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Poll: do you get sleepy or drowsy at bedtime?

Do you get sleepy or drowsy approaching your normal bedtime?

  • Yes

    Votes: 22 46.8%
  • No

    Votes: 21 44.7%
  • Other (please comment)

    Votes: 4 8.5%

  • Total voters
    47

Scarecrow

Revolting Peasant
Messages
1,904
Location
Scotland
Just curious.............


Edited to add that after seeing some of the responses I wanted to explain that drowsy and sleepy have positive connotations for me. My intent was to ask about pleasant sensations that you may - or may not - have before bedtime. I can't edit the poll question now, unfortunately.

There are other forms of tiredness that are unpleasant, such has exhaustion or wired but tired. If that is how you feel at bedtime, then your answer should probably be 'No' or 'other'.
 
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eafw

Senior Member
Messages
936
Location
UK
Mine was a yes, except it's a yes as long as ... I have about three hours of downtime and darkness in the run up. This time of year is especially difficult to close the curtains on a nice summer's evening, but it's that or still wide awake in the early hours.
 

Antares in NYC

Senior Member
Messages
582
Location
USA
Pretty tired and drowsy as I approach my bedtime... and then I get a surge of energy that keeps me awake for a couple of hours. I seem to have a bit more attention a bedtime than in the morning.
 

Tammy

Senior Member
Messages
2,176
Location
New Mexico
I said yes.............but it is a different kind of sleepy/drowsy than when I was healthy.......hard to explain. When I was healthy it was more of a relaxed sleepy/drowsy.......now it just feels like a tense sleepy/drowsy feeling.

Edited after your response @Scarecrow. There are times when I feel sleepy/drowsy in a pleasant way and it feels sooooooooooooo good but this doesn't happen often enough. When it does happen my sleep is deeper and not so restless.
 
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Messages
50
Location
Tampa FL
Often very, very tired and hard to stay awake past 8 pm or so. I have to stay up until at least 9 or I'll wake up about 2:30 and be done for the night. If I make it until 10 or so (rare) I can often make it until midnight or so with no problem.
 

rosie26

Senior Member
Messages
2,446
Location
NZ
Yes, it can come on very quickly and can be quite heavy and sometimes I can feel a bit off with it if it comes on too heavy. The only difference between now and my severe years is that I now can go off to sleep but in the severe years the sleep mechanism would not allow me to sleep. I get both (so I won't vote) but mainly pleasant now.
 

whodathunkit

Senior Member
Messages
1,160
I didn't used to, but now I do. I used to not be able to fall asleep until at least 2a in the morning.

I had to work *2 years* of the early shift at work (7a arrival, up at 5a to get to work on time) to force my circadian clock to a "normal" falling asleep time (between 9p and 11p). That two years almost killed me (seriously messed up sleep patterns and extreme, chronic lack of rest), although it was ultimately beneficial.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
I chose "other". This question does not make sense for my situation. When I was keeping fixed hours I never got sleepy or drowsy at bedtime, I was sleepy and drowsy all day, largely due to never getting enough sleep. AfterI switched to free floating hours, I go to bed when I am sleepy and drowsy, and not before. So is that my bedtime? I have no regular bedtime at all.

PS I get long periods when I am tired but not sleepy as well - what we call twired. Tired but wired.
 
Messages
1,082
Location
UK
I said no, just because my brain wakes up at midnight. My 'normal' bedtime is 2am but it can be anything up to 5am.

The only time i can feel drowsy is if i go to sleep after reading with my bed fixed in upright position of around 45 degrees which keeps the blood away from the brain.

If i lower my bed down to flat, then the blood floods back to my brain which can make me alert again.

Only an antihistamine/muscle relaxant pill used as a sleeping tablet can make me feel properly sleepy before going to sleep. I'd love to be able to do that naturally.
 

Misfit Toy

Senior Member
Messages
4,178
Location
USA
I get drowsy and then wake up. I go to bed and start reading and next thing you know....I'm awake.....second wind.

My adrenals work at night and I'm mentally alive. Wish sometimes that my days were my nights. I could get a lot done at midnight!
 

eafw

Senior Member
Messages
936
Location
UK
My intent was to ask about pleasant sensations that you may - or may not - have before bedtime.

The bedtime sensations are relatively pleasant (so leaving my answer as yes). However, daytime sleepiness is not. Feels more druggy/weak in the day rather than "ordinary" tired at night.
 

Mij

Messages
2,353
If I get too wired (do too much without rest) during the day then I'm too wired to feel drowsy/relaxed/sleepy at night. Having a nap during the day helps me sleep better at night.
 

