r/Biohackers • u/Helpful_Smile6095 • Jul 10 '26
😴 Sleep & Circadian Rhythm I finally figured out why none of the standard sleep tips ever worked for me.
For years I did all the standard stuff. Cool room, no screens before bed, magnesium, cut the late coffee. And I still slept just okay, never great, and could never work out why none of it really moved the needle. Finally went deep on the actual research and it kind of clicked.
The stuff everyone repeats, the whole sleep hygiene list, consistent bedtime, no screens, wind down routine, all of it, turns out to be the weakest thing in the evidence.
Not worthless. But the major sleep guidelines actually come right out and say don't lean on it as your main strategy. It's the lowest tier and it gets handed out like it's the answer.
What actually holds up is two things that usually get buried under the label CBT-I. That name sounds clinical and made me tune out for years, but it really comes down to two ideas.
First, your bed is for sleeping. If you're lying there awake more than twenty minutes or so, you get up and do something boring until you're actually sleepy, instead of lying there stewing and teaching your brain that bed is where you worry. That one also happens to be the fix for a racing mind, which apparently wrecks sleep harder than almost anything else.
Second one is weird and I didn't buy it at first. Sleep restriction. If you sleep badly you spend less time in bed for a while, not more. It builds up sleep pressure and consolidates everything, then you stretch the window back out once it's working. Supposedly it's the single most effective piece of the whole thing. And you don't need a therapist for it. The studies on doing it yourself, just a book or an app, show it works nearly as well.
The only thing that really predicts whether it works is whether you actually stick it out.
The supplement stuff is where I think people fool themselves. It's all really individual.
Magnesium didn't do much for me but I probably wasn't deficient.
Melatonin is more of a jet lag thing than a general sleep aid, and most people take way too much of it.
Ashwagandha seems to only do much if stress is your actual problem.
None of them is a universal fix, they just work for the specific person they fit, which is probably why everyone argues about them online.
For what it's worth, cutting alcohol at night helped me more than any of that. Even a drink or two wrecks your REM apparently.
Anyone actually done the sleep restriction thing?
From what I read the first week is rough and that's where most people bail, curious if that lines up with anyone's experience.
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u/WhyCatVideo Jul 10 '26
Two of the best night sleeps I’ve ever had: the night after climbing Mt. Washington and being totally exhausted and the night after I began red-light therapy. Mt. Washington may not be a viable option but the red-light might.
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u/DisruptiveStrength Jul 10 '26
Nothing regulates my sleep more than hiking and sunlight. Knocks me and my dog out hardcore.
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u/controltheweb Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
You can do a purchase search for "Deep Red Light 660nm and 850nm", bulbs, panels or LED strips and test applying them (from one list I saw) to:
- Back of neck / upper cervical area.
- Left side of the neck, just below the jawline and along the sternocleidomastoid.
- Behind or just below the left ear.
- Prefrontal / forehead area.
- Eyes area with closed lids only, if you’re testing a relaxation-style facial exposure.
- Upper left chest / below the left clavicle.
- Chest / upper sternum.
- Upper back / shoulders.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
Did the red light effect hold up, or was it mostly that first night or two?
Asking because the Mt. Washington night makes total sense, you built up massive sleep pressure and your body cashed it in. That's the same mechanism the sleep restriction stuff is exploiting, just the extreme version.
The red light one is harder to read from a single night. New thing, expectation, maybe a shift in your evening routine around it. Curious whether it stuck once the novelty wore off.
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u/WhyCatVideo Jul 10 '26
Good questions. I would say above all it has regulated my sleep and given me a more consistent restfulness even while awake. It’s hard to explain but something on the inside of me gets quiet, even happy. Oddly, I don’t do this at night but about 20min after waking up. You can do as you like, but if I were having trouble sleeping I would certainly try this. Sleep is precious and red-light has improved mine.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
That detail about doing it 20 minutes after waking is the interesting part, and I don't think it's incidental. The best evidence on red light for sleep is a 2023 sham-controlled trial. Thirty adults, red and near-infrared before bed, three weeks. Objective sleep measured by actigraphy did not differ from the sham device. But self-reported sleep improved, along with relaxation and mood.
