The Sleep of Reason ........

We all know we need sleep, but I'm beginning to realise I really really need sleep, in order to stay normothymic with my BiPolar I need to adopt really good sleep hygiene and some days are better than others because of this ( along with many other factors ).

Good sleep hygiene means things like:-
If you wake up in the night, get up, dont fight it, give in for a while & then try again ..... dont use lit screens or watch tv when you wake up, by all means read or listen to something but dont watch.  Well thats what appears on balance to work for me.
Stimulants and Sedatives will it seems affect high and low mood.  This actually makes sense if you think about it, you are pushing for waking hours or you are pushing for sleeping hours, however there is a place for these in extreme or neccesary circumstances but good sleep hygiene I feel means coming off coffee, tea prior to the evening and it sedatives are PNR ( when required ) when really needed though maintenance meds have some sedative qualities as well.

There is an adage and to be honest its too early for me to see this for myself, when your medication is right your sleep is right, when your medication is wrong yada yada ..... guess that makes sense but at the moment I'm probably personally seeing too much variation from this.  I have read this is to do with sympathetic and parasympathetic systems within the brain ....... good leads to better, bad leads to worse, we end up in cycles of no sleep because we have bad sleep hygiene, it gets a grip and cycles.

Hope above all makes some sort of sense

Tony x