This is a rant. Y’all have been warned.

I didn’t sleep well last night. That happens every now and again. It used to happen all the damned time, before I started doing serious ketosis.

I know someone who describes sleep as their best friend. For much of my life, sleep and I were casual acquaintances.

The thing is, I didn’t need much sleep. Not like other people. When I was a child, I never napped. My mother taught me to read when I was very young so she could put me in my crib with a book and then *she* could go take a nap.

When I was in my 20s-30s, my usual habit was to go to sleep at midnight and get up at six. Some nights I’d stay up until two or three because I was in the middle of a good book, and still get up at six. I did that for years.

As I got older, I found I didn’t do as well on just a few hours of sleep. I needed more. Plus, the quality of my sleep declined. It always takes me time to fall asleep, and I’m a really light sleeper.

At some point, some wank came up with the idea of clean sleep habits, good sleep hygiene. The implication of course is that if you can’t sleep or don’t sleep well, all you have to do is clean up your act and voila! Sleep!

I call bullshit.

I’m sure that it works for some people. Believe me, I’ve tried it all. Making sure I get enough exercise during the day. Just using my bed for sleep. Turning off all electronics for a couple of hours before I go to bed. Having a consistent time for sleeping. Never having caffeine late in the day. Coming up with a ritual to “get me in the mood” for sleeping. I have a particular piece of music that I only play when I’m trying to go to sleep. Etc.

Did any of that work? Maybe for a short while. Then whatever trick I’d found would stop working. Nothing I did would make either falling asleep easier or staying asleep a guarantee.

As I said earlier, the only thing that actually works for me in terms of getting good quality sleep is being in constant ketosis. But even then, it doesn’t work all the time. See, there are these messed up hormones of mine. The best sleep ritual in the world is not going to help when your system decides to helpfully dump a shit ton of adrenaline at 10:30 PM and your heart starts racing for no reason whatsoever.

Fucking stupid body.

Hell, I can meditate up to fifteen minutes every night just before I go to bed and still have difficulty falling asleep.

A note on the military trick of using relaxation techniques to actually fall asleep. This does help some. But there are times when it just doesn’t. Again, hormones. Using it regularly means I’ll get to sleep in under an hour most nights. And it helps me fall back asleep if I wake up in the middle of the night because I’m too hot or I have an allergy attack and I can’t breathe.

But again, nothing but ketosis works to regularly give me lovely, deep sleep. Not any supplements or melatonin or anything like that. And don’t even bother suggesting anything with magnesium in it. I’ve tried five different types of magnesium. Even at very small doses, they all act as a laxative. I’m horrifically allergic to chamomile, and I’ve tried every other relaxation tea out there and nothing works.

I did mention that this was a rant, right?

It’s winter now, there’s a lot less light, and I find that I naturally need more sleep at this time of year. Come summer, I’ll be waking up at five and needing less sleep because there’s more light. Since I have the luxury of not needing to get up every morning at the same time, I’m okay with this process. I figure it’s actually natural and the way we’re kind of supposed to function.

So if you sleep well every single night, know that I’m envious of you. I do sleep better than I once did. It just irks me when I can’t and there really isn’t anything I can do about it. Particularly when I have a full day of lots of socializing planned.

Fortunately, there’s coffee. And possibly a nap in my future.