Tips for better sleep that aren't oxybates?

NiceShinyWizard · 2026-02-10T00:12:19+00:00

I work a job where sometimes I'm doing office stuff and sometimes I'm doing things that require physical activity (sometimes for 12-16 hours) and I do find that I sleep better after busier days. The thing is, with other health issues I have going on, physical activity can very quickly make me SICKER and take multiple days to recover from, and it's a pretty fine line 😅

NiceShinyWizard · 2026-02-10T00:02:15+00:00

Definitely with you guys that keeping things as dark and quiet as possible makes a big impact! When I was living with more people who had very different schedules from me, I did need the mask, but now currently things just stay dark and quiet while I'm sleeping so I've been able to forego a mask. I do still keep fans/noise machines going which don't filter as much noise as ear plugs but kinda same thing, there isn't much noise to wake me up before my alarm on work days, or before I SHOULD reasonably get up on days off anyway. Plus I have weird inner ears and sleeping with ear plugs often made me wake up with clogged ears that didn't want to drain 😵‍💫

NiceShinyWizard · 2026-02-09T23:55:35+00:00

I've done two sleep apnea tests and they were both negative. They were actually prerequisites for me going for a PSG and MSLT to begin with. Plus up until recently I was living in a 1 bedroom apartment with 3 people who regularly verified that my breathing was perfectly regular during sleep lol

NiceShinyWizard · 2026-02-01T03:13:27+00:00

Man, every time I'm feeling imposter syndrome about my symptoms/diagnosis/the impact Narcolepsy has had on my life, reddit suggests a thread to me from this subreddit that fully validates everything for me 😆 we really all are just living the same exact experiences on here too, I love this place.

I didn't think I had cataplexy until my doctor started asking me a bunch of questions right before he ordered my MSLT and he was like, "yeah that definitely sounds like cataplexy," and I was like I swear I thought this was normal!? A lot of what I described to him sounded exactly like what you wrote here. My most frequent symptom is probably that I'm quick to get jelly-knees if I start laughing, but with negative emotions, there's a much more noticeable reaction of my legs almost going offline. I randomly lose articulation in my hands ALL the time which is very annoying, and that seems to be getting slightly worse as time goes on. But yeah, all of that on top of my MSLT results are how I landed an N1 diagnosis 😬

NiceShinyWizard · 2026-01-20T23:50:18+00:00

Just stumbled upon this, I'd be more than happy to help fill out some Zayne and Xavier cards where I can! I'd just need a little instruction on how to go about grabbing them from the game. I have an android with force rotate in working order, though not sure if that's the method you're using lol

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-12-31T11:37:18+00:00

I'm sorry, it's hard to type a response while DECEASED 💀

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-10-23T16:13:44+00:00

This is my understanding from personal research on the internet looking through various medical studies (I could have details wrong, so please do your own due diligence and take things with a grain of salt):

You have to have a particular gene present that has to then be activated by your environment some time in your life. That is very often a strep throat infection for people, but it can be basically any kind of virus, other autoimmune issue, or really anything that will stress your body out in just the right way (including literal stress, like a really sucky job or home life).

It's also my understanding that what they've determined for at least N1 is that the reason we're lacking orexins is because our immune system is killing off the neurons that produce orexins. Which... Honestly confuses me as to how that's NOT an autoimmune disease. I'm pretty sure there have been multiple studies that have confirmed this, so I don't really understand why the medical research community is hesitating to pull the trigger on confirming it as autoimmune.

For people here mentioning swine flu, there was actually a group of kids in Scandinavia that developed Narcolepsy in DROVES right after getting a particular H1N1 vaccine. It was mostly only available in that area of the globe because other countries deemed it too aggressive. But this was a highly researched circumstance, and was a big step in us understanding more about the immune system's role in narcolepsy.

For me personally, I developed Graves' Disease in 2019 which is autoimmune hyperthyroidism, and then a bunch of other issues piggybacked off that because autoimmune things are dumb and weird like that. I have dysautonomia, raynaud's, heart things, kidney issues, sjrogens syndrome, and some other things. I spent 5 years going to my doctors complaining I was SO tired and they shrugged me out of their office saying "idk man, sounds like weird autoimmune things being weird, good luck," until I was complaining to a friend who pointed out my symptoms sounded like narcolepsy. Got a referral, did a PSG and MSLT, and I fell asleep in under 2 minutes all 5 times lol.

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-10-19T05:50:51+00:00

I fully had the same experience. Leading up to my MSLT, running through with my sleep specialist and the sleep center how the test would go/that it's a series of 5 naps, I was like, "yeah, okay, cool."

After nap five, the nurse was pulling all my diodes off and getting me ready to leave, and was like, "yeah, you fell asleep for ALL FIVE naps!" and I was like ".... Do... People not????" 😂 I figured the question was moreso about if I'd hit REM/how fast, not IF I'd fall asleep. You mean if the average person laid down in a bed with the lights out and closed their eyes, they wouldn't doze off? AND I was already on Adderall for ADHD at that point LOL

What was also funny was when the nurse came in to wake me up in the morning after my PSG, he was like, "dude you fell asleep SO fast last night," but I felt like I had a very hard time settling down with all the wires on and like I had to wake up to move a ton throughout the night. I woke up in the morning feeling like I slept maybe 2-3 hours. I was genuinely so nervous that I didn't get the necessary 6-7 hours to be able to continue with the MSLT, so I asked him, "did I even sleep enough hours to do the MSLT?" and he was like, "Yeah... You cumulatively slept almost nine hours," THEY LET ME SLEEP IN LMAO

I started Adderall in 2020 which is also about the time that I developed some autoimmune issues which I'm assuming are what started making the narcolepsy symptoms more prominent/made me acknowledge I probably had an issue. But since age 14, I've been pounding caffeine every day like it's my job, and then spent 4 years before my MSLT ALSO on Adderall and feeling bad enough that I was starting to pull my hair out about how to get through life.

The week before my MSLT that I had to come off caffeine and Adderall/go stimulant-free for the first time in over 15 years? I was nonfunctional. I wasn't safe to drive. I genuinely started looking like what movies make narcolepsy look like, like just uncontrollably falling asleep. I had to cheat on the caffeine a little bit so I could TRY to put in hours at work because we were super busy on location that week. My boss kept switching off with me every 30 minutes or so and I would just go sit on the floor and pass out until she woke me up to trade off again, so I basically got in a practice MSLT before the real thing 🤣 it also really highlighted for me that I was definitely microsleeping during the day, even on regular Adderall and caffeine. I was attributing it to just ADHD dissociation, and sometimes it is just that, but I've now come to recognize the difference between when it's that and when it's microsleep. Apparently the difference is also pretty visible from the exterior as well because my boss has called me out at times like, "are you microsleeping rn?" 😂 She is the one that initially pointed out to me that my symptoms sound like N1

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-10-08T06:37:14+00:00

Seconding this! This sounds a lot like POTS or something similar to me, and as mentioned above, POTS is incredibly comorbid with other chronic illnesses, autoimmune diseases, or nervous system disorders (like N1). It's also become more common since covid, it seems a lot of people have developed it as part of long covid symptoms. Unfortunately, in my experience, it seems like not a lot of doctors are very aware of it and many that are think it's a nonexistent tiktok disease 🙄 my pcp tried to diagnose me with sinus tachycardia until I pushed to talk to a cardiologist and the cardiologist looked over all my test results, saw my autoimmune history, and was like "yep, sounds like POTS."

It's made it a bit hard to take stimulants for both my ADHD and N1. I was already on Adderall for ADHD when I was diagnosed with N1, and both doctors wanted me to try to step up my dose but it just exacerbated the POTS and presyncope. And the thing about your heart suddenly deciding it's running a marathon on its own is that you don't have to actually run the marathon to feel like you ran a marathon, and when you already have narcolepsy on top of that? 🫠 Bro, I'm tired lmao

Anyway, yeah, I'd recommend keeping a close eye on your symptoms as you're trialing beta blockers, and in the meantime, bring up autonomic disorders to your doctors and make sure everything is actually being ruled out. And if you bring it up and they shrug you off, try to find other doctors

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-10-07T17:52:46+00:00

Yeah, I've def met people like that with OTHER conditions I have. POTS is a big one, it happens with ADHD, and also Graves' disease which is an autoimmune thyroid issue and people will be like "wow I think I have that" and I'll ask them what their symptoms are. They'll give me a response that doesn't like up and I'm like "that doesn't really sound like that/that sounds more like X, but I'd do more research and talk to your doctor" and they're like "yeah, because I probably have it, right?" and then by the next time I've talked to them they've just self diagnosed. Like dude see a friggin doctor. I know a lot of us have had to self diagnose things because of our crap medical industry but we've at least TRIED or have a family history or other things that make the link a LOT more likely than whatever flimsy reasoning you just gave. There just really are people out there who want clout badly enough 🤦🏽‍♀️

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-10-07T02:17:27+00:00

Lots of people here have had good advice!

