Annals of Self-Experimentation: How to Fall Asleep Faster

Evan Dumas, our self-experimenter, does IT support in Portland, Oregon. He is 26 years old. As far back as he can remember, he has had trouble falling asleep. After he went to bed and turned off the light, it take an hour or more to fall asleep.

About a year ago, he tried a new solution: exercise just before bedtime. He had noticed that he fell asleep more quickly when he was tired (and of course exercise was tiring); and it was hard to exercise earlier in the day. He wondered if the standard advice don’t exercise close to bedtime was true. (For example, “finish your exercise at least three hours before bedtime,” says the National Sleep Foundation.)

His exercise consisted of slow push-ups, crunch-style sit-ups, and some static yoga positions that use the side muscles and back muscles. He continued until he was tired. In the beginning this took about 10 minutes; now it takes about 20 minutes.

The very first night he tried this, he fell asleep within minutes. Same with later nights: After exercise, he fell asleep “instantaneously,” he says — by which he means within about 5 minutes. Any doubt it was cause and effect was removed by evenings when he omitted the exercise, just to see if it was necessary. Without exercise, it again took him more than an hour to fall asleep. He also noticed that the exercise caused him to sleep less and wake up feeling more rested.

A great discovery. Surely we need far fewer sleeping pills.

To repeat what I said earlier: If you are interested in doing any self-experimentation, feel free to contact me for help. Also, please let me know the results; I would like to publicize other people’s self-experiments in this blog.