I picked up meditating daily in an attempt to address one of my mental disorders.

Falling asleep is much easier for me now, whereas I used to struggle with it a lot.

My thoughts used to feel unstoppable and the moment I would wake up in the middle of the night, they started going and I was wide awake and no longer sleepy within seconds.

Now it’s like I’m observing them, but no longer get excited. I still have bad days, it’s not a 100% consistent solution, but it’s helped me massively.

Exercising. More specifically aerobic exercising. High and low intensity both work, but you have to do enough to properly exhaust yourself, just 15 minutes of walking is not enough. And not doing anything too exciting or demanding 2-3 hours before going to sleep. Maybe you just haven't done enough or not consistently enough.

What has worked for me, but with only one month experience: An apparatus that pulls my lower teeth forward, prescribed by a doctor, that keeps me from snoring. Then suddenly, I slept so soundly that I didn’t wake up at odd times during the night. I used to wake up at 2am and stay awake until 6am, only to sleep between 6 and 8 and be late at work.

Can you share more about this apparatus, or what made your doctor think you needed this? Were you investigating sleep issues or dental issues or what.

In French it’s an “orthèse mandibulaire”. It holds teeth together (with a hinge), its role is to push the lower mandibula forwards to get 0.5cm farther from the throat so that air can pass unencumbered.

Sleep hygiene was #1 for me. If I'm not sleeping or having sex, I get out of the bed.

I never go to bed if I'm not tired and if it takes too long for me to fall asleep I get back up, trying to force sleep will just cause physical pain. I usually have a ~30 minute nonsense trivia podcast playing for me to fall asleep to. If I can hear it ending, I get up and do something else.

#2 was switching to a job that's less stressful. If my day-job requires me to juggle 20 things at the same time, it's impossible for me to wind down enough to sleep - or at least I couldn't figure out a way. For a co-worker journaling worked, basically they offloaded their brain to a physical notebook and that gave enough peace of mind to relax and fall asleep.

I struggled with the same. I tried all sorts of practices, "sleep hygiene", supplements and devices. What I eventually learned is that frequently what's need is changing your relationship with sleep. I couldn't find a CBT-I[1] psychologist in my area. So I ended up taking the sleepio.com[2] coaching class as a trial candidate. It walked me through the steps of CBT-I and got my sleep back on track. The recent book Hello Sleep[3] by Dr Jade Wu also does a good job re-framing your perspective on sleep and walking your through CBT-I. You do need to commit to the CBT-I process. It could take several months to complete and one of the initial sleeps often leads to sleep deprivation, so it may feel worse before getting better. But after following the process my sleep improved dramatically. I still keep in mind what I learned when I have the occasional bad night of sleep.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy_f... 2: https://onboarding.sleepio.com/sleepio/onboarding-sleep-test... 3: https://drjadewu.com/