hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr4034.txt

Episode: 4034
Title: HPR4034: Sleep Tips
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4034/hpr4034.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 18:52:42

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 4,034 for Thursday the 18th of January 2024.
Today's show is entitled Sleep Tips.
It is hosted by Operator and is about 11 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, go with Operator on his journey to Sleepy Town.
You are listening to a show from the Reserve Q.
We are airing it now because we had free slots that were not filled.
This is a community project that needs listeners to contribute shows in order to survive.
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio with your host, Operator.
So today I'm going to be speaking about sleep and sleep optimization.
While back probably, I want to say it's been probably a 10 year saga of having issues and
difficulty sleeping and trying to bring you on that journey to where I'm at today.
So I think about probably 10 years ago, 11 years ago, I was doing consulting, traveling
a fair amount, staying up odd hours for work, doing after hours testing for security
at organizations and doing different time zones.
And I think that had some to do with it, of why I had issues sleeping.
I also think mainly it's around drinking lots of alcohol and drinking and causing that
part and then again stress with work or work life balance type of deal.
So I started having problem probably back, like I said 10 years ago, I would have this
need to just wake up and my wife called it at which he hours like three o'clock.
And the more you talk to people, the more you realize that not a lot of people get the
right amount of sleep and it gets worse in different regions.
But for me, I started to realize that I was waking up around three or four o'clock and
then from then on it was more just kind of flopping around.
And I remember seeing commercials late at night about restless syndrome and all that
and I thought it was about your Hula and then I realized I actually had it.
It's kind of almost like the sensation of Tourette's almost where you have the sensation
of like if you have to scratch your nose or something like that, but you can't scratch
it.
So you have to constantly move your legs.
It's an anxiety kind of feeling or if you've ever been antsy, that same kind of thing,
but it won't go away.
You can do exercises.
Some people say the bicycles will work.
For me, it was kind of holding my legs up for a long period of time and using my muscles,
the leg muscles and trying to tie them out and that would usually give me some really
for a while.
So that ran for about, I want to say a year or two, on and off having issues sleeping,
I would sometimes drink to help sleep.
That would make things kind of worse, eventually ended up talking to my doctor, my doctor
of course just gave me pills, which was sleeping pill.
It wasn't ambient quite yet.
It was something else that was ever, it was like a tranquilizer essentially.
That didn't really do much.
He gave me a gabapentin, like a 500 milligram gabapentin.
That didn't do much.
He told me to up the gabapentin.
I didn't feel great with that and I tried it, didn't help, tried Benadryl, tried every
kind of over the counter thing.
I tried showers, I tried baths, I tried bar soap, but the foot of your bed, milk, exercise
before, exercise after, I tried every single possible combination of anything.
The only thing that seemed to make it worse was drinking a fair amount and or staying
up irregular hours and not having that normal cadence.
Fast forward, I ended up taking a break from all of that because I couldn't sleep anyways
and then about a year after that.
I came back and said, I'm still having issues and he put me on ambient.
That seemed to kind of work for about a year and realized that it was kind of not really
helping me.
It would kind of make me forget that I had a horrible night and it would kind of knock
me out.
I would have day and you hear people about ambient and they're like, they don't want
to touch it because you essentially day trip, you'll wake up in the middle of the night
and you'll do something crazy.
What I would do is if I had problem sleeping, I'd wake up in the middle of the night and
I would down like, I'd even drink wine and I would down like a little bottle of like
mini wine or something or just wake up and take it for you shots of something or something
and then go to sleep or I would wake up and have a full-on conversation with my wife
or something.
That got to be kind of, I never did anything dangerous necessarily.
Some people talk about driving or doing crazy things.
I never did anything like that but I realized after I woke up on morning and there was
like a mini bottle of wine next to my office because I was sleeping in the office because
I'd flop around so of course you can't sleep with another partner if you're flopping
around on night so I'd just sleep in the other room and yeah, when I woke up and there
was like a empty bottle of mini wine next to my bed, I realized, okay this is not great.
I think I took a break from ambient and I tried my routine which is no sugars or bed,
nothing, no stimulants before bed, being regular about my sleep, regular exercise, not drinking,
not doing fake sugars, all that stuff seemed to kind of help.
