Most people who suffer from sleep apnea are unaware that they’re waking up scores of times during the night. My ex-, who had such a severe case he was observed to awaken a couple hundred times during one night, had no idea. I sure did, though: I used to watch him stop breathing and then jerk and gasp when his body finally managed to inhale enough to stop him from suffocating. And I couldn’t miss the loud snoring, which made it impossible for me to sleep.

He was so exhausted during the day that when we had guests over to our house, he would fall asleep in the middle of conversations. Interestingly, though, because for him this was “normal,” he wasn’t even especially aware of how tired he was. It took a second wife who was more assertive about finding a doctor who would take her complaints seriously to get a diagnosis.

This is a dangerous illness. It leads to heart attack and stroke. If you’re not kidding and you seriously do fall asleep at odd times like that, you should have yourself checked for sleep apnea.
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2. Light-reducing curtains. Actually, that’s not really a super-frugal option; our light-reducing curtains cost somewhere around $70. That said, they also help trap in cold or heat, depending on the season, so I suppose they’re sort of frugal-friendly in that respect.
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When it comes to sleep, the frugal methods are also the most effective! Medications are more expensive and also alter the sleep architecture and leads to worse overall sleep than not having medication at all, in general!

Avoiding naps, caffeine and alcohol is great advice.

So is exercising regularly, but not too close to bedtime as exercise arouses people which will make them less likely to sleep – especially if they work out in a brightly-lit area such as a gym with lots of lights and mirrors.

Getting rid of the tv, and having a small snack before sleeping is also good advice (although for some types of anxiety preventing people from sleeping, tv can be quite an effective relaxation strategy if it’s something like, say a david attenborough documentary and not Die Hard.)

On the other hand, I don’t entirely agree with your other two points.

The dark bedroom one is interesting. Because whilst it’s definitely true that a dark room can help us to sleep, the biggest factor in changing/resetting the timing for sleep is light, especially bright light. A small amount of light won’t make too big a difference. What will tend to make a larger difference in my opinion is having a room with black-out curtains that doesn’t let light in during the mornings. If people don’t get light not too long after waking and get light later in the day instead, it can really impact on their sleep patterns and lead to morning grogginess. I find that many people sleep better with the blinds open if there aren’t too many lights outside, such as country towns. In the city, the noise, lights and bustle definitely needs to be eliminated for sleep though!

The bedtime tip isn’t right though from a sleep-science perspective as far as I understand. In terms of maintaining sleep, setting a bedtime doesn’t tend to work very well at all, especially for people who have insomnia or issues with not being able to wake up in the morning. This is because if people aren’t sleepy at a particular time, it’s because their body clock doesn’t actually think it’s bedtime. Going to bed earlier tends to lead to people just laying in bed feeling stressed out because they feel they should be asleep when they’re not. Going to bed earlier doesn’t have much of an impact on your body clock.
What is really important is the time that you get up – and what will really alter and then stabilize ones’ body clock is exposure to bright light! In countries/times where there is lots of sunshine, this means getting up and getting out into the light. For me, that’s spending 15 minutes or so walking to the bus stop, which does the trick nicely! The timing of the light is very important as light at different times will alter the timing of sleepiness (and several other functions, like core body temperature, which follows the same 24ish cycle as the body clock).

To maintain the best sleep, don’t set a bedtime. Don’t worry about sticking to going to bed a certain time. If you’re not sleepy, don’t try to go to sleep. If you’ve ever been awake in bed for what felt like hours thinking ‘I should be alseep. Why am I not asleep? I NEED to be asleep or I won’t get enough and then I’ll be tired and have a horrible day tomorrow’ you should understand why it’s good not to go to bed unless you’re sleepy. That worry makes people more awake and less likely to sleep.

Set a waking up time and stick to it. This is much more important than a bed time! The waking up time will have a much bigger impact on your body clock If you want to go out at night, do it. But get up at the same time as usual the next morning. YOu’ll find that your body will tell you when you should go to sleep quite readily if you maintain a waking up time every week. If you go to bed and don’t get to sleep within 10-15 minutes, you probably don’t need to be in bed at all Not everyone needs 8 hours of sleep. Anything from 6-9 hours of sleep needed is pretty normal and some people need even less whilst there are others who need more.

I’m happy to explain exactly why waking up time is more important than bedtime, but it’ll take a while.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_response_curve

This article gives a little more information about the timing of light, which is all about shifting the body clock

And I pray myself to sleep. I get a chance to talk to God, and He eases me into dreamland.

Thanks for the tips – I now have an excuse to indulge in pb! Yay!
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