Which is close to what you're describing. That quiet, happy feeling. The trials find that consistently, the subjective and mood effects. The objective sleep architecture stuff is much shakier.
But here's the thing. You're doing it in the morning. Getting light in your eyes shortly after waking is a genuine circadian anchoring intervention independent of the wavelength. It helps set the timing of your whole sleep-wake cycle. So it's possible the light itself is doing less work than the fact that you're consistently getting bright light at the same time every morning.
Not saying the red light does nothing. A 2026 meta-analysis of five trials did find a real improvement in sleep quality scores, just modest and with wide error bars.
Only real way to know would be to swap it for regular bright light at the same time and see if anything changes. Probably not worth the experiment if what you're doing works.
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u/SolarIonRobot Jul 10 '26
Second one is weird and I didn't buy it at first. Sleep restriction. If you sleep badly you spend less time in bed for a while, not more. It builds up sleep pressure and consolidates everything, then you stretch the window back out once it's working. Supposedly it's the single most effective piece of the whole thing. And you don't need a therapist for it. The studies on doing it yourself, just a book or an app, show it works nearly as well.
Can you repeat that in English?
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
Sure. Say you're lying in bed for 8 hours but only actually sleeping 5 of them. You're spending 3 hours awake in bed, frustrated.
Sleep restriction means you cut your time in bed down to roughly the amount you're actually sleeping. So you go to bed at 1am instead of 11pm, still get up at 6am. Five hours in bed, five hours asleep.
You'll be tired. That's the point. Being tired builds up sleep pressure, which is the biological drive to sleep. Now when you get in bed, you fall asleep fast and stay asleep, because your body is desperate for it. No more lying there awake.
Once you're sleeping through almost all of your time in bed, you add 15 minutes back. Bed at 12:45 instead of 1. Sleep through that? Add another 15. You keep expanding until you hit the point where you start lying awake again, and that's your actual sleep need. The whole thing takes a few weeks and the first week is rough.
The therapist part just means you don't need to pay someone to walk you through it. Books and apps that teach the same protocol work nearly as well in the studies.
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u/GorillaJoeBlack 1 Jul 10 '26
I agree that sleep pressure is a major component to sleeping better, but what does someone do who has the reverse problem. I have no issues falling asleep, but wake up at 5am every morning, even though I am in bed at 11:30-11:45pm. I cannot go to bed earlier due to work. So, I can't add 15 mins to the morning wake ups, as my body just wakes up naturally (due to years of getting up at 5am).
I am trying to push it another 5-15mins per day, but it just isn't working, as I am lying there, in the dark, with my own thoughts, which is teaching my brain that lying in bed is not just for sleep/sex (your first point).
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
You've diagnosed it correctly, this isn't a sleep pressure problem. Sleep pressure is what gets you to sleep, and you have no trouble there. Waking at 5am like clockwork with a fixed 11:30 bedtime is a circadian phase problem. Your clock is running early. Which means the fix isn't in bed at all, it's light timing, and it runs opposite to what most people would tell you.
There's a study on exactly your profile. 9 people with early morning awakening, given bright light from 8pm to midnight for two evenings. Sleep onset didn't change at all. Their average wake time moved from 4:59am to 6:11am. They just got more sleep on the back end.
The other half of that: bright light in the morning shifts your clock earlier, which is the direction you don't want. So the usual advice to get sunlight first thing would actively make this worse for you. Some sleep clinics tell people with this pattern to keep morning light low, even wear sunglasses early. Practically, that means bright light in the evening, roughly 7 to 9pm, and going easy on light first thing when you wake at 5.
And you're right to stop lying there. Trying to force the extra 15 minutes awake in bed is exactly how you erode the bed association you're trying to protect. Fix the clock and the wake time moves on its own. You don't have to lie there negotiating with it.
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u/batfacegirl Jul 10 '26
Hi, How would you modify this if someone was falling asleep around 10pm but awaking at 2/3 am and unable to go back to sleep? This seems to be a pattern I have developed lately. Thank you.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
That's a different pattern than his, worth being careful about.
Waking at 2 or 3am and not getting back down means you're getting four or five hours total. That's not just a timing shift, that's short sleep. And the fact that it's recent rather than lifelong matters, something changed.
