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Falling asleep at work...
Athenor
Battle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered User regular
Battle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered User regular
I don't know what it is, but my body has decided that between 9-11AM each day will be "naptime." I've bemonaed this in other threads before, but haven't really come up with any good solutions.
It started with just weekends. I'd go to bed around 1 AM, wake up at 7-8, and then fall back asleep around 9-10 and sleep till noon-1PM.
Then, a few weeks back, it started happening at work. Same story - sleep around midnight-1, wake up in pain due to a bad bed that I've since replaced, and then feel like I want to sleep around 9.
Even now, with a new apartment, new bed, and so on... it's still not better. And it doesn't seem to care what my previous night's sleep looks like. I still do this "Dozing" thing where my eyes are closed, my head bobs, and I jump at the slightest sound. All I can think about is how much I don't want to be sleeping, and how much trouble I'll get in if I'm caught.
In general, my sleep patterns involve trying to go to bed at 10-11, listening to youtube videos to fall asleep for about an hour, finally falling asleep between 11PM and 1 AM, and waking up between 6-7 AM depending on how I've set my alarm clock. When 9 AM rolls around, my usual way to counter it is to go and buy soda/caffeine/snacks at the local store, which lasts for about 30 minutes of energy, and likely a long restroom break. My diet is crap at the moment, something I'm hoping to change starting today.
I'm really getting worried that I'm going to get in trouble at work. After lunch I'm extremely wide-eyed and bushy tailed and very productive in the afternoon, but my mornings are usually filled with reading the most boring documentation for IT known to man, and if I force myself to do work it only ends up accounting for keeping me going for 10-15 minutes at a time. I really am getting sick of this, but nothing I'm trying is helping...
I don't want to make it seem like I'm hiding anything or leaving out any important information, like the last thread I started here. I'm still not healthy... that's my next goal now that I've got my apartment. But I just want to stop falling asleep...
Edit: Thinking about it, this started about a month or two ago, which was about a month or two after I started on 40mg of generic Prozac. Isn't drowsiness a side effect of anti-depressants? I know there are some people who take their meds in the evening to counteract that sleepiness...
It started with just weekends. I'd go to bed around 1 AM, wake up at 7-8, and then fall back asleep around 9-10 and sleep till noon-1PM.
Then, a few weeks back, it started happening at work. Same story - sleep around midnight-1, wake up in pain due to a bad bed that I've since replaced, and then feel like I want to sleep around 9.
Even now, with a new apartment, new bed, and so on... it's still not better. And it doesn't seem to care what my previous night's sleep looks like. I still do this "Dozing" thing where my eyes are closed, my head bobs, and I jump at the slightest sound. All I can think about is how much I don't want to be sleeping, and how much trouble I'll get in if I'm caught.
In general, my sleep patterns involve trying to go to bed at 10-11, listening to youtube videos to fall asleep for about an hour, finally falling asleep between 11PM and 1 AM, and waking up between 6-7 AM depending on how I've set my alarm clock. When 9 AM rolls around, my usual way to counter it is to go and buy soda/caffeine/snacks at the local store, which lasts for about 30 minutes of energy, and likely a long restroom break. My diet is crap at the moment, something I'm hoping to change starting today.
I'm really getting worried that I'm going to get in trouble at work. After lunch I'm extremely wide-eyed and bushy tailed and very productive in the afternoon, but my mornings are usually filled with reading the most boring documentation for IT known to man, and if I force myself to do work it only ends up accounting for keeping me going for 10-15 minutes at a time. I really am getting sick of this, but nothing I'm trying is helping...
I don't want to make it seem like I'm hiding anything or leaving out any important information, like the last thread I started here. I'm still not healthy... that's my next goal now that I've got my apartment. But I just want to stop falling asleep...
Edit: Thinking about it, this started about a month or two ago, which was about a month or two after I started on 40mg of generic Prozac. Isn't drowsiness a side effect of anti-depressants? I know there are some people who take their meds in the evening to counteract that sleepiness...
He/Him | "We who believe in freedom cannot rest." - Dr. Johnetta Cole, 7/22/2024
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2nd, it's possible you're not getting enough sleep. Personally I'm fine on 6-7 hours of sleep, but not everyone is. Do you have any muscle soreness in your large muscle groups? That is a good indicator of not having enough sleep.
3rdd, what are you eating in the morning? Most people will get drowsy up to an hour+ or so after a substantial meal. Go lighter (I don't eat in the mornings, but many people might say that's a bad idea).
Worst case scenario, you cannot figure out why you're tired, but you don't want to get fired. Stand up. Much harder to doze off at work if you're standing up.
I am scheduled to meet with my psychiatrist later this week, and I'll be bringing this up to him.
Breakfast has been McDonalds crap for the last few weeks (like I said, no hiding). I'm gonna be switching to cereal tonight, now that my kitchen in the new apartment is taken care of.
