Why can't I tell my body what to do

[Pengwuino]

So I know this might sound a bit silly, but why can't I control my body

No, really! Today I knew I had to wake up at 9:30 and because I was sick the last couple of days, I had been sleeping in rather late. So I went to bed at around 1:30 and couldn't get to sleep. Then came 2:00...2:30...3:00am!

It got me thinking... why do we have so little control over things like this? I mean, I know I was going to get up at 9:30 come hell or high water because of my alarms, but my body didn't give a crap! It was like "screw you penguin, I am not going to sleep until 3:30am and screw you over with 6 hours of sleep so you feel like crap in the morning". And don't tell me "it's natural"! What's the dealio?

SERIOUS BUSINESS!

 

[Evo]

So I know this might sound a bit silly, but why can't I control my body

No, really! Today I knew I had to wake up at 9:30 and because I was sick the last couple of days, I had been sleeping in rather late. So I went to bed at around 1:30 and couldn't get to sleep. Then came 2:00...2:30...3:00am!

It got me thinking... why do we have so little control over things like this? I mean, I know I was going to get up at 9:30 come hell or high water because of my alarms, but my body didn't give a crap! It was like "screw you penguin, I am not going to sleep until 3:30am and screw you over with 6 hours of sleep so you feel like crap in the morning". And don't tell me "it's natural"! What's the dealio?

SERIOUS BUSINESS!

It must be the stress of knowing you need to get up. It always happens to me, if I *need* to sleep because of something the next day, it's a guarantee that I won't fall asleep until 1-2 hours before I have to get up.

 

[arildno]

My body is quite compliant in that respect.

Probably due to more flab than muscle, so that it can't fight back so easily..

 

[Pengwuino]

I got to wake up at 9:30am on Monday :( and I'm going to be up to 5am tonight. WAAAAh. STUPID BODY!

 

[Darken-Sol]

I got to wake up at 9:30am on Monday :( and I'm going to be up to 5am tonight. WAAAAh. STUPID BODY!

try meditation. my first attempts were riddled with cases of me falling asleep. just let each thought pass through without focusing on it, counting breaths, this should be sufficient to fall asleep or prime you for sleep. and lay off the dr pepper.

 

[Jack21222]

So I know this might sound a bit silly, but why can't I control my body

No, really! Today I knew I had to wake up at 9:30 and because I was sick the last couple of days, I had been sleeping in rather late. So I went to bed at around 1:30 and couldn't get to sleep. Then came 2:00...2:30...3:00am!

It got me thinking... why do we have so little control over things like this? I mean, I know I was going to get up at 9:30 come hell or high water because of my alarms, but my body didn't give a crap! It was like "screw you penguin, I am not going to sleep until 3:30am and screw you over with 6 hours of sleep so you feel like crap in the morning". And don't tell me "it's natural"! What's the dealio?

SERIOUS BUSINESS!

At what time do you stop ingesting caffeine?

 

[Pengwuino]

At what time do you stop ingesting caffeine?

I don't drink caffeinated soda or coffee. Take that!

 

[Darken-Sol]

I don't drink caffeinated soda or coffee. Take that!

try the meditation then. it is tying your awareness to one of your bodies major functions(breathing), it will help exclud your other thoughts.

 

[Pengwuino]

try the meditation then. it is tying your awareness to one of your bodies major functions(breathing), it will help exclud your other thoughts.

That sounds like crackpottery. MODS!

 

[Darken-Sol]

That sounds like crackpottery. MODS!

its certainly testable, feel free

 

[mishrashubham]

Have you been messing around with your sleep patterns? Like staying up late to finish work one night and then waking up late on free holidays?

 

[lisab]

try meditation. my first attempts were riddled with cases of me falling asleep. just let each thought pass through without focusing on it, counting breaths, this should be sufficient to fall asleep or prime you for sleep. and lay off the dr pepper.

Good advice. And try vigorous exercise, especially in the morning. If you can exercise outside in the sun, it's even better for sleep, I've found.

 

[Dale]

One word: Ambien.

I travel a lot and can't sleep in hotel rooms unless I am drop dead exhausted. Some trips I only slept every other night. One Ambien and thirty minutes later I can get a solid 6 hours minimum, and after 7 hours it is out of my system and I don't feel groggy.

 

[Pythagorean]

Meditation is not crackpottery when it comes to controlling your own brain. There's plenty of research that sets meditation states apart from other conscious states.

Its crackpottery to claim that you can remote view or make boils appear on your flesh from meditating, sure.

 

[Dale]

I have tried meditation, and it leaves me relaxed but very alert and not at all sleepy. I don't think it is crackpottery, but it is also not a panacea for insomnia. I understand Pengwuino's frustration, it is maddening to not be able to sleep when you are tired and know that you have a lot to do the next day.