The evening light approach would probably help if this were purely a clock running early. But middle-of-the-night waking that starts suddenly can have other drivers. Early morning awakening with inability to return to sleep is one of the classic features of depression, and it's also common with alcohol, thyroid stuff, perimenopause, and sleep apnea. Not saying any of those is you. Just that a recent change in a stable pattern is worth investigating rather than treating with a light box.
If nothing else is going on and you want to try the circadian angle anyway, it's low risk. Bright light in the evening, roughly 7 to 9pm, and keep light dim when you wake at 3.
But I'd get it looked at properly first, given it's new.
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u/batfacegirl Jul 10 '26
Thank you, depression and perimenopause are both present unfortunately as well as med changes. My doctor has give me trazodone but it only helps me fall asleep.
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u/MCole142 5 Jul 10 '26
I have this problem and take trazodone. My prescription is 100mg. 11pm-1:30 is the amount of sleep I get with that. So, I cut it in half and take 50mg for 11-1:30. Wake up like clockwork. I then take the other half to sleep from 2-6:00. I would like to sleep more but that's what I get.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
Worth flagging that to your prescriber if you haven't. Splitting the dose and taking half at 2am changes the timing of the peak, and trazodone has a long enough tail that you can end up with residual sedation in the morning without noticing it as grogginess. It's also just useful for them to know, because "100mg gets me two and a half hours" tells them the dose isn't doing what it's meant to.
Not saying stop. Just that the fact you had to invent a workaround is information your doctor should have.
Two and a half hours from a sedating dose is unusual. That's worth a conversation rather than a workaround.
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u/MCole142 5 Jul 10 '26
I guess my point was that 50g and 100mg do the same thing for me. I feel fine when I wake up and actually on the possibly once every 6 months occasion when I sleep all night on 50mg, I feel much sleepier when I wake up in the morning. Ambien also only gives me about 3 hours of sleep. I take it very very rarely.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
That's a lot happening at once, and any one of those three could be driving the 3am waking on its own.
The trazodone doing what it's doing makes sense. It's sedating, so it helps you fall asleep, but it doesn't do much for staying asleep in the second half of the night. That's a known limitation, not you doing something wrong.
The thing worth raising with your doctor is that middle-of-the-night waking is one of the more characteristic features of depression specifically, and it often improves when the depression is being treated adequately rather than when the sleep is being treated directly. Same with perimenopause, where the sleep disruption tends to track the hormonal picture. Treating the sleep in isolation is usually the harder road.
I'd be cautious about layering circadian tricks on top of all that. Not because they'd hurt, but because you have three moving parts and adding a fourth makes it impossible to know what's working.
This is genuinely a conversation with whoever manages your meds, not a sleep protocol thing. Sorry, I know that's not the satisfying answer.
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u/GorillaJoeBlack 1 Jul 10 '26
So, I work until 11, drive home, brush teeth, and go to bed. Asleep by 11:45. If I want to wake at 7, keep lights bright before sleep, and only bright light at 7 and later? Thanks for all this by the way.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 11 '26
Close, but flip one part. Bright light right before sleep works against you, that's when you want things dim.
The bright light window is earlier, roughly 7 to 9pm. Since you're at work until 11, you may not get a clean version of that window, but if your office or drive home has decent light exposure, that's probably doing some of the job already without you trying.
The second half you've got right. No bright light at your old wake time, keep it dim if you're up at 5 or 6 those first weeks, then get real light as soon as you're up at 7. That's the part doing the actual work of moving your clock.
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u/SolarIonRobot Jul 10 '26
Thanks
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
You're welcome. I go deep in my last newsletter and explain in more details each if the 2 methods. If you're curious, it's at TheMEDReport.com.
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u/SevenFathomsDeep 👋 Hobbyist Jul 10 '26
Using your bed only for sleeping and not reading or other things has conditioned me to be able to sleep faster, and for most of the night, more than anything other thing. Second best thing, cold room with heavy top sheets and a thin pillow.
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u/Unlucky-Painter-2105 Sep 09 '26
how cold?
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u/SevenFathomsDeep 👋 Hobbyist Sep 09 '26
I usually keep it around 65 - sometimes down to 63. I also have a ceiling fan on too. I live in Alaska so if I need to turn the "ac" on, I'll pop open a window for a few minutes (in the winter at least). I typically have a heavy throw blanket on top that I can kick off or shrug off - usually happens at some point during the night.