I don't know about the fake sugar but I know caffeine would cause me issues so I quit
all of that and I tried anything that would induce those types of reactions to flopping
around.
I would kill, but for me, eventually kind of would
get it in check for a while and then it would kind of come back and it was almost seasonal
the way it would come back.
So then I realized, you know, I came back with a vengeance and I was talking to the neighbors
down the street and they said, they suggested two things, mirror packs and one of the thing.
One of them is a primary care think and the other one was a pharmacist so they're just
like, take this drug and I had been pretty steady from then, actually before that there
was a time where I evaped THC and that worked like a chunk.
It would, you know, I'll just do one little vape before I went to sleep and it would knock
me out forever as long as I wanted to sleep I could sleep and it wasn't a groggy sleep.
It was a comfortable, you know, I slept like I was supposed to sleep.
So that can work for a lot of people too.
Not your CBD oil, I did try that, I tried legit CBD oil and other things like that, but
nothing worked like a regular THC card.
So that's one option, but for me later on I started to still wake up in the middle of
the night and had the RLS symptoms, right?
And then I'd have to vape again and then I realized, okay, well, you know, I'm kind of self-medicating.
It's working and it worked for about a year, but then I'd wake up and kind of start to
build a tolerance to it.
And like any drug you'll sometimes, most of the time, end up building some kind of tolerance
to it.
So I switched to the mirror packs and I'm taking the lowest dose of mirror packs and that
is helping me sleep a lot and I'm trying to stay normal with my exercise.
Sleeping habits are a big part of it.
Not drinking, kind of at all.
If I do drink, I'll drink a little bit or I'll drink a lot or I won't drink at all
because it's not really worth it to chance it for me to drink a little bit and then go
to sleep.
And then usually I'm fine like the first day or two and for whatever reason, if I have
like two or three drinks, I'll be fine that night.
But the next night it will catch up with me or the night after that it will catch up
with me.
So I'll have problem sleeping, you know, a couple of days after, for whatever reason.
We also talk about the skinny rhythm, so I try to wake up and go outside, sit out
front with the natural light and drink my tea and listen to my podcast.
So having that regular cadence of the skinny rhythm thing helps, I'm hoping.
But here recently I've been kind of still waking up a little bit at night, but more
because of stress, because some things have changed at work in home.
So I think that's changed, but some things have lifted in that space.
So I think I'm at a relatively low stress level in general, but a lot of times people
can't sleep because of stress.
Reducing your stress is probably the biggest thing you can do as far as I can tell.
And or, you know, get a second opinion, get a third opinion, keep trying, don't give
up like anything, any ailment that you have, get a second opinion.
But anyways, I hope that didn't put y'all to sleep, and if it did, and you were trying
to sleep, then great.
But, you know, get second opinions, ask around, try something else, don't give up, don't
live with not sleep.
If you have to, you know, vape for a year or vape for how long, or if you have to, you
know, if you have to take ambient for however long, just to get you some sleep for a
while, till you can figure out what works for you, right medication, the right balance
of exercise, diet, whatever, that works.
It's not, it didn't all be y'all, if someone, you know, there's a lot of pushback around,
you know, taking a pill or taking a medication for something.
It doesn't have to be the solution, right?
You can take a medication for a short period of time, and you'll be relatively okay.
I mean, honestly, everything causes cancer anyway.
So, you know, if you're going to complain that, oh, you're on ambient, oh, we on, I don't
think that stuff, or that's bad, or whatever the drug is, it's not a lifelong thing.
You might be, you might be, you know, left with some kind of disposition of some sort
for ever, and have to take some kind of medication.
But in general, there's usually something you can, you can try one drug for a certain
amount of time, and try another drug, and switch back and forth when you build tolerances
and stuff.
But anyways, hope that helps out, you know, stay vigilant, get some sleep, focus on good
practices, good hygiene, get exercise, that's a big one, walk out, walk, walk at least once
a day.
I walk up and down the stairs, there air condition here at the office, and I walk
with my spouse, you know, around noon now, because it's not taught, but when it gets
hot, I would walk, we would walk earlier in the morning.
So anyways, I hope that helps out, and, you know, I have a good place.
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