I generally always have soreness in my back due to my weight. The new bed is better than the crappy futon I used to have, but it's fairly stiff. Doing a lot of moving hasn't helped either.
Starting good sleep hygiene really sucks. I'm not going to lie. You are going to spend the first few days just lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering "What the hell? Why isn't this working?" After those first few days, though, your brain adjusts to the new time, and you are sleeping better and at the appropriate time.
How old are you? Sleeping at 1AM and waking in the morning is fine for early adulthood, but as you age, you are going to need more sleep and better sleep. It's just a fact of life. There are many people who say "Well, I've been able to pull all-night benders drinking or playing video games and it didn't affect me at all!", but later in life, it definitely hits you harder.
Are you overweight? Do you snore when you sleep? If you don't have a partner who can hear you at night, you can probably just record yourself on your phone or a low-tech solution (like a tape deck on extended play). Either of those give a predisposition to sleep apnea, and that will ROYALLY mess up your sleep schedule, as well as exacerbate a lot of other medical problems (including depression and cardiac issues).
Some folks find it easier to have deep and restful sleep after a bit of exercise. The usual joke is the "sleep coma after sex" bit, but it's true! I know that sex (or substitutes for sex, erm) makes a lot of people pass out immediately afterwards... but you can also jog or do crunches or some other physically taxing activity that wears you out. You go to bed sweaty, but you wake up feeling like a million bucks.
If you are starting to sleep at work, you should try to catch yourself before fallinga sleep or find a trusted co-worker who won't snitch on you to wake you up. After that, stand up. Just stand, walk around, do your work standing if you can. I sometimes jab my thumbnail into one of my fingertips really hard to induce a bit of pain to wake myself, as sort of last-ditch thing.
Prozac can definitely cause insomnia (I think it's right there on the side effects label. Not sure, though). It's something to bring up to your psychiatrist/family physician.
I'm 31, will turn 32 on Sunday. Obviously staying up late is hitting me hard.
I'm very much overweight at 6'5" and 425 lbs; see previous threads here. I do snore when I sleep, though I have a CPAP. I need to get it adjusted and replace some worn out parts, though.
I don't have a partner I can physically be with right now. Exercise is on the docket for once I get done with this stressful patch at work + settling in my new apartment.
And yeah.. Getting into a set sleep schedule is something I've tried a couple times, but you are 100% right on the "laying there wondering why it isn't working" element. There's also the fact that my GF tends to get home late from work and so we don't have a ton of time to talk before bed, and I found myself staying up way too late talking to her/thinking about her...
No excuses though. More than anything this was me wanting to get thoughts on "paper" and keep myself awake this morning, and make sure it didn't get lost in other threads. I really do appreciate the advice/support.
Prozac does make some people drowsy, and some more than others. I would change to taking it before bed, as long as your doctor says this is ok. If they're a good and competent doctor though, they would have gone through these side effects and how to deal with them so you should, hopefully, already have this permission. When i went on an anti-depressant my doc said to take it mid-day and see if they make me drowsy or give a boost of energy, then move to evening or morning depending on how it changed my energy level.
To be honest, though Mcdonalds is probably whats putting you to sleep at work, your body is processing alot of bullshit and it puts all the energy into digestion. If you go for cereal, dont pick a super sugary one.
If you find a Yoga class with a real Shavasana at the end, it can be good practice for tensing up/stretching all your muscles for a period of time and then learning to shut it all down afterwards. This is a pretty good alternative to the standard method (masturbating) especially if you tend to look at a screen when you do that. Learning to control your breathing can be a big help too, if a racing mind is what tends to prevent you from falling asleep. I oscillate between sleeping normally and having trouble falling to sleep when I need to, but doing the same little bit of yoga and then a little controlled breathing right before bed puts me in sleep mode.
EVERY DAY.
Getting into the habit of a solid 9 hours of sleep every night will greatly improve your alertness and attentiveness during the day, your stress levels, your general health, and many other things.
Try as hard as you can to eat a healthy low-gi breakfast, muesli perhaps? This will also help, because eating shit for breakfast is detrimental in a multitude of ways as has already been stated by others.
In bed at 10. Actually killed the electronics at 10:20 or so, fell asleep between 10:40 and 11.. woke up at 2:20, woke up at 4:XX, woke up at 5:15 with my back hurting. So here I am. >.<
What's muesli?
It's grains and stuff and usually has things like dried slices of banana, sultanas, paw-paw and other things in it.
Your pour about a cup and a half in a bowl, add about a cup of full cream milk, mix it up, slice some strawberries or whatever on top, and eat it. You also have a nice big glass of real fruit juice with it.
it's a sleep schedule - you have to give your body time to adjust.
