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Sleep pattern

Owen Bawn

Garden party cupcake scented
Now this is an old man topic if ever there was one... For all of my adult life, I've been one to go to bed early- 8.30 or 9- and then get up at 3.00 or 3.30. I started doing this when I was in college and working full time- I'd take 8,9, and 10 o'clock classes, then work from 11.30-7.30, then go to bed exhausted. I'd get up at 3 or 4 and do my studying. There was no internet in those days so it was stupid to be up at 4 if you weren't doing something productive or sensible. This schedule worked for me for decades.

But it has changed some since the lockdown. I still go to sleep by 10, but I now wake up at 1.30 or 2 and I'll stay awake for a couple hours reading, meditating, etc. Then at about 4 I'll go back to sleep for 2-3 more hours, getting up at 6.30 or 7.00. This is actually the way many monasteries operated. The 'Great Silence' began at about 8, the monks were awakened for Mattins (a long prayer service) at 12.30, and then they were free to read or go back to sleep from about 3.30- 6.00. Most medieval people kept a similar schedule (without the prayer vigil), going to bed not long after dark, then getting up for a couple hours in the middle of the night, and returning to sleep for a couple hours before sunrise.

How about you? Do you have a regular pattern of sleep? Has it changed over time?
 

EclipseRedRing

I smell like a Christmas pudding
I was always up until after midnight and slept very poorly, especially before I quit drinking. Now I get up at 6am every day and try to keep active, although my wife has a lie in if she is not working as she does 12 hour nursing shifts. In the last few years I have upped my steps to about 12500 per day and my wife and I do daily exercise and aerobics. We each have a Fitbit and enjoy a friendly competition to encourage each other and have fun doing something together. We compare Fitbit sleep scores most days and we go to bed before 10pm every night and try to keep to a routine. We both certainly feel much better for it.
 

Whilliam

First Class Citizen
I've read about what you are describing: going to bed, sleeping until, say, two, then going back to bed. The phenomenon is called the "second sleep," and, yes, it was common through the Middle Ages. I don't know if it is part of our natural circadian rhythm, but it sounds as if it might be.

That said, my sleep pattern mirrors yours: I'm usually asleep by nine, up at midnight for an hour or two, then back to bed until I get up for the day, generally at about 3:30 a.m.

To your question, yes, the pattern has become more pronounced as I have gotten older.
 
I go to sleep around midnight and wake up at 7:30ish.

COVID has changed this as I don’t have to get up early to commute. I used to go to bed at 11:00 and wake up at 5:30-6:00, but I like to sleep.no reason for me to be up early unless I have a good reason these days.

My sleeping pattern has been the same for decades. I’m getting old, but still sleep thru the night.
 

JWCowboy

Probably not Al Bundy
An old guys topic for sure!

I typically try and get to bed before 10 pm on nights during the work week. I start getting ready around 9:30 by putting out my clothes for the next day, making sure my lunch is packed, the coffee maker is set, etc. Alarm goes off at 5:45 in the morning and I get up and go for a run in the neighborhood, 1.6 miles. I find it's a lot easier when my running clothes and shoes are set out the night before as well ;) Then it's shower/shave/take the dog out/eat breakfast and kiss the wife goodbye as I'm out the door by 7:15 for the commute to work. This is the Monday-Friday routine. I find that if I get to bed by 9:45 or so I usually feel good the next morning, and the later I get to bed the worse I feel. The biggest thing I've noticed as I've gotten older is that I'm a much lighter sleeper than I used to be, and of course I occasionally have to get up to urinate, which I never had to do as a younger man. I like to have the occasionally craft beer 2-3 times per week, but I try and make sure I'm finished before 8pm, and never have more than one, unless I want to pee all night.

Now on the weekends, I might stay up until the ungodly late hour of 11pm and gloriously sleep in until darn near 7:30 or 8
I run a whooping 3 miles every Saturday and Sunday, and usually enjoy a bigger breakfast and linger over the newspaper.

I admire your monastic pattern @Owen Bawn, I try and spend at least 45 minutes reading a book every day.
 
Life long insomniac here. Keep a routine but its never helped. Been on several course of meditation, meds too nothing really works. Some nights out cold by 730 other nights up all night and just go to work.

My GP has said over the years its because of the hours I've kept. Continental shifts as an apprentice, then wierd shifts with the cops and ambo service. Only recently now that I work for transplant theatres are my hours more regular.
 
Cannibis helps. Not marijuana. It messes with your patterns. But hemp oil or bud helps with sleep. If I do oil, it works great but gives me vivid dreams. Smoking mellows out my patterns without the dreams.
 
I go to bed at 9:00 each night and Alexa awakens me each morning at 4:30. Even though I am retired, I have maintained this schedule. I usually sleep through the night, getting up at least once for the bathroom. I sleep much better now that I have my CPAP machine.
 

Toothpick

Needs milk and a bidet!
Staff member
Sleep pattern? Yeah, it’s like a Sudoku puzzle. Just a bunch of random numbers that are meaningless to me.

I work 12-14 hours on 3rd shift every Friday, Saturday, & Sunday. Then I try to join the normal people on days during the rest of the week. My sleep pattern is more like random naps whenever I happen to fall asleep.

