Reddit comment that may benefit mento (or anyone with sleep issues):

Question -

Are there any legal alternatives to caffeine to help me stay awake more? I have tried caffeine in many ways and forms but it just doesn't help me stay awake.

Answer -

Your neuro system is the most advanced technology available to you. Beats out any chemical or nootropic tools. You can learn where the levers are.

How tired you feel is called sleep pressure. As you are awake a compound called adenosine builds up in your bloodstream. The concentration of how much adenosine there is determines the sleep pressure you feel, and how strongly you feel the need to sleep. Caffeine works because the molecule is similar in shape as adenosine and it blocks the receptors that absorb adenosine and communicate to your brain how much sleep pressure is there. These receptors also reduce the amount of adenosine in your bloodstream so when they're blocked by caffeine, the adenosine is building up. The result is when caffeine begins to wear off you get a crash in energy.

This provides a couple of interesting protocols.

After waking up in the morning skip caffeine for an hour or two. This allows some adenosine to be absorbed before applying caffeine. This will reduce the intensity of the energy crash later in the afternoon when caffeine begins to wear off.
"You have to pay back the energy from caffeine later. There is nothing for free." This is a useful framing. Caffeine does not make you more rested. If you are tired, only sleep and rest make you rested. It does mask your ability to sense that you are tired and defer it until later.
To become rested the actual levers available to you are sleep, nutrition, and timing when hormones are released.

Sleep is a skill. You can improve it. There are cheap sleep trackers on the market now. On average if I leave my cell phone outside the bedroom I fall asleep an hour earlier. Make your bedroom relaxing and only sleep in that space. You can train your brain like pavlovs dog to go into a relaxed state when you go in that room if the the only thing you do there is rest. By leaving all electronics outside that space you're less inclined to read or work on projects. If you do finances, or social media, and such your brain will instead to into high alertness, anxiety, and attention, on entering that space. You're less inclined to fall asleep quickly.

"Every hour of sleep before midnight is worth two hours of sleep." Is another useful framing. Falling asleep earlier is one of the better tools to become rested because light has a powerful effect on telling your neuro system when it can sleep deeply. You see why leaving the phone out of the room helps to get tipped over into sleep quickly, this is often the hardest part. If you collapse that dead time of laying in bed but not sleeping you can maximize being awake and getting useful things done with your time.

Nutrition. Your body repairs itself while sleeping. You need nutrients for your body to repair itself. The Standard American Diet tends to result in undernourishment, while over calories. Industrialized diets do not have enough nutrient-dense foods to support repair, and this can result in feeling tired often. Deep Nutrition is a good book to learn more about that topic. In short, get enough protein as most do not get enough particularly women, get collagen, add organ meats to your diet because they're nutrient dense and better than vitamins, eat something fermented daily, no limits on vegetables. That gets you the basics where you're going to get what you need to repair while sleeping. And carbs become your lever to control as the elevator button to move up or down in weight on the scale.

Hormones. Your brain sticks out of your skull. Your eyes have specialize brain cells that do nothing but sense UV. We've got a skull and intense biology to protect the brain from damage it's odd to have some of these brain cells sticking out of our head, they must be important in some way. These cells specifically detect a contrast in light between dark blues and oranges. The type of light coming through right leading up to sunrise, and to sunset. When your body detects light at these times it sets an anchor that your biological clock runs on. Roughly 12 hours after getting that light at sunrise in your eyes your body will dump melatonin. This cascade of biological processes makes you sleepy and makes it easy to fall asleep fast on head hitting pillow. When you don't spend much time outdoors and particularly don't see early morning light then you have less synchronization between the cascade of body processes that release hormones and they tend to be misaligned. Your feelings of energy are less intense. And your feelings of sleepiness when it's time to sleep are less intense. Good news is it's quick to realign your biology. By taking a few days to get light in your eyes first thing in the morning it re-establishes a biological clock aligned with where you are in the world. If you read about travel and how to overcome jet lag the strategies are derived from understanding this behavior. This gives you a strong tool to help get to sleep easier -- go outside.

Exercise helps too. But this is long enough.

For additional listening, Huberman Lab summarizes current research to derive protocols to make getting rested and maximizing your energy. Peter Attia is a good stop for podcasts and reading with emphasis on how to optimize sleep to minimize rate of aging, live healthier longer.

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