- Hey there, as you may know, my sleep sucks.
Well, it did suck.
Now, it actually doesn't suck as much.
I never really have trouble falling asleep,
It's just that I wake up in the middle of the night
nearly every time, sometimes for three to four hours.
The next day, i generally feel crappy,
and who knows what it's doing to my long term health.
Leading studies, well, they can give an indication.
Nostradamus, he's dead, and also, is that real?
Father Time, I don't, It was a rhetorical question.
Anyway, again, it has been improving lately.
When I wake up, I'm not up quite as long
and my sleep has gotten better,
and I feel like I have more energy in the day.
And I've compiled a list of all the things I've done
to fix it, and I've divided it into two parts.
One is big lifestyle changes
and the other is the smaller practical
in the bedroom tips.
I'm not talking about what you're thinking,
although that might work.
Jumping on a pogo stick will
you know, wear you down a little bit.
First, the lifestyle tips.
Number one, acceptance.
It's just gonna suck sometimes for me
and probably for a lot of you.
There's no silver bullet that's gonna fix everything.
Probably, throughout my life,
I've never been and never will be that perfect sleeper
I want to be so bad.
Tastes like dreams.
My parents always had trouble getting me to sleep.
My sister tells a story about one time
when we were sharing a bed
and she woke up the next day on the floor
and I was on the bed like this covering the whole thing.
Bad brother, I've always been
pretty self-centered and awesome.
I was always the last to fall asleep at sleepovers.
In my twenties,
I was always the last to leave a bar or a party.
And I'd always wonder why my friends were so tired.
My wife sleeps like a brick and it's stupid.
I always want that sleep, but I have to accept
that that's not who I am.
I also had to accept that I'd never be a Ninja Turtle.
My name would have been Van Gogh
and my weapon would have been the Kukri.
Kuku for Kukri would be my catch phrase.
Also sorry, Van Gogh, England.
Also sorry, Van Gogh, Netherlands.
Also, sorry, Canada and Wisconsin.
But no, I have to accept the reality I'm given.
But what I can do is try to remember
the thing that I like to say from time to time.
Perfect is the enemy of the good.
Like Raphael he's flawed, but he is good.
Not gonna get perfect sleep
but I can make improvements here and there,
add tools to my tool belt.
And if I fail sometimes just accept it
because if I don't then I'm gonna get stressed
and I won't be able to sleep and play the long game.
I didn't sleep well this time
but I'm sleeping a little better
on average over the long term.
So to do that, maybe I change aspects of my lifestyle
like the rest of the list.
Number two, routine.
Most slarticles are very consistent about consistency.
Go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time.
I just recently did a video
about going to bed at 10:00 PM every night.
And I noticed a big improvement when I did that.
And since then, I'm not a hundred percent consistent
but I have been going to bed earlier and it is better.
And I've been using an alarm
and waking up at 7:30 every morning.
Some people say, try to not use an alarm to wake up.
Some people say do, some people think birds are real.
I'm meant to say aren't real.
Some people think birds aren't real, but are they?
For most of the past 15 years,
I haven't been using an alarm.
But now that I do,
it seems like it's better.
The next thing on the list, no alcohol.
This is the biggest recent change in my life.
Chyna and I just started a year of no alcohol,
we're several months in now.
I don't know when this video's going live,
so I'll just say several,
three months at the time of shooting this.
It didn't really increase the amount of sleep I get.
I still wake up in the middle of the night,
but it does feel like I'm getting better,
more rejuvenating sleep.
It is common knowledge that alcohol
reduces the amount of REM sleep you get.
By REM I mean REM
which is the band that sings
stand in the place where you are.
They help you get good sleep.
It actually stands for rapid eye movement,
It's a phase of sleep.
You know this, come on, also not drinking alcohol
makes it easier to go to bed earlier
because alcohol does give you an energy boost.
At least it gives me one initially, and then I get tired.
I know a lot of people that actually
use alcohol to fall asleep.
Alcohol's a complicated thing.
But in general, I think my sleep is better
because I am not drinking alcohol.
Speaking of substances, I do no caffeine after 2:00 PM.
And usually I'm done with coffee before noon.
Some say, you shouldn't have it at all.
Some say love it is a river.
That don't make a lick of sense, Bette Midler
I have quit coffee entirely for a month
that didn't help with the of the night wakey-wakeys though.
Maybe a month's not long enough.
Maybe I'll revisit.
Maybe she's born with it.
Maybe it's Maybelline.
Definitely it has caffeine,
but for now, and for most of my adult life,
I don't drink coffee in the afternoon.
And if I did, it would destroy my sleep
because I have done it before,
back in my stupid years, stupider years.
Since quitting alcohol though
I have started doing something
that I used to consider sacrilege, drinking Decaf.
To be fair, it's whole bean decaf, freshly ground
and made with the pour over method.
So it's actually very delicious, but I started drinking it
because it's nice to drink something in the evening
that's delicious that isn't alcohol or some sugary drink
and I'm still getting jacked up
on the caffeinated version in the mornings.
Don't worry, yes I know decaf
has a small amount of caffeine in it.