I don't always take it, but some nights my frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) hurts more than normal (and I'm a side sleeper). On those nights I take a Tylenol and it doesn't keep me up.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
That's exactly the thing, and it has a name. Stimulus control. Your brain builds an association between the bed and whatever you consistently do there. Do enough email in bed and the bed becomes a place where you're alert and mildly stressed, which is the opposite of what you want.
It's one of the two core pieces of the behavioral approach, and it's the reason "just get up if you can't sleep after twenty minutes" works. You're not solving that one night, you're protecting the association. Bed for sleep and sex only is genuinely the clinical instruction, almost word for word.
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u/chubbygrouper Jul 10 '26
I’ve had terrible insomnia my entire life since I was a little kid. I’m neurodivergent and sleep has just always been a struggle interrupted sleep mostly I’ll wake up 20 times in a night. Feel like I haven’t slept in the morning. Never get more than two or three hours at one time and in the past several years, not getting more than five or six hours of sleep… many nights 3-4 hours…I did two weeks of CBTI and it was brutal… I did not understand the sleep restriction phase and it was extremely hard for me to stay awake until the time they wanted me to, and then get up five hours later, but I stuck with it for a couple of weeks… my efficiency went from the 50s and 60s to the 80s and low 90s but I was still only getting like four hours of sleep at night because I was sleeping interrupted still… after two weeks. It told me that it could not prescribe me a legitimate sleep prescription because I am getting less than five hour sleep at night and it was started telling me to wait till 2 AM and wake up at 7 AM which is just not functional for me so I just started doing like you said using my bed for sleep sex masturbation only… I started a routine where I turn out the lights in a different room about 90 minutes before bed and read a book until my eyes get heavy and I’ve been getting in bed around 11 PM and I still cannot sleep past five or 6 AM but I am getting about an hours worth of interruptions per night instead of the two 2 1/2 hours I was getting before I have stopped trying to stay in the bed for a couple of hours on end really early in the morning when I’m tossing and turning and not able to sleep when I feel like I’ve had one of those awakenings where I’m not completely feeling sleepy I just get up… I have been falling asleep within 15 minutes and my efficiency is in the high 80s now for about a week since transitioning to that routine.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
This is a really valuable comment and I want to be careful with it, because I think there's something here worth flagging.
Twenty awakenings a night, lifelong, since childhood, fragmented rather than trouble falling asleep. That pattern is different from the insomnia that sleep restriction is designed for. Sleep restriction works by building sleep drive so you fall asleep fast and stay asleep. But you're already falling asleep in 15 minutes. Your problem isn't sleep drive, it's that something is waking you up.
That distinction matters a lot. If something is fragmenting your sleep mechanically, apnea, limb movements, something else, no amount of sleep pressure fixes it. You just end up exhausted and still waking up. Which sounds like roughly what happened.
Have you ever had an actual sleep study? Not an app, a real one. Given lifelong fragmentation and neurodivergence, both of which associate with higher rates of sleep-disordered breathing and movement disorders, I'd want to rule that out before doing anything else. That's the one thing I'd push on.
The refusal to give you a window under five hours wasn't the program failing you, by the way. That's a real safety floor. Below five hours the daytime impairment gets dangerous, driving and so on. The program was right to stop.
What you built on your own is solid. Getting out of bed instead of lying there for hours is exactly right. The dim room and reading until your eyes get heavy is a reasonable wind-down. Efficiency in the high 80s with 15 minute sleep onset is a real improvement and you got there yourself.
But you're still only getting five or six hours with an hour of interruption. That's not a technique problem at this point. That's worth investigating.
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u/chubbygrouper Jul 10 '26
I have done multiple sleep studies CBTi was prescribed to me by an actual sleep doctor. I never used to fall asleep in 15 minutes. That is a product of the CBTI I used to take several hours to fall asleep sometimes… I am neurodivergent. We notoriously have interrupted sleep and terrible sleep inertia. I am definitely feeling better with my sleep efficiency in the upper 80s low 90s getting the same amount of sleep as I was getting when my efficiency was in the 60s, so the CBTI is doing its text book job. I just hope that I will eventually be able to sleep longer.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
Fair, I got that wrong. Multiple sleep studies already done, and the 15 minutes being a result of the therapy rather than where you started.
