In 2 weeks Daylight Saving time change which will give more darkness earlier. Any of you have this night phobia?
@Marie Mallery if I had "Night Phobia" I couldn't live through a winter in Alaska. It is dark 18 hours here in December.
I would rather we stayed on Daylight Savings year around, and had the extra light in the afternoon, instead of daylight earlier in the mornings, but that is because I scan just sleep through it until daylight in the morning. I think that when it is getting dark by 4 pm, I just feel like we lose more of the day, even though it is actually the same amount of daylight, just rearranged differently.
I love the darkness earlier. Makes me feel all nice and cozy with the cooler weather here, and fire place going.
I have taken melatonin with mixed results. (Walmart carries it for cheap.) A 5mg dose made me groggy until noon. I bought 1mg tablets and ended up cutting them in half. I was taking them because I fall asleep fast but wake up for a few minutes around 3AM. At first the 1/2mg dose worked. Then I started waking up at 3AM again, so I upped the dose to 1mg. That worked for a while but I felt groggy in the morning and it stopped working again. So I don't take it any more. It sucks because there are other benefits to melatonin. I'm either oversensitive to it, or my body already makes plenty on its own. There's a melatonin thread here. It's also discussed in the Do You Take Anything To Make You Sleep thread here. As active as you are, I'm surprised you may have troubles. I can sleep fine when I get off of my butt and do stuff during the day.
John I may not be able to handle it either. I often wake in middle of night but thank goodness most of the time I go back to sleep, the times I don't and just get up, I can't wait till daylight. Usually I'm up between 5-6, always up before 7 even if I don't want to.
Since melatonin is something that our body makes, and it starts making it when we are in twilight, it will be different for each person. Someone who is inside with lights on, or maybe watching television, would not make as much because the mind would not tell the body it was getting dark and time to make melatonin. Like other hormones, we also make less as we age and our body doesn’t regulate it as well. Each person has to try a smaller dose and then find the amount that works for them. We take ours about a half hour before bed, and I try to either do my artwork, knitting, or something relaxing for that half hour, so my body and mind are getting ready for sleep, and not wound up from a book I am reading (or TV, if I watched TV). I have found that the ipad painting really seems to relax my mind, sort of like going for a walk in the woods, where you walk and just let your mind wander. Melatonin is also anti-aging, and has other benefits besides helping you relax and sleep better. I was hoping that taking some before a doctor appointment might help @Jake Smith to be calm and not have BP so high , but they would need to try it and see if it helps him be calm and lower his BP. It might also help with the panic attacks, but I have not researched that at all.
I could probably benefit from those; I will see about getting some and try it. I wake up all early sometime like 1am, 2am, or 3 am, and get up go to the bathroom feeling bad and when I try to lay back down, I freak out mentally; and have to get back up and walk it off; bad feeling for long night. Little Becky used to walk with me back and forth on the porch, until daylight; miss her, was my little sidekick. Thanks Yvonne again, I will check on that stuff; see if it helps.
One of the things I like to do after dark is make a fire in my steel patio fire pit and then stay on my feet as a form of extra exercise. Often I'll take a tablet and speaker-stand and watch videos. Or a radio and listen to a talk show or music. It's really dark out there since the new neighbors took down the old mercury vapor barn light that came on after dark every night for decades. Tonight there were weird monstrous sounds coming and going that I couldn't place. Turned out some clown was using an impact driver quite some distance away within a garage facing out the other direction so I was getting echoes that sounded like low roars from my back yard.