treatment or just plain contact for informational purposes? After a long, long battle to convince doctors that obstructive sleep apnea is a wrong diagnosis, I've finally been diagnosed with Central Nervous System Sleep Apnea and had a change of machinery. However, I am still having difficulty with the CPAP (or whatever the specific version of CPAP for CNS Apnea is..) being an effective treatment. In talking with my therapist, she suggested that contacting the Mayo clinic for a more rigorous diagnosis and possible exploration of new/experimental treatments might be worthwhile. Has anyone been down a similar path? What's the best way to start? A detailed email to someone in the right department?

Help my kiddo sleep!

christinetheslp — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 21:39:19 -0800

My son's sleep schedule is all screwed up. How can I make it better again? My son, now 16 months old, has always been a horrible sleeper. Part of it was just his own personality, but part of it was my tendency to nurse him to sleep whenever he awoke at night (hey, when it's 2 AM and I have to be at work the next day, getting him down as quickly as possible was my only priority). We kept up this pattern until he was 15 months old.

Then one day I had to be put on prednisone and we had to quit nursing cold turkey. He adjusted surprisingly well. Within two weeks he went from waking four times a night and having to be nursed each time to sleeping through the night independently five nights a week. About twice a week he'd wake up once a night and I'd hold him while he drifted off again. He was going to bed at 8:15 and sleeping until 7 AM. Sleeping so much was blissful for everyone.

Within the past week it's all changed. He's back to waking up four times a night again...most times he cries for about 90 seconds and then settles back down, but it's enough to wake me up. However, most nights I have to go into his room once and rock him back to sleep. He's also waking up earlier. Nobody's getting a good night's sleep anymore.

I have no idea what's happened, or how to get my kiddo back on track. I do realize that the cry it out approach might be necessary at some point, but I'd like to know of anything I can do before we try that. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Cheap extended stay in Cambridge

paulesque — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 11:13:03 -0800

(Very) Cheap places to stay in Cambridge, MA, for about 7 nights? Inbetween some conferences I'm spending a couple of weeks in Cambridge, and while I am sleeping on friend's couches for part of that time, I'd rather not infringe too much :). It really only needs to be a bed and a shower (but clean, quiet preferably).
For mid-Oct, places near MIT ideal. And I'd rather not couchsurf, thanks!

Silence me

kestrel251 — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:02:16 -0800

Makeshift earplugs??? I'm traveling for work and find myself in a loud hotel. Well, not the hotel itself, but outside. Think: college campus on a Friday night. I'm not a prig, and remember college, and am not going to call Public Safety. But I forgot to bring earplugs.... Can I do better than a twist of TP in my ears, or a pillow over my head? Any techniques????

Help...Falling asleep in class everyday.

loser8008 — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:53:49 -0800

Advice...I can't stay awake during my class lecture. How can i stay awake and cure my problem??? Well let me start off by saying I am a full-time college student and a part-time worker, working 20 hours a week. I defiantly do not get the right amount of sleep that i really should be getting. Since i am stuck closing just about every other night i don't usually go to bed till around 12 am or 1 am on those days. The other days if i usually attempt to go to bed around 11 pm or 12 am. And i wake up at around 7 am everyday during the week.

The problem is i wake up fine and am usually ok during my first lecture, then a few hours later during me second and third lecture i just really start crashing and start to really fall asleep (closing eyes, bobbing head up and down every few minutes). It is pretty bad, one of them is in a small lecture room where i can tell the professors have noticed. I don't really drink coffee, and kind of don't want to start. But when i do drink something it is either an iced coffee or an energy drink. ( these do work but are expensive, and I have never had a problem like this, this bad.)

Normally a professor puts me to sleep when i just don't care about the subject and don't care. I really do not one to sleep in class but i am so tired and it just starts to happen. i end up stabbing myself with my pencil just to keep me awake which doesn't work to well.

If any one knows what might be the problem or something to help, please i really can't keep falling asleep in class.

I grope in my sleep. Can you help?

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 07:07:44 -0800

Is there such thing as "sleep groping", or am I just a perv? If yes, how can I stop it and how! I have a tendency to grope my girlfriend quite a bit in the early hours, right before I wake up. Since she's trying to sleep so obviously this is not on.

Unfortunately, I can only vaguely remember doing it after I wake up. This happens regardless of how much we've been having sex or how much sleep I've has the previous night. It's been happenning since we started sleeping together. I want to change it.

Is this a weakness of character? Am I making lame excuses? Or is this an actual "thing" - a thing I can do something about. Have you had similar issues and dealt with them successfully? Help!

Sleep that's too deep

umbú — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 12:50:00 -0800

Why can't my Macbook Pro wake from a coma? I have a Macbook Pro 2.4 ghz pre-unibody 17” with 4 gb of RAM running Leopard (10.5.2 I think? 10.5.something). I’m having trouble getting my computer to start up from a sleep-like mode, and I’m not sure what has caused the problem, so here are the possible factors:

1. Since I bought the computer a year and a month ago, the graphics card had been malfunctioning intermittently. Sometimes when I would scroll, the screen would stutter, leaving a trail of whatever I was scrolling. Other times, when I played a video, squares of video would flicker, missing.

So I sent it in (I have Applecare, luckily), and 5 days later, they had replaced both the logic board, and some connector for the battery, which I hadn’t asked them to do. Ever since, there have been moments that the computer doesn’t recognize that there is a battery in it, which is odd, because even when the little battery with an x icon was present, the computer didn’t immediately shut down when I unplugged the AC adaptor.

2. A was doing a video editing project recently that took up way more hard disk space than I expected. There was one point when I received the warning “Your startup disk is almost full.” When I got this warning, I immediately shut down, booted up again, and transferred 30 gb to an external hard drive.

3. I started to have trouble waking the computer from sleep, but I could always hard boot by shutting the computer down holding the power key for a few seconds, and then rebooting. I wondered whether something was wrong with the sleepimage, so I turned off safesleep (hibernation) mode through the console using the instructions in this link.

4. That fix worked for a couple of weeks. Then, the other day, I took my computer out of my bag, and to my horror, it had been turned on with the lid closed for what I assume was an hour or two. Either it never went to sleep, even though I closed the lid, or it spontaneously woke up with the lid closed in my bag. The fan was going full throttle, and the screen was still on. I turned the computer off, let it cool down, and then later when I started it up again, it seemed fine.

5. Then, by accident, with safesleep still disabled, I let the battery on the computer completely drain. After that, even though I recharged the battery completely, when I try to boot up, I hear the beginnings of the process (the optical drive engaging, for one) and the sleep light goes on, but the screen never does anything. I’ve tried to use a flashlight on the screen to see if there was any activity, but as far as I can tell, nothing is happening. Target disk mode, safe boot, external hard drive boot, zapping the pram don’t change anything.

6. Another thing that I feel I should mention is the fact that I’ve been using the Freedom freeware program, which I assume affects the network preferences temporarily to block all internet connections while you’re using it. I include this because, based on what I’ve read on-line, a couple possible causes of this problem could be this one—that waking from sleep gets messed up if a certain system program isn’t present—or this one, in which somehow ethernet preferences being messed up causes the problem.

What do those of you who know about these things think? What should I do?