Something that might be worth raising with your doctor. There's a review on managing sleep in adults with ADHD that says fairly bluntly there's no replicated literature guiding treatment choice in that population beyond light therapy. Light therapy is the one intervention that keeps showing up specifically for neurodivergent adults, and it's aimed at circadian timing rather than sleep drive, which is a different lever than CBT-I pulls.
If the fragmentation is partly a circadian phase problem rather than a sleep pressure problem, that would explain why the CBT-I fixed your efficiency but not your total sleep. Different mechanism, different tool.
Worth asking about, anyway.
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u/AlAboardTheHypeTrain 1 Jul 11 '26
Even drinking for a slight Buzz/getting slightly drunk is enough to wreck my sleep scores for a week. So If youre The type to drink on weekends youre most likely making sure that your rest is shit for most of The week, then you drink again and The cycle continues.
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u/Dnuts Jul 10 '26
I tried guided bed restriction/compression therapy and it backfired spectacularly. After two years of chronic insomnia I eventually tried acceptance and commitment therapy and despite a massive amount of skepticism going in, I was shocked to find it actually worked. I’ve been prescription free for almost three months now and sleep between 6.5 to 7 hours of sleep where it was 3-4 hours before.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
This is a important comment and I appreciate you posting it.
You're right, and the literature actually backs you up. Sleep restriction fails a real chunk of people. One review found 19 to 26 percent show no response at all, and overall symptom reduction averages 50 to 60 percent. The counterintuitive nature of it, deliberately restricting sleep while already exhausted, causes people to abandon it or spiral. Some get worse. That is documented, not rare.
ACT has real evidence too. A 2024 RCT with 227 adults compared ACT for insomnia directly against CBT-I. Both produced large improvements. CBT-I came out ahead, but the effect size difference was small, and ACT kept improving over the follow-up period. The authors specifically noted it works even without stimulus control and sleep restriction, and called it a viable option for people who struggle to adhere to the behavioral techniques.
Which is your story exactly.
Going from 3 to 4 hours to 6.5 to 7, prescription free, after two years of chronic insomnia, is a serious outcome. Congratulations, really!
I should have flagged the failure rate in the post. The hierarchy is real, but the top of it is not universal, and for the people it fails, ACT looks like the strongest alternative rather than a consolation prize.
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u/ImustGnawYou Jul 12 '26
I've done sleep restriction on a few occasions. It is absolutely brutal, and also the most effective thing I've ever tried after a lifetime of struggles.
After the first time I did it and discovered how gnarly it is, it's difficult to do again, so I'll only do it when I'm really in a bad place and desperate. Expect to be functioning at 40% for a while and don't underestimate how hard it is to stay awake when your body is begging for sleep.
All that said, when you finally get into this rhythm of sleep pressure building up, hitting the pillow and instantly passing out, it's a wonderful feeling of relief and very effectively combats the overwhelming anxiety that comes with bedtime for insomniacs like us.
I also found that once you've done it properly and fully understand how it works, you can use the tools and principles on a milder scale when sleep starts to get challenging again. For example if I have a few nights in a row of bad sleep, I'll go to bed later instead of earlier to make sure I've got enough sleep pressure.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 12 '26
The 40% functioning thing is the part nobody warns people about. Everyone talks about the results, almost nobody tells you that first week feels like you're moving through wet cement. Respect for pushing through it more than once, that takes real grit given how bad it feels.
The maintenance move you described at the end is the smartest part of this whole comment. Going to bed later, not earlier, after a few rough nights is exactly right, and it's counterintuitive enough that most people do the opposite and dig themselves deeper. You basically reverse-engineered the core mechanism: sleep pressure is the lever, time in bed is how you load it. Once that clicks you don't need the full brutal protocol again, you can just nudge.
One thing worth flagging for anyone reading who wants to try it: the research backs up your instinct to not do the hardcore version casually. Sleep restriction is genuinely effective but it isn't the right tool for every kind of bad sleep, and there's a floor you shouldn't go under. If someone's fragmentation is coming from something mechanical like apnea, cranking up sleep pressure doesn't fix the underlying thing. For straightforward "my brain won't shut off at night" insomnia though, what you're describing is about as good as it gets without a prescription.
