I have not slept an entire night for what seems to be the last ten years. Most nights, I am wide-awake at 2:15am like clockwork. Sometimes I fall back to sleep in a fit of exhaustion, but most nights I give up and get up around 6:00am. My entire life, I have never had a problem sleeping. I could go to bed at 10:00pm and sleep a sound eight hours without fail. The closer I get to fifty, the more I find myself tossing and turning night after night, with rarely a sound night of sleep.
Once I started having sleep issues, everyone had opinions of how to fix them. The obvious ones – don’t drink caffeine after 3:00pm; don’t exercise at night; no TV in the bedroom – are more obvious fixes. Others are a bit less common, and some downright strange. Some research shows that if your extremities are cold, you cannot sleep well. But on the other hand, it’s also known that you can sleep better in a cooler room, so what to do? So I turned my thermostat down to 64-ish, and started wearing gloves and footies to bed. However once the hot flashes started and I had more temperature fluctuations than the Colorado Rockies in the summer, the gloves and footies were the first things to go.
Some experts suggest to keep a boring book by your bed and if you wake up, read to lull yourself back to sleep. But you can’t read in the dark, and other experts say to keep your room totally dark. So then what?
Dr. Oz is full of answers to cure insomnia. Oz recommends the hormone Melatoin, which supposedly helps regulate sleep cycles. He says it might take a while for it to produce effects. I’ve been taking it for three years now, and I’m still waiting for it to kick in. Oz also suggests a nightly ritual of chamomile tea. The only problem with drinking tea before bed is – you guessed it – I have to pee by 2:00am, putting me right back where I started.
My massage therapist says forget all Oz’s baloney and stand on my head. Something about a yoga pose stimulating the pituitary gland, which regulates the sleep/wake cycle, so turning upside down will help you sleep better. All I got was nauseous and dizzy, and then I was too sick to sleep.
As I was sitting on the couch writing this post, I just nodded off to sleep. I could never before just fall asleep sitting up; I’ve always assumed from watching my husband, and my father before him, only men could sleep in upright positions with no effort. But I guess with my estrogen deficiency and new upper-lip shadow, there’s no telling what is possible.
Aging Inappropriately 