Honestly, I don't want to be mean, but there's no way around it: you have to lose weight. Sleep disruption & exhaustion are known to be caused by obesity; your symptoms line-up with the current shape that your body is in.
How is your meal planning / exercise planning coming along?
You're fine being mean.
I don't know how popular this advice will be, but if you have to start with lazy low-self-control solutions, do it. Diet soda, no-sugar added and low sugar everything. If you can replace sugar anywhere in your diet with a suspicious chemical, do so. The worst any of it will do is tear your stomach up and taste like shit for a week, then it'll taste fine and you'll feel fine and you'll start losing weight. All the 'it causes cancer' and 'it's worse than sugar!' stuff is BS, seriously.
Once you're ready to pursue something a bit more rigorous, a keto diet will work wonders, unless your kidneys are in dubious condition. If you have Type 1 Diabetes or something else that's compromised your kidney function, this diet will not work wonders, it will put you in the hospital. If you're unfamiliar with keto, it's uber-low-carb dieting. Somewhere around a 65/30/5 fat/protein/carbohydrate calorie balance. You'll feel like shit adjusting, but it's relatively easy to follow after a week or two, especially if you're already used to sugar alternatives or just plain avoiding sugar. And I sleep like a rock on a keto diet, sleep terribly on any other diet, to take us back around to the original topic. Probably because there's no boom/bust energy cycle going on without carbs.
[citation needed]
Aspartame won't set your spinal cord on fire, no. But it's not good for you.
Substituting other things entirely for soda will be even better. Juice, milk, tea.
I know I found Mio stuff helpful when I transitioned off of soda (uh....for awhile, I'm gonna drop it again I swear.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy
It's completely safe. Juice is only the most marginal of improvements over sugared soda, and milk's even more calorie dense despite having better sources of those calories. And if you take sugar with your tea, it's not an improvement either.
Yes, water is going to be better than any other drink, a good salad better than any low-carb ice cream, but those are an excellent way to start digging your way out of the hole.
edit: Hell, there's that study showing that people who drink diet drinks lose weight more consistently than people who try to drink water only. Not because diet soda's better than water, but because it's easier to stay on the diet wagon than the water wagon.
If you can drink water and stick to it, more power to you. It's the best option, maybe supplemented with some black coffee and some tea for their health benefits. But when you fall off the wagon, you want to fall onto diet stuff, even if you stay off the wagon longer drinking diet since it "doesn't count".
And definitely avoid large amounts of fruit juice. Orange juice is as bad as regular soda in terms of sugar, the only benefit of it being the vitamins and minerals--which there are much better ways of picking up.
Honestly, the single best thing to do for any diet, period, is to accurately log every single thing that passes through your lips. There are dozens of sites that make it easy..calorie counter, myfitnesspal, etc. Log EVERYTHING. Exact amounts, even if you have to measure everything you eat with scales/measuring cup/whatever for a week or two--it's stupid easy to be eating, say, a few hundred calories of coffee creamer every day without realizing it. So log, log, log.
It's always weird to realize X thing you eat and worry about is actually pretty healthy and Y thing you didn't think about is actually Food Hitler.
I'm not a big believer in low carb/no-carb diets.
The fructose in 100% natural juice is fine, as long as you don't start drinking quarts of it with every meal. And the vitamins and fibre are definitely good for you. Milk is healthy. Yes, even full-cream milk. 4% milk means it contains 4% fat. So, 96% fat-free then.
The whole point here is that if you're trying to lose weight drinking calories is not a good idea and is one area you can cut that won't impact your feelings of fullness very much.
Fruit juice is okay, sure there's lots of sugar, but sugar isn't necessarily the death of a diet or anything. The most basic measure is calorie in and calorie out. Some calories are better than others, yes, blah blah blah, but if you're packing in 2000 calories of "good stuff" and 2000 calories of "meh stuff" you're not better off if it's affecting sleep or weight loss.
If you're going to do anything, drink wise, you should get those water additives that come in the little bottles. Sure they have artificial sweeteners, but they make the transition to water a hell of a lot better, and help you break the "well I just like the carbonation and taste of soda" because you can get a really nice tasting beverage going.
If you drink one juice a day, nothing is going to happen.
Drinking calories isn't fine as a general rule. Fructose isn't a magic sugar that doesn't make you fat. 100% natural juice is still as sugar-dense as soda.
As for milk, I'm only recommending against it in large amounts--it sure as hell isn't something you want to replace soda in your diet if you're drinking a lot of soda. And I personally only use whole milk...although I'd recommend half-and-half or heavy cream for coffee/tea/etc. if you want to be really serious about dieting, just to cut down on sugars.
As for low carbing versus other diets...you can lose weight with any diet, so long as you get your vitamins and minerals and burn more calories than you eat, but low carb's got a lot of modern science going for it. And anecdotally, I know 4 people who went from struggling to lose any weight to bleeding it off like crazy when they went keto, including myself--I shed 15 lbs and dropped my blood pressure from 180/holyshitlookatthefirstnumber to something healthy in my first month.