Scarecrow

Revolting Peasant
Messages
1,904
Location
Scotland
So, I've been thinking about sleep quite a lot lately.

Four and half years ago, I had a sudden change in sleeping habits. I went from average sleep quality (mostly slept all night but non-restorative) to barely sleeping (between 0.5 to 5 hours a night, avge probably between 2 and 3 hours). At the same time, a pattern of being tired but wired during the evening and the early hours of the morning began.

To cut a very long story short, this situation persisted for almost a year until I took methylB12 one evening. Within half an hour I went from horribly wired but tired to profoundly sleepy*. I slept all night and dreamed vividly for the first time in I don't know how long. For some time, I could rely on the B12 to induce sleepiness and give me a good night. I didn't take it every day, just as and when I needed it.

Over time, the B12 has had less and less effect. It doesn't provide good sleep any longer. Something has changed.

Over recent months, I've only been sleeping between about 1am and 5am and getting more and more frustrated. A few weeks ago, I started taking the probiotic C. butyricum. I do tend to sleep marginally longer but I'm more relaxed about not sleeping properly now, so even if I'm not sleeping after 5am, at least I'm calmly resting. For a few days I was becoming a little sleepy at bedtime but no longer.

About 10 days ago @SDSue started this thread and I downloaded the Sleep Cycle app and have used it every night since. What it confirms is that I don't get an awful lot of deep sleep and I seem to have a tendency to wake straight out of it. It also tends to suggest that the reason I'm not currently able to recall any dreams is that I'm very unlikely to be spending much time dreaming.

So, next I noticed this post by @Thommo and I watched the presentation by Dr Stasha Gominak about sleep and vitamin D with a short mention of vitamin B12. According to Gominak, there is an optimal vitamin D zone for good sleep, between 60 and 80 ng/ml and that B12 can also be a vital component.

By chance I had my vitamin D level checked a few months ago. It was at 34 nmol/L**. Not horribly low by conventional UK standards but lower than it really should be, much lower than the level recommended by Gominak and also much lower than the level I was at in October 2011, which was 64 nmol/L.

Not knowing that I had been supplementing D3 at between 2,000 and 5,000 IU per day for a period, the doctor told me in November 2011 that my D was acceptable. When I told her the level I had been supplementing at, she conceded that I may want to supplement over the winter months but she really down played it. So I've taken very little in the past 4 years, hence my now depleted level.

Even though my levels 4 years ago were well below what Gominak would recommend, I'm wondering if it is the declining level that is responsible for B12 becoming ineffective. I'm going to keep supplementing with D3 at 10,000 IU per day and will take 1mg methylB12 once per week and hope that some at some point I'll hit an adequate level.




* From what I can gather this is a slightly unusual reaction at Phoenix Rising. It seems to make most folk here agitated or anxious but there are a few others who, like me, report sleepiness.

** to convert nmol/l of vitamin D to ng/ml, use the ratio 2.5:1 (i.e. 1.0 nmol/L of B12 = 0.4 ng/mL)
Hence 34 nmol/l is about 14 ng/ml
64 nmol/l is about 25 ng/ml


Recommended levels of vitamin D
You can look all over the web and you will find vastly different levels for good health recommended by different countries - and within those countries by different societies and agencies. It's very confusing!

For example, Wiki references an Australian study's recommendations:
  • Insufficient 50-100 nmol/L (20-40 ng/mL)
  • Mild 25–50 nmol/L (10–20 ng/mL)
  • Moderate 12.5–25.0 nmol/L (5-10 ng/mL)
  • Severe < 12.5 nmol/L (< 5 ng/mL)
My recent UK lab states:
  • Insufficient 25–50 nmol/L (10–20 ng/mL)
  • Deficient <25 nmol/L (<10 ng/mL)
 
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Scarecrow

Revolting Peasant
Messages
1,904
Location
Scotland
Edited after your response @Scarecrow. There are times when I feel sleepy/drowsy in a pleasant way and it feels sooooooooooooo good but this doesn't happen often enough. When it does happen my sleep is deeper and not so restless.
Tammy, please accept this :trophy:and these :bouquet:. :)

I hoped someone would make a connection between sleepiness and quality of sleep. I didn't want to comment on it in my OP but I would have asked this question if the poll responses could be linked. So in other words, what percentage of people reporting that they do feel sleepy at bedtime also get good quality sleep?

It's definitely true for me that the sleepier I am the better I actually do sleep.

So I feel a bit like this at the moment: :bang-head: