If you bounce out of bed at 6/6.30....

[Bemyclementine]

What time do you go to bed? How do you manage if you have any health conditions?

I'm exhausted. Struggle every morning. Have had a bad habit if stating up roo late (stress related, and also child free time, single parent).

But even with going to bed earlier I'm still exhausted. Every morning my alarms goes off at 6.30 and most days I struggle out if bed an hour later. And rush. And be late.

To add, I have anaemia and hypothyroidism. I'm also overweight.

I get up at 6.30 to get DS out of the house by 7.30. I'm normally in bed by 10pm.

I'm 60, work full time, 2yrs post BC, and seem to be ok. My energy levels have returned, thank goodness. That is not to say I don't enjoy the occasional lie-in 😀

Think carefully about what you eat in the afternoons. Stay away from coffee, caffeinated tea, and alcohol. If that doesn't help, go back to your GP.

I do have a health condition.

My alarm goes off at 6, and I make myself get straight up. It’s the only way I can do it. If I lie there at all, I end up dropping back to sleep. So I just stride straight to the shower, however tired I am.
I commute for an hour by public transport, sometimes I sleep on the way to work.

I often have a slump after lunch; I try to arrange my day so it doesn’t matter too much, and drink herbal tea to perk myself back up. I usually fall asleep on my commute home - I’ve only missed my stop once though!

Sometimes I also sleep for a half hour or so when I get home.

I go to bed when I am tired. Sometimes before 9, sometimes after 11, usually around 10. If I can judge it well, I can drop straight to sleep, and sleep through. If I miss the window, I seem to be overtired and I’m awake exhausted most of the night, which doesn’t help.

Getting into a routine was a big help for me.

Used to go to bed at 23.30 and up at 6.30. 7 hours of good quality sleep was enough for me.

I don't bounce out of bed any more, but I do have a 6am alarm. Go to bed between 11pm and midnight due to my little one's midnight medications and fall out at 6am for the 6am meds. Every 10 days or so days I go to sleep at about 10pm, set an alarm for midnight then sleep until 6am but sleep is always broken because he wakes several times a night needing attention. No health conditions and I am now 60 (I am a foster carer, hence the small person) and I think that works in my favour, add to that many years spent working nights and I seldom feel knackered or broken.

Me too! I’ve always been an early morning person and useless in the evening let alone late nights 😊

I get up at 6:40 and go to bed at 10:30, lights out at 11pm. I don't always sleep that well - I quite often wake at 4:30 or 5 and sometimes don't manage to go back to sleep. I still find it easy to get up though, as I'm a morning person. It's later in the day (about 3:30 or 4) that the tiredness hits me if I've slept badly.

I'm asleep by 9. This gives me the sleep I need as I wake up to BF my baby (co sleep so I only wake briefly but it's still a disturbance!).

I don't bounce out of bed at 6 but I force myself to get up and get into a cold shower, that wakes me up enough to carry on. I'm not good at going to bed early but I try to head to bed at 10 nowadays.

I'm hypothyroid too, when did you last get your bloods checked? Might be worth getting them checked again and making sure you're on the right med dosage. Anaemia will impact too, always harder to get up when I'm anaemic, are you not responding to iron?

About 11. I don't sleep well so I'm usually up before 6. I hate it and I am tired a lot but I can't sleep.

I’m up at 6.30, as long as I’m in bed by 11 I feel fine, any later and I struggle to get up. I’m usually up and get some admin work done while the house is quiet so feel awake and able to be productive.

I usually go to bed around midnight, and up at 6.30.
I've never bounced in the mornings, but I can get up and go to work or walk the dog, even if I'm not exactly thrilled about it! (I'm 55)

When I had iron anaemia, I used to wake up wishing it was bedtime! Even when my levels were stable in the bottom end of normal, it was hard getting up. I’ve increased my dose with doctor agreement and getting up has got so much easier than it was.

About 10:30 to 11pm. Which gives me over 7 hours maybe 8 hours sleep. Seems fine. I wake up at 6am around ten minutes before my alarm.

Exactly the same health conditions as you plus another more serious one and I go to bed around 11-11.30 if I go earlier or later then I don’t sleep and I bounce out of bed at 6.40am every day to see to the dog, take my thyroxine, get the coffee machine on, go to the loo, have the house to myself before anyone is awake or in the way and be first in the shower (that is my motivation).

I set 3 alarms on my phone but I am usually awake for 6.30 before the first one goes off.

I really empathise with you OP, I was in exactly same place as you about a year ago. I have exactly the same health conditions too. I used to feel like I was being dragged up from the bottom of the sea in the mornings, so incredibly groggy and sluggish and just an awful feeling.

I used to stress about going to bed so late, and feel shame that I couldn't get in bed earlier. But I used to get this massive second wind about 9pm and suddenly had all the energy for all the things. I believe that might have been due to cortisol levels being out of whack (not enough cortisol in the morning but too much at night, related to poor liver function I think, which of course is in turn related to hypothyroidism/poor diet/alcohol/stress as your liver is part of the process that turns T4 into T3).

I now know that the time I go to sleep isn't really correlated to feeling so groggy in the mornings; I go to bed pretty late still (I've always been a night owl) but I feel much more sprightly in the mornings now. For me it was because all of my levels - TSH, T4, T3, ferritin, B12 were not optimum. How are your levels in all these things?

Things have improved since I addressed the various levels and cut down on the amount of alcohol I was drinking. I do still drink, but I think because my health conditions are better controlled, my liver is working better. I've been really on top of my iron tablets and also taking magnesium before bed. I take B vitamins (both sublingual B12 and a B-complex), zinc, probiotics, myo-inositol and a high dose of vitamin C with my iron tablets.

One other thing to suggest - have you ever had your thyroid antibodies tested? I did when I was feeling very low and finding it hard to function in the mornings, and they were off the bloody charts (My TPO level was 1006 against a range of 0-9!). High thyroid antibodies can really make you feel awful.

Alarm at 6 usually, occasionally 5. Bed at half ten, ten o’clock on the days I’m up at five.

I'm normally asleep by around 10, and get up at 6. I don't have any health conditions but do sit under a warm blanket with a strong coffee until 6.30!

How do people go to bed at 8:30 or 9:30? when do you manage to fit stuff in or go out?

The words '6am' and 'bounce out of bed' are mutually exclusive. However, in the days when I had to get up at that time bed was at 9pm and lights out were no later than 10. No screen after 7pm and no alcohol during the week. No weight and no health issues (that affected sleep, anyway)

Shame the job wasn't worth the sacrifices in the end.

I don't go out very often, maybe once a month. Also don't really have anything to fit in to that time - the kids have given up most of their activities, housework gets done at the weekends. Usually I'm home from work around 6.30, cook and eat dinner by about 7.00/7.30, maybe watch one TV show, then off to bed. Exercise gets done before work or on my days off.

Up at 6.45am and in bed by 11pm.

Thanks to DC with additional needs, an increasingly busy job and no DH/DP I run on vapour most of the time. Bed around 1am, alarm at 7:10 for school run and work. We all try to sleep in at weekends, luckily the kids aren't early risers.

I’m up at 6 or 6.30, depending on whether I’m wfh or in the office (work full time). . I walk the dog before work so have to get up - I definitely don’t bounce out of bed. I have menopausal insomnia which is hideous so usually get to bed for lights out at 10 to try and get a few hours sleep. I’m usually very tired.

Much as I'd love to be
bouncier in the morning, no way would I go to bed at 9pm or 10pm. Do you never go out - go to the cinema/theatre - meet friends for dinner? I'm no livewire in the mornings but at least there isn't much to miss out on at 8am.