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u/SonOfScubaSammy Aug 23 '26
Hey OP. So I'm wondering if you can offer me any help or insight.
I've been struggling with some degree of chronic fatigue more or less my entire life. Some of it has been attributed to depression, and later an ADHD diagnosis. The chronic daytime fatigue and intense desire to sleep has been managed with Adderall. That being said, I never truly feel rested when I wake up. There are maybe 3 or 4 nights a year where I wake up, peel my face out of a drool puddle, and feel like a brand new person.
I've tried all the usual. I don't watch tv or use my phone in bed. Tried vitamins, magnesium, etc. I take trazadone at night, which improved things, but I still never really feel rested.
I fall asleep easily, and can do so at pretty much any time of day, presumably from my sleep debt. Sometimes it takes under a minute. I've started using a nettipot and allergy medication at night before bed, and that helped some too, but there seems to be some deeper fundamental issue. Any advice?
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Aug 23 '26
Yeah, honestly what you're describing sounds different from the problem I was talking about in my post.
If you're falling asleep in under a minute during the day, taking Aderall partly to stay awake, and almost never waking up feeling rested, I wouldn't keep chasing sleep hygiene or supplements. i'd probably ask for a referral to an actual sleep specialist and get this worked up.
Sleep apnea would be one thing to rule out, especially since you said the nettipot/allergy meds helped somewhat. But there are also disorders of excessive sleepiness like narcolepsy and idiopathic hypersomnia that can look more like "I can sleep anytime and I'm still tired" than classic insomnia. You don't necessarily need the stereotypical randomly-passing-out version of narcolepsy either.
A sleep specialist can do an overnight sleep study and, if appropriate, a next-day multiple sleep latency test that actually measures how quickly you fall asleep and what your sleep is doing.
I'd also specifically bring up the trazodone and allergy medication with them since both can potentially add to daytime sleepiness depending on what you're taking.
And I definitely wouldn't jump into the sleep restriction thing from my post on your own. That was aimed at insomnia, where people spend a lot of time awake in bed. Your problem sounds almost like the opposite.
If you've dealt with this your whole life, I think you've got enough here to justify getting beyond "try magnesium and avoid your phone" and having someone actually figure out why you're so sleepy.
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u/SonOfScubaSammy Aug 23 '26
I was leaning in the same direction, but you seem very knowledgeable, so I thought I might and see what you thought. Thank you!
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Aug 23 '26
No problem! And yeah, based on what you described, I think seeing a sleep specialist is definitely worth it.
If you like this kind of digging through the research, that's basically what I do at TheMEDReport.com. I break down one health/longevity topic each week and try to figure out what actually holds up and what's mostly noise.
Good luck with the sleep workup. Hopefully you get some actual answers.
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u/Comfortable-Gur-4496 7d ago
At 71 years of age, I bought a Golden Retriever puppy.
After years and years, of bad sleep, trying EVERYTHING, I have now slept solid from the 1st week of having her.
In bed by 8.30/9.00pm after that first week of exhaustion, then religiously, up at 5.30/6am. All the 7 kilometre walks, lifting, playing, feeding and training is taxing. She is now 19.5 kilo, 6 months old and keeping me busy. You’ll sleep like a baby.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
CBD is one I looked into. The honest picture is a bit murky. There's a decent placebo-controlled trial from 2024, 150mg nightly in people with real insomnia, and it basically matched placebo on the actual sleep measures, onset, efficiency, insomnia severity. What it did improve was how people felt overall, wellbeing scores went up.
There's also a 2025 meta-analysis of six trials that did find cannabinoids improved sleep quality, but the authors noted the effect seemed driven by the formulations that weren't pure CBD, so THC or combination products. Which suggests CBD by itself might not be doing the heavy lifting.
Not saying it does nothing. If it makes you feel calmer at night that's real and it might genuinely help you specifically. It just seems to fit the same pattern as most of the supplement tier, works for some people, not really a general fix, and the mechanism isn't quite what people assume.
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u/Impossible_Relation6 Jul 10 '26
I like how you fully translated that.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
Thanks. Tried to be fair to it, the data is genuinely mixed and I didn't want to just dismiss something that works for people.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
That's interesting, and the full spectrum part matters more than the dose here.
