"Linear Progression" for Sleep: a trial of sleep restriction therapy

[Suboptimal]

Why is it important to sleep through the night w/o waking?

I wake at least 2-3 times every night, pee, and go back to sleep easily. Doesn't seem to hurt me a bit. I just schedule a bit more time in bed to get the total amount of sleep I need.

I'm not sure it's a big deal as long as you can get back to sleep easily and it's not affecting you during the day. But I find myself wide awake in the early hours of the morning, and I can't sleep later than 7 or 730am.

For the most part I'm not affected during the day, but I am nearly non-functional in the afternoon until I get a nap--even just a quick 5-10 minutes. I can't imagine that this isn't having a negative effect on my recovery.

However, if you're waking up to pee 2-3 times a night (versus waking up 2-3 times, peeing only ONE of those times) you might wanna ask your doc about diabetes.

[Suboptimal]

Possibly totally unrelated- but I've had sleep issues for a decade or more. I did a sleep study last year... severe obstructive sleep apnea. I had no idea. My wife had said my snoring was bad, but I felt like I spent more time laying awake in bed than anything.

Now I've got a CPAP. It's not the sexiest thing ever, but it has greatly increased my sleep ability. I rarely wake up in the middle of the night anymore, just a solid 5-7 hours of sleep (which is amazing for me) most nights.

So, a sleep study may or may not show anything... but if your insurer covers studies, it might be worth checking out.

Sleep apnea is absolutely something I'm concerned about. I snore badly (gf has to wear earplugs) and my neck is over 17", which is a risk factor. I also think I have a relatively small mouth and large tongue (crowded oropharynx is another risk factor). I would be open to try CPAP but I have shitty insurance, not sure if they'd pay for a sleep study. If this doesn't work out I will talk to my doctor about it and see what it would cost.

[Charlie Davies]

However, if you're waking up to pee 2-3 times a night (versus waking up 2-3 times, peeing only ONE of those times) you might wanna ask your doc about diabetes.

Nah, my blood sugar's fine. I just drink a lot of liquids and have a small bladder.

[Daniel Cavallari]

And anything more than one alcoholic drink within a couple hours of bed will make my sleep worse too.

Yeah, I forgot about that, although alcohol diminishes the quality of my sleep rather than the quantity. If I drink more than a little bit I usually wake up tired.

[Nockian]

2 things to consider that aren't mentioned:

Stress, both mental and physical -and mental stress is often something that isn't obvious.
Mattress/pillow-means the body moving more than it needs to in order to remain comfortable.

Also, I discovered my sleep pattern interrupted due to breathing difficulties caused by nasal polyps. Sleeping on the left side, when the nostrils alternate breathing, then essentially my nose blocks solid and that causes me to wake, or the necessity to turn over creates a bad rested state.

[Suboptimal]

Update:

Tuesday, 2/6:
Felt pretty normal most of the day, wanted a nap at 4pm like I normally do. Getting used to being super tired after 9pm and staying awake anyway. I wish the last 3 hours of the day could be productive but I can't motivate myself to do anything but dick around on the internet.

Tuesday night:
Fell asleep quickly. Woke up once, briefly, to wrestle the blankets back to my side of the bed. Woke up at 530am and then dozed off as my alarm went off. Getting out of bed was an RPE 9.

Wednesday, 2/7:
Feeling the same as yesterday but the urge to nap came a little later at about 530pm.

Wednesday night:
Slept all through the night, waking at 550am.

Thursday, 2/8:
Feeling completely back to normal all day, but still wiped out after 9pm or so.

Thursday night:
Repeat issue with the blankets. I don't mind this kind of brief awakening as long as I keep being able to fall back asleep quickly. Woke up at 550am again.