 

[Pengwuino]

I have tried meditation, and it leaves me relaxed but very alert and not at all sleepy. I don't think it is crackpottery, but it is also not a panacea for insomnia. I understand Pengwuino's frustration, it is maddening to not be able to sleep when you are tired and know that you have a lot to do the next day.

Bah the thing is I am NOT tired because of the stupid hours I keep at times. RAWR. Stupid body.

 

[Dale]

It sounds like my situation may be even more severe than yours. I can be tired and still not able to fall asleep. I am not surprised that you have trouble falling asleep if you are not even tired. I am not sure I could fall asleep in that case even with Ambien, but I haven't needed to test it.

 

[Dude.]

Sweet, I can definitely help =D. I've always thought that sleep was a waste of time. And in a sense, it is, but it's also a very beneficial part of our memory consolidation and parasympathetic systems. So I've been studying and experimenting with how to fall asleep faster and how to sleep more efficiently. I do hope that at least 1 smidgen of this information will help you sleep better. =D



First, some good resources that have helped me better understand my foe:

This article will probably be most beneficial to you.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=95375"

This mini ebook is awesome for general sleep information and tips.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3932344/40-Sleep-Hacks-The-Geeks-Guide-to-Optimizing-Sleep"

Information about Melotonin, the chemical that's released to make you sleep.
http://www.denvernaturopathic.com/bluelightandmelatonin.htm"

A bunch of information from the National Institute of Health. Good general sense of what sleep is.
http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih3/sleep/guide/info-sleep.htm"

Super awesome alternatives to the standard sleep model.
http://www.dustincurtis.com/sleep.html"



Some general tips that help me fall asleep quicker or sleep more efficiently:

• Keep a notebook by your bed, or nearby, and write down everything that is keeping you awake. For me, it's usually planning for the next day, reviewing the day before, or dreaming about what I want to do with my life in general. Your brain will keep repeating the information because that's how it stores memories and thoughts. Once you write it down though, you effectively force the thought into long term storage (a notebook) and your hippocampus can stop worrying about holding on to this information.
• _______
• Wake up at the same time every day. It takes about 10 days for a sleep schedule to be solidified, and to solidify it, you have to wake up at the same time everyday. Your body chooses when to wake you up by a mix of cortisol and raising body temperature (and possibly other things I'm not aware of yet), and it's activated at your regular 'wake up time'.
  
  With having a set time to wake up, your body will tell you when it's time to go to sleep. Now all you have to do is listen to it.
  This is the best way to start a new sleep schedule I've found. You'll be tired at the beginning, but rest assured that it will work. I went from sleeping 9am-4pm to 12am-8am using this method.
• _______
• Exercise. I always fall asleep easier after a day of some sort of physical output. Be it running, basketball, lifting weights, pushups, crunches, jump rope, pull ups, drumming, whatever.
  I think hard studying works also, but I'm still working on these experiments, so I don't feel confident in spouting it as fact.
• _______
• Be vary wary of poor quality food. I was raised on fast food and soda everyday until about 2 years ago when I started doing experiments on myself while studying sleep and higher consciousness materials. I worked at Pizza Hut at the time, so I had access to unlimited free experiments lol.
  
  I found that I could be dead tired, barely able to stay awake; but if I had our pizza before, it was a struggle to fall asleep. I would get throbbing, electrical-storm-brick-wall headaches if I tried to do anything productive, and my thoughts would chase their tails round and round while I lay in bed.
  
  I've noticed huge differences in sleep ease and efficiency after ridding my diet of garbagety food with fillers, preservatives, and high fructose corn syrup.
• _______
• Don't do anything too active within an hour or so of your goal sleep time. Try not to work out, write/read something heavy, play video games, or watch an intense movie/show.
  I'm still working on optimizing this strategy, but I've found promising results with meditating to jumpstart stage 1/2/3. With a notebook at hand, I'll focus on my breathing and slowly work up my body, relaxing mentally targeted muscles. The trick to this is to remember your brain is a muscle, and it needs relaxing too. For any thoughts that come up, assess if they should be written down or dismissed from awareness, then put focus back on your breaths and muscles. Don't dwell on anything.
• _______
• Keep your room cold. You will absolutely not fall asleep in a warm or hot room. Your circadian rhythm (sleep cycle) relies on body and external temperatures. Cold means sleep, warm means wake up.
• _______
• Open a window! I've noticed pretty significant differences in sleep efficiency with my window open versus closed.
• _______
• This movie is awesome to fall asleep to:
  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7583894250854515095#"
• _______
• Also, getting better at lucid dreaming has made me much more look forward to sleeping. Instead of viewing sleep as a waste of time, I can now look forward to working out challenging thoughts and concepts in my dreams. I definitely recommend reading and working on lucid dreaming. It essentially doubles your life efficiency and utilizes the full capacity of human imagination.