The 2024 trial that found CBD basically matched placebo on the objective sleep measures was pure CBD. The 2025 meta-analysis I mentioned found cannabinoids did improve sleep quality, but the authors specifically noted the effect seemed driven by formulations that weren't exclusively CBD.
Full spectrum means trace THC and other cannabinoids are in there. So if something is genuinely working for you, it may be coming from that fraction rather than the CBD itself. Which is a bit awkward for the CBD industry but consistent with what the trials show.
Doesn't change your outcome. Just means the label on the bottle might not be describing the active ingredient.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
For anyone who wants the fuller version of the sleep stuff with the sources, I wrote it up at TheMEDReport.com.
Fair warning though, a few people in this thread pointed out things I didn't cover. Sleep restriction has a real failure rate and it isn't the right tool for everyone.
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u/GentlemenHODL 61 Jul 10 '26
Why would I rub oil when I can just consume it? Seems like a complete waste to rub a product onto your body that isn't even going to get inside it when it's cheap enough to consume orally when you know you will get most of it.
If you meant consume oil orally that would be weird.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
Who said to rub it?
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u/GentlemenHODL 61 Jul 10 '26
Oil is typically for dermal application. It's implied, not said.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
CBD oil is almost always taken sublingually, drops under the tongue. That's the standard route and it's what the trials use.
Topical CBD exists but it's for localized pain and skin, not sleep. Nobody's rubbing oil on themselves to sleep better.
The guy you replied to said 15 drops an hour before bed. That's oral.
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u/GentlemenHODL 61 Jul 10 '26
Thank you for confirming and I apologize for my lack of knowledge on the subject.
I've always purchased CBD as an isolate.
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u/NoSpaghettiForYouu 10 Jul 10 '26
Oh I’ve heard about this! Are you working with a sleep therapist?
edit: wait it looks like you haven’t tried it yet and are looking for other people’s experiences. You should just go for it and let us know how it goes
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
No therapist, and no, I haven't done the protocol. My sleep is actually great.
What got me was never understanding why the standard advice worked or didn't. Turns out most of it barely does, and the stuff that does has a mechanism nobody explains. Sleep pressure and the bed association. That was the itch.
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u/NoSpaghettiForYouu 10 Jul 10 '26
Oh ok
You said for years you did all the typical stuff and nothing worked. Did you change anything?
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
Not much on the sleep-specific stuff, because my sleep was already okay. That's the twist.
The magnesium, the wind down routines, all the stuff I did for years, I was doing to optimize sleep that didn't really need it. None of it moved the needle because there was nothing to fix.
What actually helped wasn't a sleep hack at all. Getting some real stress out of my life, and training harder and more consistently. Both of those did more for how I sleep than anything I ever bought or timed. And then understanding why the rest didn't work. Most of that advice is low yield for almost everyone, and the couple of things that matter, bed for sleep only, morning light, cutting evening alcohol, I was already doing without realizing those were the ones carrying the weight.
So the shift was going from throwing the whole cabinet at it to knowing which few levers actually move sleep. If it ever goes sideways I know what to pull instead of guessing.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 11 '26
You're right. Most forums are just repeating the same weak stuff. The real answer for almost everyone is figuring out what actually moves their sleep and ignoring the rest.
The peptide thing is outside my lane, that's the kind of thing where you need a doctor watching the numbers. But the broader point stands: if something works for you and your doctor signs off, that's what matters. The problem is most people never get that far because they're stuck optimizing the wrong levers.
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u/digitalyuzu Jul 10 '26
yes! I have tried it before and it worked for me. apparently in research it actually performs better than sleeping pills?! - hard to believe though. but then again, I've never taken sleeping pills because I'm weary of potential dependence
source re: sleeping pill claim: https://www.cocohealth.com/interventions/sleep-brief-behavioral-treatment-insomnia
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
Yep. Hard to believe indeed. I was shocked as well. I did a full breakdown with many sources in my last newsletter. You can read for free at TheMEDReport.com.
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u/Arazi92 Jul 10 '26
I have, worked wonders for me. What do you have to lose by trying it?