I can't overstate how unusual it is for me to sleep this well for several nights in a row. Even before adding time to my sleep, I feel like I'm already getting better sleep now than I have in many years. I do think staying up those last couple of hours each night makes my appetite for sleep much stronger and so leads to better sleep. But I also think the structure of the sleep restriction therapy keeps me from psyching myself out into waking up, worrying about not getting enough sleep, and then actually not getting enough sleep. I think my attitude toward sleep has improved independently of my sleep. I know that, no matter what, I'm getting into bed at 12am and getting out of bed at 6am. I'm not 100% certain that skipping the 5-10 minute nap in the afternoon is helping the sleep at night, but I'm not about to change something that's working. There could also be a significant placebo effect; knowing that I'm doing something to improve my sleep, and that it has been shown to improve sleep, might be making my perception of sleep improvement greater than the actual improvement. (I might also be waking up in the middle of the night and just not remembering it.)

I'm getting anxious for the sleep gains so I might add 15 minutes to bedtime on Saturday night (after 1 week of the initial restriction) if tonight goes like the last few nights. It just seems like I've already adapted to 12am-6am so why wait an extra week? I might do a bit of research to see if anyone is using a protocol for one week of initial restriction versus two.

[Taylor Grayson]

Meditation techniques and progressive relaxation are also immensely helpful. Although I usually fall asleep as if someone hit me with a 2x4, if my mind is disturbed, it can take a while. Focusing on my breathing, as Mindfulness suggests, is often enough to shut my mind down and let nature take its course.

But I think that relaxing the mind is best started well before bedtime. If there's mental tension at bedtime, there's probably mental tension all day long.

BTW, the idea that having to pee makes one wake up is probably wrong....it's usually the other way around. Your body shuts down urine production during sleep and only starts it up again as you begin to wake. If you get roused during the night for whatever reason, your body will soon trigger the need to pee. If you can keep the anxiety in check during one of these arousals, you can often prevent the need-to-pee.

[dhalli]

...
BTW, the idea that having to pee makes one wake up is probably wrong....it's usually the other way around. Your body shuts down urine production during sleep and only starts it up again as you begin to wake. If you get roused during the night for whatever reason, your body will soon trigger the need to pee. If you can keep the anxiety in check during one of these arousals, you can often prevent the need-to-pee.

Don't worry- a swole prostate will go ahead and change that

Actually it was probably that, along with sleep apnea that did it the most. Partially wake from the apnea event a few dozen times, there's probably been some urine production happening...

[Fulcrum]

BTW, the idea that having to pee makes one wake up is probably wrong....it's usually the other way around. Your body shuts down urine production during sleep and only starts it up again as you begin to wake. If you get roused during the night for whatever reason, your body will soon trigger the need to pee. If you can keep the anxiety in check during one of these arousals, you can often prevent the need-to-pee.

A couple of things.
When I was young, I would wake up at 6-8am and take a nice loooong pee. So I doubt my urine production system was shut down over night.

HERE: Nocturia: Causes, Treatments, and Prevention

And after all those medical explanations, the very last one I had a good laugh:
"Other people who have nocturia have simply developed a habit of waking up during the night to urinate."
Much science.

Also, I thought if you are eating moar protein,
your body kicks up the kidney function/urination frequency to deal with 'it'.

Maybe that's Broscience, but I thought that was a legit thing. IDK.
But it might stand to reason, that MOST people that were sleep-studied, probably weren't eating 200+ grams of protein per day.

TL;DR --- Maybe high protein eaters pee more (and the other reasons mentioned here).

[Taylor Grayson]

A couple of things.
When I was young, I would wake up at 6-8am and take a nice loooong pee. So I doubt my urine production system was shut down over night.

This doesn't contradict my point. You start to rouse prior to being conscious and this turns on your normal urine production, so by the time you're conscious, you have to pee.

Your own link supports the point, although my use of "shut down" might be an exaggeration:

During sleep time, your body produces less urine that is more concentrated. This means that most people don’t need to wake up during the night to urinate

The distinction is important, because if you mistake the cause/effect, you'll do try things like trying to dehydrate yourself before bedtime, which doesn't work.

The key point is that the need to pee is probably a symptom, not a cause of the problem.