Thursday Thoughts: Sleep

Sleep is critically important to our health.  The older I get, the more I realize this.  I am hoping some day to get it together with sleep.  When you read the magazine articles/scientific studies about how to have good sleep (go to bed same time every night, wake up same time every morning, have a bedtime ritual, stop screen time 60-90 minutes before bedtime, eat or drink no caffeine after 6 PM, etc)  I have done most of those--except the screen time--for a long time, and yet, there are nights where sleep is just plain elusive.

For the past few years, when I wake up at night, I go back to bed and try to drop off again. If I don't fall back to sleep within 30 minutes, I get up and do something productive, such as read my scriptures, knit, quietly clean up anything that needs cleaning up--and there is ALWAYS something to clean up that I did not do before bed!

Sadly, these stay-up times can last for hours.  Even with positive self-talk.  Such as, I am only going to knit two more rounds, or I will only read today's scripture goal, or I will only read one Spanish chapter, or, or, or.  Or even, at 2:30 I will definitely go back to bed.  Staying up seems to feed on itself.

Lately I have noticed that the nights when I am up for three or four hours during the night, I wake up with very nasty blood glucose levels.  Rats! 

So I was talking with Dear One.  Griping, actually, and he said he just stays in bed, tosses and turns for a while, then eventually falls back to sleep on those rare nights when sleep is difficult for him.  I think I will try that one for a while to see if that works.  I am definitely tired of feeling tired all day. 

Night-before-last was an up-most-of-the-night night.  Not surprisingly, last night I slept from 9:00 to 5:30!  Score!  And my blood sugar was happy this morning, even though I had not eaten smartly last evening.

May I say that I hope everyone who reads this post has better and better sleep.  It makes the days so much easier.