Sleep Deprivation

For anyone out there who has a bad sleeping pattern, I feel with you. I never have a good night sleep, I'm always trying to catch up or oversleeping to compensate.

I've been a bad sleeper for as long as I can remember, It normally takes me anywhere from 45mins to 2hours to fall asleep at night. I normally wake up at least 3 times a night and average about 6 hours sleep (when you minus my wake ups its prob more like 5 hours). At least once a month i will have 4-6 days of only getting 3/4 hours of sleep, so being constantly tired is a part of my life.

Not many people in my life realise that I sleep so bad, and prob think I'm exaggerating. I have been to doctors and gotten sleeping pills and found that they don't really make much of a difference and to tell the truth I felt so much worse after taking them than dealing with the lack of sleep.

Generally lack of sleep can make you groggy, irritable, drowsy, have trouble with memory and basic function. When talking to me you will find a lot of the time I struggle to think of basic words or remember the name of obvious things like the bathroom. It may all seen funny and trivial, but I can tell you that it is irritating and sometimes makes you feel stupid!

For anyone out there experiencing some bad nights or have patterns like mine I just wanted to share a few little things that I do to help me, they don't always work, but sometimes is better than never.

have a hot drink before bed, some milky hot chocolate or just hot milk. try and stay away from tea, coffee or any caffienated products within 3 hours of going to bed.
Take a hot water bottle to bed with you, maybe even put it in the bed 10 mins before you get in, heat can make you sleepy.
if you have not fallen asleep withing an hour (an hour and a half tops) get back up and do something, watch some tv, read some pages of a book. there is no point in lying in bed if you are not sleeping, and sometimes this can cause a psychological effect.
Try and avoid watching tv or taking you laptop into the bedroom, try and keep your bedroom as a calm, dark and quiet place.
If you have a brain that wont ever shut up, try and force it to think about nice things instead of the day, eg, what would you buy if you won the lottery, planning your dream holiday. This may sound strange, but 50% of the time by doing this I force my brain to start day-dreaming and eventually will drift off to sleep.
try and make your bed as comfortable as possible, make sure the sheets arn't creased and the bedding is soft, once again it sounds strange, but if your uncomfortable then you won't sleep.
Also set your alarm and get up no matter how tired you are and don't take any naps, try and set you body back to normal on its own.
If you do have a really bad bout and need sleeping tablets, try no to rely on them, only use them every other night for a week. It's a lot healthier if you can get back to normal on your own.