Food, Sleep, and Activity

I've been working on some stuff related to fatigue at work, and understand more viscerally the concept of cumulative sleep debt.  This is when you get insufficient sleep for several nights in a row.  It adds up, so that several days of two or more hours less than you need can have the same effect as a single night of only a couple of hours of sleep. You can't catch it all up, but generally one night of 9+ hours will put you back on top of the world.

If only.

At work, we talk about providing sleep opportunities as a matter of safety regulation. "Opportunity" doesn't translate into "sleep", and it's not just because someone is being irresponsible. Some of us just simply cannot sleep, we toss and turn for hours.  Nine hours?  Not likely.  Only if an unrelated nap (generally in the little Window of Circadian Low, or WOCL, in the late afternoon) gets added to the six hours at night.

I'm really busy, and I've got lots going on at work and at home to think about as I toss and turn. I'm convinced, however, that physical reasons are the chicken, or reason I'm not sleeping, and the mulling over and over various issues is simply the egg, because I'm awake anyway and my mind has to go somewhere.

How little sleep do I have?  My magic device adds it up, probably overcounts a bit, and so here's the sad truth:

The average has never been much above seven hours, but now its closer to six. I've been stupid with fatigue in the afternoon, not able to think clearly. I've had micro-sleeps while driving home, and vowed never to stick it out so tired again. So today, home while still awake before lunch and straight to the bed to get a serious nap.

Being this fatigued makes me want to eat comfort food, served to me rather than having to fix it. I'm convinced being more active will help me sleep, but the afternoon slump is very real and keeps me chairbound.

Not much can be done about this except the obvious clean living stuff. I don't drink much coffee and it's done by 10 am. I'm getting exercise and spending time outdoors in the sunlight. I use my bedroom for sleeping and changing clothes, not as an active living room. I strive to be in bed by 10 pm, and rarely do lights out later than 10:30.

But it doesn't work. I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow (a sign of fatigue) and wake a couple of hours later. The rest of the night is spent tossing and turning. My magic device shows a typical pattern is 2 minutes awake, doze for 9 minutes, awake for 3, doze for six, etc., for several hours. Solidly and soundly back asleep around 4 am, and the alarm goes off at 5:30 or I wake up naturally at 6:30.  Got to get up, no matter how little sleep there was in the middle.

The reason this is a problem is it makes my afternoons and evenings so much less productive than they could be. Don't have a fix for it.  Helps explain the lack of posting here - less ambitious and out of time in the evenings.  Can I move my bedtime up an hour? Not without getting even less done.