I just haven't noticed any difference
in my sleep since I started drinking it.
But speaking of consuming things in the hours before bed,
don't eat in the hours before bed
this is something I mostly do.
As in don't do,
I don't consume things in the hours before bed.
Sometimes I don't, as in do.
But I never eat a lot before bed,
and it hasn't really been a problem.
Next one, exercise.
You move around. you get tired, you sleep better.
You sit on your butt, you don't get tired.
you don't sleep better, science.
This ain't fun Craig.
I know, I know sitting ain't fun.
But it's about trade-offs.
But exercise doesn't just help me with sleep,
it helps me in a lot of other ways.
And the people who help me with exercise
are the sponsor of this video, Copilot.
it's not the only app I have on my phone.
it's just like another page, I just, just for the,
It used to be called DeltaTrainer.
I've been talking about them for
over a year now and they've been enormously helpful.
They make things so easy.
My trainer Nathaniel gives me different workouts each week.
I don't even have to think about it.
That's the best thing.
He's like, lift this, push this, pull this,
and I just do it.
I hope he doesn't let this power go to his head
and use it for evil.
Rob this bank, commit this fraud.
He seems like a good guy.
Will you ever use your powers for evil?
- Define evil?
I might increase a rep or two here or there.
It's never intrinsically evil.
It's always for the betterment of your body.
- I've never been this physically fit in my life
and it's really thanks to Copilot.
I talk with Nathaniel regularly.
He constantly checks in asking how the workout was.
Anything needs to be changed.
And it's nice to have someone to talk to,
you know 'cause I'm friendless.
Would you consider us friends Nathaniel?
- Of course.
- I have a friend.
When one of my old man nooks or crannies is hurting?
I tell him about it.
And we adjust.
I even ask Nathaniel to help me do a little stretch routine
before sleep and it helps.
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All right, moving on.
Light in the morning,
they say you're supposed to, you know
have light around and stuff.
And I try to do that.
I go for walks, I go for runs.
I work next to a window.
I hang out by the window sometimes, naked.
But in general,
I don't really notice that it helps
that much, but it might help,
so I try to do it, but I don't worry about it too much.
I just throw it in the soup and see if it cooks, you know?
And that's my lifestyle tips.
Now for the practical tips, in bed.
That sounds like a sexual innuendo or something.
One, no phone in bed.
I don't always follow this rule, but I generally try to
they say you should avoid blue light in bed.
I believe them.
But I anecdotally, I don't really know.
But I think avoiding my phone leads
to more sleep maybe because of blue light
but also because I avoid the horrible stimulation you get
from the internet fueling the swirling brain thoughts.
So just phone away from bed is general good blanket policy.
Doesn't always work, sometimes I'm in the middle
of reading something on my phone
and I put it down and I walk away from it for a while
and I go to bed,
but it's still swirling in my brain thoughts.
A better policy would probably be
to avoid the phone or anything really stimulating
for an hour or two before bed.
And I'm working on that.
But it's tough when you're a parent
and you only have an hour or two of freedom everyday
or maybe we should throw away our TVs
and I should buy a flip phone
and quit the internet entirely.
That's pretty drastic, but maybe I'll get there someday.
Baby steps, life is complicated.
Perfect is the enemy of the good
try not to have your phone in bed.
It's probably not good.
I'm mostly successful at it.
Moving on, reading a book, not the internet, not smut,
maybe smut, I don't know, reading in bed
tends to make me fall asleep.
I don't know what's different about reading a book
versus reading the internet besides the blue light.
Probably partially because it's not shocking news,
it's not interactive, it's not sensational,
it's not real, If you're reading fiction.
So sometimes it's hard to tell what's real and what isn't.
One notch against the blue light theory
is sometimes I read a book on my phone and that also works.
But that's dangerous because then you're just a swipe away
from all the internet trash.
Side note, I gotta stop looking at
pictures of trash on the internet.
Why do I do it, Just seeing other people's dirt
makes me feel more clean
because I'm so unclean.
But yes, I try to read in bed,
I go in phases.
Sometimes I'm reading a book for a while
and then I stop and I don't know why.
And I'm like, quit life, nothing works, I hate it.
No, I recognize that sometimes I'm gonna fail
these things go in phases,
perfect is the enemy of the good.
So if you try reading and it works for a while,
but you stop, you can always go back.
You can do this.
Next, black out curtains and white noise.
This is something that Chyna and I have been doing
for many, many years.
I've been using a fan to go to sleep
since before I knew China
probably 30 years back when I was like 37.
So I'm 67 now it's joke about me being old,
it's very funny, I don't even know
what it's like without them.
Maybe we should quit for a month.
Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's Maybelline.
Now my newest trick and perhaps my favorite.
I think it really works,
progressive muscle relaxation.
Basically, you go through several muscle groups
and you tense them up for five seconds
and you breathe in and then you let it out.
There's a link down there to how you do it.
But here's a quick run down.
Five seconds of hands,
then biceps, then triceps, then shoulders,
forehead like this, squinting eyes, smiling like this,
clenching your jaw,
going like this arching your back like this,
stomach, butt, thighs
feet like this, feet like this.