At the very least, low-carb isn't dangerous (unless you go extremely low-carb with bad kidneys). It's worth experimenting with if you're not really succeeding with what you're doing.
And again, back to the original topic of sleep, I sleep and stay awake appropriately way, way easier on a low-carb diet, because energy levels are far more stable than they are with copious amounts of carbs.
If you don't have the soda habit, and are more of a juice drinker, then dilute the juice. Some don't like water cause there is no taste. 7 oz water and 1 oz juice gives some taste and will fill you up and not dump as much sugar or calories into you than 8 oz of juice. Bubbles also help. No calories or sugar, but something going on in your tastebuds. Bit of lime/lemon helps.
low/no carb diets can be very effective, but someone who needs to lose about half their body weight to hit a "healthy" BMI should not go on any rigorous diet without a medical consult.
I pretty much agree with you across the board, so I think I've been misunderstood a bit.
To clarify, the goal in my opinion isn't 'drink diet drinks' it's 'don't drink calories'--in a perfect scenario, you do that by drinking water, but if you lack the will for that drinking diet soda (or diet juice, mad science that it may be it tastes pretty good), using aspartame or stevia or splenda in your tea and coffee, etc., is a great alternative.
I may be doing Athenor a disservice, but it's been my experience that EVERY overweight person I have ever met has has 'drinking calories' as a major problem in their diet, so it's something I always take time to mention, especially with the massive stigma against artificial sweeteners that might scare people off that could be helped by them.
As for seeing a doctor, preferably a specialist first...definitely a good idea. Not one that occurred to me, because seeing a doctor is something I can't really afford to do outside of emergencies.
Weight... spend the money for a nice bed, and perhaps you have sleep apnea which may be affected by your weight. I have sleep apnea, pretty severe actually. It only really became an issue in the past 4 years.. but it got to the point where it was causing huge problems for me at work. Fortunately my insurance covered a sleep study, a cpap, and all that jazz.
GIS is evil
Thanks for the advice, everyone. I'll keep you updated.
But yeah if I'm not occupied I can easily take a nap.
Just a note: This is backwards, don't bring your electronics to bed. Don't do anything in bed other than sleep. If you have the space, get that stuff out of your room. Kill the electronics like a half hour before you go to bed. Should be enough time to go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, and all that.
Doing the same stuff every night will help you fall asleep on time, but losing the weight is whats going to help you sleep through the night.
There are a ton of conflicting views about nutrition, but I believe you are still seeing a doctor about your diet? Listen to your doctor. Hes got the experience and can monitor your health as you shed off the weight. He'll probably tell you a lot of the same stuff that people in this thread are (Drink water, dont eat Mcdonalds) But I'd trust him to help you navigate that.
There are studies (maybe just one, I don't know, I read it on the internet) that a steady rhythm makes you more productive, If you can use headphones, I would maybe try a chillout playlist in the morning to keep you up. May not work, but worth a try.
On the doctor/weight loss thing, I know it gets old to hear it all the time. I get the same thing from my doctors. They're just trying to do what they think is best for your long term health.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I know... and yeah. That's my plan, actually, once I get done with this working till 8-10 PM period (which started after the sleeping issues, which is why I didn't bring it up).
I miss walking, actually.
Remember all those weeks you spent studying for your MCATs, then the 70 hour weeks for 3 years of med school and studying you did to get your MD, and then the 90+ hour weeks for the years you spent in residency, then the massive cram sessions to pass your boards? All that has really honed your intuition on medical issues, I'd trust yourself here.
Yes, I understand what you are saying. I also know my personal mental capacity to handle abrupt change, and the fact that they were not forthcoming about some of the numbers worries me. I also really don't like that every time I asked to go to an informational seminar, I got put into surgery-based options despite my saying I had no interest in surgery.
I'm sure this "Health Management Resources" program works fine. But I just couldn't see myself being able to see it through, and thus making the initial 600 dollar or so investment seemed like a bad idea.
I know I need to get lighter. I know it's affecting my sleep. I'm not trying to brush these things off. And it's not just this one thing that's made me uncomfortable, such as my going undiagnosed for lymphedema for a year despite my bringing up the strange coloring on my legs multiple times.
But.. anyways. I'm going to get back on the boat of walking, cut out the sugary drinks (including juices *sadface*), and start going to bed at 10 without any electronics or the usual background noise I've used to fall asleep.
juice is better than soda as long as it doesn't contain corn syrup; it still has way more sugar than it should because of how concentrates are made, but at least they're relatively healthy sugars.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Ew.
EDIT: http://www.nudie.com.au/nudies/Nutrition.aspx?productId=16