I really hope this helps you dude! I've been a long time enemy of sleep, but I'm really starting to figure this guy out. One of my life goals is to engineer sleep out of humans. =D I will definitely post my results when I figure it all out. =D

 

[turbo]

Peng, I worked ridiculous rotating shifts for years in very demanding jobs. You can can get to sleep and wake up when you need to, but it takes some effort. Look up some links on "sleep hygiene" and see if you can get some help. Good luck.

 

[fluidistic]

I have a much worse problem than yours pengwuino. It's been more than 1 month I go to bed around 1 am and can't sleep till 5-6 am. So much that I stopped to attend lectures (unfortunately all my lectures start at 9 am so I have to wake up before 8 am).
I usually drink a green tea around midnight (it's almost midnight and I'm currently drinking it :) ). Around 2 or 3 times I hadn't sleep a single second and went to university. Lately I've been like a zombie that couldn't concentrate a single moment and with my eyes being bothering/annoying to me due to the lack of sleep.

I think the tip of opening your window is very bad in my case. I live in an apartment with windows giving in a somehow crowded street and sounds really bother me when I want to sleep. I've been using the stuff that you put in your ears (I don't know the name in English) to lower sounds by 29 decibels. Now I can't sleep without this. I can hear anyone speaking in the street (I'm at the 4th level) or the clock ticking in the living room and I can't sleep well due to this; even with the stuff in my ears but my brain seems to forget I'm listening to that after 5 am.
It's been a long time I knew my body was weird in the sense that in holidays I'd live during the night and sleep during the days. (watching a sunrise used to make me sleepy) but now I totally lost control... I just can't sleep at night and I'm waking up around 2 pm everyday. I go to gym almost every days (getting better and better) and I do study everyday maybe around 4 hours.
I don't have time to read Dude.'s links that seem interesting in helping us, but if a blue light can make one sleepy then I'm changing my computer background instantly to a dark blue :)
About meditation, I should try that but I really don't know how to proceed. I guess an extensive internet search could guide me through this (I'm really interested).
Well, I'm suffering for good.

 

[Evo]

I have a much worse problem than yours pengwuino. It's been more than 1 month I go to bed around 1 am and can't sleep till 5-6 am. So much that I stopped to attend lectures (unfortunately all my lectures start at 9 am so I have to wake up before 8 am).
I usually drink a green tea around midnight (it's almost midnight and I'm currently drinking it :) ). Around 2 or 3 times I hadn't sleep a single second and went to university. Lately I've been like a zombie that couldn't concentrate a single moment and with my eyes being bothering/annoying to me due to the lack of sleep.

I think the tip of opening your window is very bad in my case. I live in an apartment with windows giving in a somehow crowded street and sounds really bother me when I want to sleep. I've been using the stuff that you put in your ears (I don't know the name in English) to lower sounds by 29 decibels. Now I can't sleep without this. I can hear anyone speaking in the street (I'm at the 4th level) or the clock ticking in the living room and I can't sleep well due to this; even with the stuff in my ears but my brain seems to forget I'm listening to that after 5 am.
It's been a long time I knew my body was weird in the sense that in holidays I'd live during the night and sleep during the days. (watching a sunrise used to make me sleepy) but now I totally lost control... I just can't sleep at night and I'm waking up around 2 pm everyday. I go to gym almost every days (getting better and better) and I do study everyday maybe around 4 hours.
I don't have time to read Dude.'s links that seem interesting in helping us, but if a blue light can make one sleepy then I'm changing my computer background instantly to a dark blue :)
About meditation, I should try that but I really don't know how to proceed. I guess an extensive internet search could guide me through this (I'm really interested).
Well, I'm suffering for good.

I can't sleep if there is any noise, so I use a fan to drown out noises, it has helped significantly. And I used ear plugs.

Make sure that the tea you are drinking has no caffeine.

Do you have Excedrin PM where you live, that is wonderful for making you drowsy enough to sleep.

If all else fails, see a doctor, prescription sleeping aids may be what you need.

 

[fluidistic]

I can't sleep if there is any noise, so I use a fan to drown out noises, it has helped significantly. And I used ear plugs.

Make sure that the tea you are drinking has no caffeine.

Do you have Excedrin PM where you live, that is wonderful for making you drowsy enough to sleep.

If all else fails, see a doctor, prescription sleeping aids may be what you need.

I'd rather not take pills to sleep in fear of being addicted.
So you use a fan that actually makes noise to drown out other parasite noises? Sounds interesting. My fan makes lots of noises but I had no ear plugs when I used it in summer. I wouldn't use it now since nights are getting cold.
My tea at night must have some caffeine but I don't think it has a significant amount of it. Much less than a coffee I believe.

 

[hypatia]

I also use a very loud fan, to block out sound. My windows have room black out window film on them, it all seems to help.