Life: Drinking more water seems to help with night time sleep but not perfect

I still occasionally wake up in the middle of the night. Drinking more liquids throughout the day seem to help with my restless leg syndrome which in turn helps me sleep better. I definitely had more no-wake nights, and definitely better sleep nights even if I wake up.

Having good sleep habits is still good. Some days when I am too exhausted and I take a nap during the day, I have more difficulty staying asleep. Twice that I did this, I ended up just watching videos at night as lying there did not help at all. With nothing to do actually makes my body feel worse. Watching video distracts me from that feeling and I will eventually drift asleep.

I am not sure if I have insomnia as I usually don't have trouble going back to sleep. Majority of the time, I can just move to the couch and fall asleep. I haven't determined if it is because the couch is more firm or because it is cooler there.

In the past, I tend to sleep much better if I keep the windows open because it cooled my room. Recently, I cannot keep the windows open for reasons out of my control. I am also not sure if sleeping with a blanket helps, as I seem to also lose my blank for reasons out of my control. Although, maybe I can just use a second blanket. I do tend to kick my blanket and even my pillow so this may be a very difficult experiment.

Any case... for a period of time, sleeping was getting harder and my restless leg syndrome was getting pretty bad. Drinking more water does seem to significantly help. I have not been perfect and on/near days that I was more dehydrated (in hindsight), I did notice that I had more trouble sleeping.

How much is enough drinking? I typically can drink 3-4 cups a day on a good day. On bad days, I drink almost no cups of water. I do not drink alcohol often. On the couple days where I did drink a decent amount, I usually fall asleep pretty quickly but the quality of the sleep is not as good. I do get buzzed very easily but I don't get drunk easily. I also never had a hangover... not sure if that is related to me never having a headache. So not sure if my advice on drinking will help anyone else. I don't recall having much issue with restless leg syndrome so maybe having liquids help more with that and that in turns help me sleep uninterrupted, and somehow alcohol lowers the quality of my sleep.

Life: Do I need more water to sleep well at night? Second night experiment

I have been terrible with my water consumption since my last attempt about a month ago, and I haven't been sleeping through the night. Fortunately, I do not stay up (for the most part) and can fall asleep after I move to the couch. I'm not sure why changing my sleeping place helps with my sleep.

Yesterday while cleaning my place, I drank more water and again I was able to sleep without any interruption. Odd part is that I actually feel more tired than usually when waking up. The energy catches up soon though and now I feel I have more energy than usual.

So unsure if water is my problem, but seems suspiciously correlated. It may also have to do with the cleaning and possibly racing the neighbor's kids. I am so out of shape that the little "jog" may have been a workout for my body.

Reference

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2021/07/life-do-i-need-more-water-to-sleep-well.html

Life: Do I need more water to sleep well at night? First night experiment

Lately, I have been waking up in the middle of the night. I also think I have restless leg syndrome at night. I usually go lie on the couch, and somehow that helps me go back to sleep. 

I know I do not drink enough water through out the day, and yesterday was the first time that I reached 5 cups (normal drinking cup not the unit of measure). I cannot remember the last time I even had more than one cup of water. I do drink some milk which I guess could count as some water.

Yesterday randomly, I started drinking more water. I brought the water pitcher to my work desk which reminded me to drink more water. I was wondering why I felt like I had more energy today, and realized that I slept the entire night... it was actually kind of odd to wake up on the bed.

Maybe coincidence, so will continue to test this out. Although I already missed drinking water this morning. I was going to post after a few more tries but given my track record... I may forget to do this after day three and I wanted a record to show when I last tried it.

...

kind of like all my attempts to start exercising...

...

sigh

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Sequel (Edited 2021-08-17)

https://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2021/08/life-do-i-need-more-water-to-sleep-well.html

Life: Sleeping - Changed Beds

I switched from a standard innerspring bed to the box-spring. Fortunately, the box-spring is flat enough for me to sleep on. As for why I ended up sleeping on the box-spring is because my mom needed a mattress. The details into that is odd and not important for this post.

Historically, I have been able to sleep anywhere. I have no problems sleeping in a chair, on a plane, train, hardwood floor, on multiple chairs, and probably even standing up. I actually was a little uncomfortable for the first couple days on the box-spring. I did not have a lot of problems falling asleep, but was a little sore when waking up.

After a while, I did get used to sleeping on it. And what inspired me to write this post is that I actually feel a bit more refreshed than usual. It takes less time to "wake-up" and more focused on morning tasks. I am not exactly sure why that is.

Looking back, I want to say that I do have a tendency to feel better after changing where I sleep. Every so often, I would choose to sleep on the couch and would feel like I had "better sleep" but it would wear off. Then I would have better sleep when I switch back to my bed.

Sleeping or napping in a sitting position has never been as beneficial unless it is in a car. Even sleeping in the car does not compare to sleeping lying down. I've camped outside a couple times and do not recall being grumpy about it but then exercise (ie hiking) typically helps me out of the haze quickly.