Ok...I have my thyroid. But my mom didn’t and she was on .88 for for the whole time time she had her thyroid removed in 1997 I think.
Male and female thyroid dosages are different, but @Chrissy Cross has a point if you have not had your levels checked recently, @Lon Tanner. Endocrinology is too complicated to get into here, but I have found that women are generally happier when their TSH level around 1.0 mIU/L. If it is lower than that, they are restless and if it is higher than that, they feel sluggish and tend to gain weight. "Normal" or "Reference" ranges are broader than that. I never heard any complaints from men along those lines, but I don't know if it was because they were not affected or because men don't complain. A sluggish male is a little like a cat that sleeps too much.....
Since I have retired from jobs that I have to report to at any particular time, I sleep as much as I think I need to, unless someone (invariably my wife) makes an early-morning appointment for me. Usually, I go to bed at about 2:00 am and get up at about 10:00 am. When I go to bed at midnight, I still sleep until 10:00 am. However, sometimes I wake up at some ungodly hour of the morning, like 5:00 or 6:00, and there are times when I'll sleep until 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon, but that's usually either when I hurt somewhere and am trying to heal from it or when I'm having entertaining dreams. I can remember a time in my early working career when I'd be desperate at night, unable to sleep but knowing that I had to get up early for work. At one point, I even tried sleeping pills but, while they made the going to sleep part easy, they didn't help with the getting up part. While working in the paper bag industry, I worked the graveyard shift mostly, and slept only about four hours a day, not because I couldn't sleep longer but because that was all that I seemed to need, and while I was in EMS, I was up and down on calls throughout the day or night, and slept whenever I could, often in spurts of only an hour or less at a time.
I don't keep track of how many hours, and only go to bed, or take a nap, when I'm really. sleepy. Once you learn it won't kill you, even if you stay up all night, occasionally, it's easier, because you quit worrying about it and don't watch the clock. I don't have any regular pains, yet, so I'm sure that makes a big difference. To me sleeping is like a nuisance you have to put up with, like brushing your teeth. Afraid I'm going to miss out on something interesting while sleeping. lol
I sleep a tad longer now that hubby is not working. But just as I get sleep regulated, the soon DST will mess that up, always does.On average 6 hours a night. However today was up at 5:15 . I sleep good and always go back to sleep after bathroom trips....just don't sleep real late...never have.
I don't regularly nap during the day but I will sometimes do that now, if I'm tired. I refer to it as spending quality time with my cats, who are alway amenable to a nap.
Early to bed...early to rise...that's me but I still end up getting at least 7 hours of sleep most nights. It never feels like I get enough sleep since I've gotten older though and I can't nap during the day for some reason or other. It's just part of the new normal for me and I work around it.
After working shifts for thirty years when sleep deprivation through noise was regular. The awful feeling was a measure when I think five hours or so is not good enough; there is no comparison. My advice is stop worrying, go to bed at eleven or twelve and if you get five hours sleep with two toilet breaks it's plenty. We are old and most of us are less active.
I do not have any set pattern for my rest periods. Ideally, if I go to bed by 10:30 then I should be up by about 4 but that’s not always the case. Sometimes I might get up and head for the coffee pot as early as 2:30 or 3 which kinda wrecks the day because my body still has a lot of repair work to do from my workouts. I have gotten used to taking about a half hour to an hour nap in my easy chair after I have a good meal but beyond that I really am not well scheduled.
Wow bobby Cole, I would say you are a lesson in sleep anxiety. You are obviously well balanced and certainly no hypochondriac.
LOL, the wonders of 10mg of Melatonin 15 minutes before bed. As you mentioned in another post Jim, we are indeed getting older. With that it’s pretty much recognized that some changes occur in the physiology of our body but some of the changes can be remedied. Melatonin for one, is a simple hormone which helps govern our sleep periods but the production of it decreases as we grow older hence the idea that seniors only need 4 or 5 hours of sleep. The older idea that we only need x number of hours sleep is predicated by the idea that when we retire, we just kick back in the rocking chair and the only exercise we get is yelling at kids who trespass upon our lawns. It’s kind of like the old idea that pregnant women shouldn’t bend, stoop, run or certainly any yoga or aerobics was out of the question. More and more seniors are hitting the gym and doing things that tear down muscle fiber (and also helps to pump up brain functions) and when that happens our body needs a goodly amount of sleep to do the necessary repairs. It’s a shame that with the workouts and other activities that the brain doesn’t revert back to the younger years when melatonin production was high but that just doesn’t happen so my wife and I supplement the production by taking an oral tablet which helps with having a good sleep period. Melatonin is natural and doesn’t have all the caveats that most sleep medications carry with them.
While we were traveling, and for the time that I was in Michigan, I went to bed before 10 pm and got up between 5 am and 6 am. It felt kind of nice being up that early but I got almost no work done, as I was visiting with relatives most of the time. I'm not sure that I'd be able to get up that early and get work done.