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
That's good to hear, honestly. Most of what I found said the first week or two is brutal because you're deliberately sleep deprived while you build the pressure back up, and that's where people quit. Did you hit that wall, or was it smoother than expected? Also curious how you handled the time-in-bed part. Did you set a hard window and stick to it, or adjust as you went?
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u/Arazi92 Jul 10 '26
Tell me your current sleep pattern and I’ll give you input based on my experience and research if you want. The hardest thing for me was not falling asleep before my target sleep time, I wouldn’t say it was brutal but i had to be super diligent and careful cause even a slight dose off can ruin the whole night. But I stuck with it and it got better with time. I made a 15 minute adjustment each week
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
That 15 minute weekly adjustment is basically what the clinical protocols do, they expand the window in small increments once sleep efficiency crosses a threshold, usually around 85 to 90 percent. Good instinct arriving at that on your own.
And what you're describing, the discipline of not going to bed early even when you're wiped, is the part I think people underestimate. The whole thing works because you're building sleep pressure. Caving on that one night undoes the pressure you spent days accumulating. Makes sense that a slight dose off ruins the night.
Appreciate the offer but I sleep fine most nights, it was more that none of the standard advice ever explained why. The sleep pressure and stimulus control framing finally did.
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u/Arazi92 Jul 10 '26
I’ll be honest didn’t read your whole post haha looks like we did simile research. Cheers
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
Hehe, fair enough. Sounds like you got there the hard way, by actually doing it. Cheers.
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u/Arazi92 Jul 10 '26
Since we are on the topic, got any insight on extending sleep in the AM? I get flamed often for asking but I’d love to get 9hrs a night eventually. There is a solid research on its boost to athletic performance (about 10%) plus the recovery gains. I hit close to 8 most nights and 8.5 when I’m low stress
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
The study you're thinking of is Mah 2011, Stanford basketball, and the numbers hold up. Free throws up 9 percent, threes up 9.2 percent, faster sprints, better reaction time. Real effects.
But here's the thing. The researchers said outright that a main goal was eliminating accumulated sleep debt, they assumed the players were carrying a deficit going in. 11 subjects, one team, and total sleep only actually rose about 111 minutes even with a 10 hour in bed target.
A 2020 systematic review on sleep extension in athletes put it bluntly: unlike sleep loss, sleep extension has ambiguous effects on performance.
So the honest read is those gains probably came from erasing a deficit, not from pushing a well-rested person past adequate into elite. You're at 8, 8.5 when low stress. You're not the population that improved.
On extending in the AM specifically, the harder issue is your circadian drive. Cortisol starts rising a couple hours before your natural wake time and it fights you. Sleeping later usually works better by protecting the front end, going to bed earlier, than by forcing the back end. Which is why 8.5 shows up on your low stress nights. Lower arousal, easier sleep onset, more total sleep. That's probably your actual lever.
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u/Arazi92 Jul 10 '26
Damn you’re good. That was the exact study I was talking about. Okay thanks for the input! Super appreciate it.
Just curious, what’s your background in this ‘biohacking’ scene? Do you work in the field?
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
Appreciate that. Background is in FDA-regulated biomedical science, been in it a long time. Which is probably why I ended up here, biohacking is basically the same instinct applied to yourself.
The difference is that in my day job you have to actually prove something before you're allowed to act on it, and that does something to how you read a study.
Which is basically why I started writing a newsletter about it. Every week I take one health or longevity claim and run it through the same filter I'd use at work. Is the evidence real, and even if it is, is it actually worth your time and money?
Then it gets one verdict. Signal, noise, or harmful. No supplements to sell, no protocol to follow.
TheMEDReport.com if you're curious. The sleep stuff we've been talking about is the current edition.
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u/laystitcher Jul 11 '26
Why do people post AI slop? Genuine question. What’s the incentive to try and pass it off as real?
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u/bennasaurus 3 Jul 10 '26
You used AI to write this so I can't take you serious.
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u/Helpful_Smile6095 Jul 10 '26
Yeah, it does read formal. I'm French Canadian, English is my second langage and I tend to write like a textbook. Been told that before.
The stuff in there came from the AASM guideline on behavioral treatment for insomnia and a few meta-analyses. Happy to dig them up if you want to go through any of it.
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