I was awake from 3pm yesterday until about 2pm today. Then a nap till 6ish. Now who knows when I’ll be back in bed.

Last week I woke up about 3am every day, then a nap about midday for a few hours. There is no pattern to my sleep. It’s just 3-6 hour naps. I feel it is slowly killing me.
 

KeenDogg

Slays On Fleek - For Rizz
I was always up until after midnight and slept very poorly, especially before I quit drinking. Now I get up at 6am every day and try to keep active, although my wife has a lie in if she is not working as she does 12 hour nursing shifts. In the last few years I have upped my steps to about 12500 per day and my wife and I do daily exercise and aerobics. We each have a Fitbit and enjoy a friendly competition to encourage each other and have fun doing something together. We compare Fitbit sleep scores most days and we go to bed before 10pm every night and try to keep to a routine. We both certainly feel much better for it.
I know quite a few guys who drink regularly. None of them sleep well. Though I can't say it's the drinking, I have my suspicions. I like you and your wife are still having fun. My relationship has hit a rough patch in recent years and hope we can get back to good.
 
Sleep? What's that? Some nights just lay awake all night, churning rubbish over and over in my mind, get up 4 or 5 times to pee, maybe get up and read a book for 30 mins or so and try again (rarely works). Usually drink a bottle of wine and a couple of G&Ts which helps, but if I cannot get off quickly then I am awake for hours. In the office by 9am and spend an hour or two waking up, hoping no-one comes in to ask me anything complicated.
 
Such a bunch of early-to-bed guys! I haven't been to bed before midnight since...well, never. I get to sleep before one, up maybe twice to **** (hello, old age), then I get up when I wake up. I'm retired, so my days are my own. A day of blissful leisure is often enhanced by a good nap.

I gave up drinking years ago, but my brain is still catching up with all the dreams I missed while drinking/when passed out. Which I love.
 

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
I have a free roaming body clock. It's part and parcel with my rather complex neurological issues, which affect vision, balance, and other functions. Some "days" are only 16 hours long, while others are 30 plus. In a way, it's like permanent jet lag.

On average, most days start around noon, and finish just before the sun rises. Yesterday however, saw me staying mostly in bed, sleeping intermittently. Today started at 2:30am. There's a good chance of a snooze later, which if only 30 to 60 minutes, will leave the day format largely as it is, but if it runs for a few hours, will reset the body clock to a whole new start and finish time.

Every day is a new adventure.
 

FarmerTan

"Self appointed king of Arkoland"
I was always up until after midnight and slept very poorly, especially before I quit drinking. Now I get up at 6am every day and try to keep active, although my wife has a lie in if she is not working as she does 12 hour nursing shifts. In the last few years I have upped my steps to about 12500 per day and my wife and I do daily exercise and aerobics. We each have a Fitbit and enjoy a friendly competition to encourage each other and have fun doing something together. We compare Fitbit sleep scores most days and we go to bed before 10pm every night and try to keep to a routine. We both certainly feel much better for it.
When I was still in the Nursing trade I werked for years as a second shift floor nurse. Quite possibly the least appreciated career in the werld, and the least paid for the responsibility.

Sorry: I will try to elaborate.... First shift nurses have fewer families to deal with. Obviously, so do third shift nurses. What first shift did not accomplish falls to second shift. Third shift is a skeleton crew, so second MUST get it done.

All management leaves at 5pm. Which I loved, because typically, management is filled with people not looking to actually werk for a living. But guess who handled the emergency situations that popped up on second shift: that's right, me, as I was usually a former manager who got demoted when I was too "soft" on my nurses, so I had the experience, OR, I was the highest seniority RN on second shift, AND a male. I know this is sexist, but it's been my experience that when an emergency pops up, with a patient or a family member dealing with grief, and becomes semi violent, the male nurse jumps in to defuse a situation.

So at the end of the night, you do charting that you couldn't do because you spent your entire shift "pizzing on fires" as well as your regular job of keeping some people alive, rehabbing others, and being a hospice nurse to a patient whom you have grown to love, and that person has taken a turn for the worse, and part of you is praying that you are there when they expire, to be certain that their pain was controlled, knowing that 3rd shift had a nurse or an aide call in sick...and part of you feels really bad because you hope they wait until 3rd shift to expire so you don't have to notify the family, the funeral home, do the paperwork....

And then deal with that emotional trauma at home at an hour when your family is in bed, and go over in your mind over and over what you are going to get yelled at by the bean counters the next day....and your wife asking why you stayed up 3 hours after you got home... knowing that she will NEVER understand why you can't just "leave the job at werk!"

So, my answer is, I think I'm a born second shifter; I was born a minute after midnight as I was told. Lol, I was too young to remember it myself!

But I look back on my nursing career and I realized I werked 2nd or third shift for 80 percent of those years, the best, sharpest, most mentally acute time of my day.

Any young people reading this: God called me into Nursing. If He ain't calling you into it, get into a job that pays well, ha!
 

FarmerTan

"Self appointed king of Arkoland"
It has been decades since I used it but cannabis always made me anxious.
Didn't ALWAYS do that to me, but often enough that there was no way I had to fear developing a dependency to it. Stuff freaked me out 2 times, to the point where I NEVER even thought of trying anything "harder".... psychotropics were never on my bucket list; I ain't wrapped tight enough as it is!
 
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