The Experiment: Day 148 ~ On Getting A Good Night’s Sleep…

Well, this looks a lot like me except that I have 3 pugs on top of me! (But don’t you just love this picture? Truly, I don’t know how I’d sleep without the dogs!) We nap like this too. One thing I’ve learned on my road to wellness is that a good night’s sleep is absolutely essential.

After the fire my sleep patterns were so bad it could be 7 a.m. before I could go to sleep. I was up all night long, feeling wired, and I could only sleep when I was just so exhausted my body just finally gave out. It seemed, after the fire, that once I’d made it through the night and dawn broke it was finally safe to go to sleep again. Of course then I was seldom up before noon and I was completely out of sync with the rest of the world. My Circadian Rhythms were all askew. The drug Abilify was added to my drug regimen and I started to sleep better. I could get to sleep by maybe 2, but I still didn’t sleep well.

Now it’s 4 years later, I am off all psych meds, but I still have a medication to help me sleep at night “as needed.” I don’t always take it, and while it works really well when I do take it I really don’t want to take drugs to sleep. I feel much better when I don’t. So I have been staying up until I am really sleepy enough to go to sleep which is usually between 12 and 1 but I still have to get up at least once to go to the bathroom. Usually I can go back to sleep right away but since I am going without medication most nights I’ve had a hard time going back to sleep. I’ve ended up checking Facebook on my phone which is just no good at all. You know that will just mess with you.

Last night I had to get up about 2 and I just wasn’t going back to sleep. I thought I might have to resort to taking a pill but then I remembered an app I had just loaded onto my phone a couple of days ago. It is a free app called “Relax Melodies.” I found it in the app store under “Ambient Sounds.” After checking out all of the free sounds the one I decided I liked the best is called “Eternity.” You can get all kinds of sounds — river, ocean, rain, flute, wind, birds, piano, underwater, frogs, thunder and a whole lot more. Those are the free ones. If you go Pro you get more but I surely don’t need more. (I’m all about the free apps!) I listened to a lot of them and when I found Eternity I knew that was it. It was very relaxing during the day, just sitting here at my desk, but last night, at 2 a.m., so tired but unable to go to sleep and my mind just going and going I knew I had to do something. (If you want to know how my brain was going watch this. You will laugh out loud. I found it on Facebook a couple of days ago and thought, “Yep, that’s just about right!”)

This app (And I have an iPhone so if this isn’t for Android check for an app of ambient sounds. There’s tons of them.) has a feature where you can pick the sound you like — you can even create your own special sound by combining multiple ones like rain with birds and flute or whatever — and set a timer so it will fade out in, say, 30 minutes. Out of desperation I tried it and it worked like a charm. It seemed to take awhile but before the 30 minutes was up I was sound asleep. The last thing I remember was the app playing.

I know technology and all this phone stuff gets a bad rap and I agree with most of it, but it saved me last night. We live in a technological age and it has changed our bodies and our brains. And what I have learned is to use any tools I have at my disposal. If it’s free and easy and at hand I will try it. It surely worked for me.

This road to wellness is not just one thing. It is not just positive affirmations and looking for the good in each day, it is not just diet, it is body, mind, and spirit and we have to take care of all 3. And sleep is so critical. Our bodies repair and heal themselves while we sleep. We burn the most fat while we are sleeping. Now I don’t know a single woman past midlife who sleeps through the night, uninterrupted, and gets in 8 hours without having to get up at least once, if you do, good for you! But if you can get up and find a way to go back to sleep as soon as possible that’s ideal, it’s just what we need, and if it’s an app on the phone I’m all for it.

This was me, last night, and it worked so well I just wanted to share it with you…

The Experiment ~A 365 Day Search For Truth, Beauty &
Happiness: Day 1 ~ Introduction To The Project
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Yoda

Comments

  1. I’m glad to hear you found an app that helps you get back to sleep Maitri. I agree it is one of the biggest challenges of midlife for sure.
    I sleep much better than even six months ago but I still do not get eight hours. It worries me when I keep reading articles about the ill effects of getting less than eight hours sleep.

    • Joan, yes, I know that they say you need 8 hours sleep but there’s also an awful lot out there that says older people need less sleep and many only sleep 6 or so hours a night. I wonder if anybody really knows. Now I do, overall, get 8 hours sleep, but not unbroken. I don’t know how anyone gets through the night without waking up to go potty, I mean I KNOW people do but not me. Sigh. Well, the app helped last night. Let’s see where we go from here! 🙂 Have a good weekend honey! 🙂

Leave a Comment

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.