Training your body to recognize which muscles are tense
and to get them to relax.
Sometimes muscles are half tense
and you don't even notice.
Nearly every time I do it,
about ten to fifteen minutes later, I fall asleep
It might not specifically be because of this exercise.
It could just be because I'm
putting my mind through a routine,
it could be the constant regular breathing,
whatever it is, it works, I like it a lot.
Another thing I've tried is meditation.
That tends to work too, similar reasons.
Another thing, 4-7-8 breathing method.
First you exhale like this,
breathe in for four seconds through your nose,
hold for seven seconds
and then exhale for eight seconds, then do it again.
I think I'm getting tired doing it right now.
Another one, I've done several videos about this.
Journaling, lately I've just been doing a journal
on my phone.
Then I don't have to turn a light on.
I sleep with Chyna in the room,
I don't have to wrestle around a bunch of paper,
It's really quick and easy.
You need to grab it, as long as I'm not swiping
over to internet trash,
whatever problem I'm working on in my brain,
that's keeping me awake, just write it down in a journal.
Often you solve problems by writing,
you don't do it all the time,
but it helps you stop thinking about it.
Another thing, a gratitude list.
You could write it down
or you could just list it off in your brain.
Just list the things you're grateful for.
And the people.
I find that when I do that, it calms me,
it relaxes me.
Another thing I sometimes do, count backwards from 100
slowly and try to picture the numbers in my head
or spell the word, nothing, picturing the letters slowly.
And those are the things I do.
Here's a list of things I've tried that didn't really work
but maybe I'll try again at some point.
Weighted blanket, a lot of people say that it works
and maybe it does for them,
but it didn't really work for me.
Quitting coffee, I mentioned this before.
I might try it again for longer.
Maybe it'll work differently
now that I'm also not drinking alcohol, I don't know.
I did a video about sleep positions,
I tried different sleep positions.
It was a miserable failure.
Going to bed at 7:00 PM,
another miserable failure video.
Biphasic sleep one big chunk of sleep.
That's called monophasic sleep.
Then you got your two chunks, that's biphasic sleep.
Not really a failure
but it was just impractical in the long run to keep it up.
Things I haven't tried but I'm thinking about doing,
a sleep study, I do want to do a sleep study at some point.
Many of you think I have sleep apnea.
I don't snore, I know you can still have sleep apnea
if you don't snore, there could be other problems
that could be uncovered
and it will probably make a pretty interesting video.
Here's one I recently came across, forehead cooling.
A lot of people claim that that's a good thing.
There's some devices out there you can get,
they're super expensive, I don't plan on spending
any money on it, but I might try that at some point.
On the beard lover subreddit I asked you if you had any tips
Calwo-wulfsiege said cold shower an hour before bed.
I have done cold showers, ah uncomfortable.
But not before bed, I might try that.
Modest girl has an interesting one.
You tell a story in your head
and you continue you the story every night.
I've read about other people doing this
and I have a link to a blog post about someone doing this.
And that's interesting.
I might try that, you also brought up China and my podcast
that we don't do anymore called "story not story".
Your post kind of inspired me to try to
bring that back side note, you know
Chyna and I have a new podcast "In flickness and in health"
that we're also putting up on WheezyNews
in which we watch series of movies
like we did the Christmas series.
Currently we're gonna watch every Tom Hanks movie.
Dr Pcox85 says sleeping with your head
at the foot of the bed, that's interesting and fun.
I might try that as long as it doesn't disrupt
other people that sleep in the bed with me,
there's just one other person.
Shy coconut has a very specific
nighttime routine before bed.
And that is something I guess I've never really done.
I mean, I do have a routine, I take my contacts out,
I brush my teeth, sometimes I read a book
sometimes I just go try to go to sleep right away.
So I guess it's not that good of a routine
because I'm changing it up.
Maybe I need to figure out a better specific routine.
Blootannery and blandwiches talk about brown noise.
I was unaware of brown noise, I use a fan,
I don't know if that's white noise or brown noise,
or purple noise, but that works, maybe I should try
specifically brown noise,
I listened to it after I read your posts
and I kind of felt sleepy right away
but that could have been placebo or I'm an old man.
And a lot of you talk about lavender,
lavender scented stuff, I don't know,
I guess I could try lavender.
So that's it, I hope you try some of these,
especially progressive muscle relaxation
that has really been helping.
I know some of you're gonna suggest I read the book
"Why we sleep" because you always do
when I do a sleep video this is, I took the dust jacket off,
that's why we sleep.
I've been reading it and there's tips at the back,
which I think I've tried all of them.
Many of you will point out that someone wrote a blog
about all the inaccuracies in why we sleep.
And yes, I'm aware of that too.
Point is, I'm not just some Dingus,
I'm a Dingus that tries to do research.
Let me know in the comments, all the ways in which
what I'm doing is stupid or what works for you.
That's probably more constructive and a low angle close up
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So that's exciting for the people on Patreon at least.
And it's good to be excited, but not too close to bedtime.
Thanks for watching.