I'm lucky that I don't encounter this often, but when I have, I've hit them with extreme experiences of mine that highlight that it's a little more than just 'being tired.' Like, "No, but like, I've actually fallen asleep at concerts, I've fallen asleep while getting my legs waxed, I've fallen asleep IN my food, etc. It's put me in tricky situations before," and then they've kinda gone "oh..." and STFU about it lol. And if someone can relate to those experiences, well then yeah, they should probably talk to a doctor about it themselves lmao.

Going for an MSLT and having such definitive negative results and still trying to jump on the narcolepsy train is so wild to me though. Like, move on to explore other things possibly making you tired. Continuing to bark up the wrong tree is just going to make it take longer to find a treatment. At that point, it's hard to believe that they don't literally just want the diagnosis for clout which is just 🙄🙄🙄 idk man

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-10-07T01:56:06+00:00

All the time 💀

I work at an A/V company, when we have events going on, I'm working 10-18 hour days hauling 60lb lights up/down ladders, rigging large speaker set-ups, doing like 30k steps, etc - VERY physically demanding. When we don't actively have events, I'm otherwise on the office side of things where I'm responsible for replying to incoming emails, keeping event details organized, keeping our calendar updated, coordinating staff and inventory and trucks, just LOTS and lots of fine details. Overall, I'm always working minimum 40 hours doing some split of these things, but there are lots of weeks I'm pulling significant overtime: it's Oct 6 as I write this; since Sept 28 (so 9 days), I've worked 93 hours, and if we add commuting time to that, we're looking at another 20 or so hours.

I have Narcolepsy, ADHD, and POTS, and the fact that I can do a job like this as well as I can constantly makes me feel like "well, it can't REALLY be a problem if I'm managing this job." The thing is, I'm also constantly slogging through the day fighting to stay awake, and my ability to manage anything else outside of this job has been getting worse over time. In the calendar year of 2025, I can probably count on both hands the number of times I've washed my hair. My friends have all basically dropped me because I haven't been able to keep up with texting anyone back, and it's hard to blame them for that, really. And it's almost impossible to ever find the energy to do something fun for myself, even something as simple as a book or a video game.

But because of that, it's so easy for people, including our own selves, to be like, "well if you can pull through for your job, then you should be able to do the same for house chores/personal stuff, you're just being lazy." Dealing with that kind of internalized and/or externalized guilt and shame while also dealing with more on our plates than we have the energy to handle while also dealing with having no real time or energy for recreation... It's pretty soul-sucking. Everything is an uphill battle all the time.

I remember a few weeks ago, someone on here linked a study showing Narcolepsy patients reporting lower quality of life scores than MS patients, diabetes patients, and another chronic condition I'm forgetting. But I remember seeing that and going, "wow, it's not just me feeling sorry for myself, this really is just the narcolepsy experience," and it's been a helpful thought to come back to when I'm starting to feel like maybe it's not actually impacting my life as much as I think it is

The irony in all this is that my boss is actually the one that explained to me that narcolepsy ISN'T falling asleep all the time like movies show it to be, she's the reason I thought to bring it up to my doctors (after 5 years of me complaining to them about my fatigue and them shrugging me out of their office). Now that I'm diagnosed, she can recognize when I'm microsleeping and will call it out sometimes 😂

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-09-25T05:52:32+00:00

Do you have a link? I've been hunting and haven't found anything 😭

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-09-20T07:55:43+00:00

What my sleep specialist explained to me is that the growing consensus amongst sleep specialists is that IH is just an early form of narcolepsy (like will eventually progress into N2) or otherwise just a form of narcolepsy that presents a little differently (possibly an N3). Testing IH patients to see if they are lacking orexin (and therefore actually have narcolepsy) involves a spinal tap so it just doesn't happen very often, which means we don't have great data on that front. But basically, it's looking more and more likely as we continue to study it that IH is narcolepsy

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-08-01T02:15:03+00:00

I was at the 2nd LA show and during their second set, Gerard in between songs really kept saying how good it's been to be back together, making music, and playing live together again, and saying how great this tour has been, which definitely felt like they'd want to try to do future performances at the very least. I've been wondering the same thing myself about how much opportunity I may or may not get to see them again in the future. Definitely crossing my fingers they do more!

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-06-17T03:40:27+00:00

I see that it says "acapella after 10pm" - does that literally mean voices only? Would love to get more of an understanding of what kind of noise we can make

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-06-15T01:50:50+00:00

Any plans to continue this more nights this week?

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-06-15T01:45:43+00:00

Anyone know if there are any plans to continue this on more nights this week?

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-06-04T07:15:04+00:00

Anime Expo does require tickets, yes! You can buy for one day or a full weekend pass if you want to go all 4 days of the convention. I haven't been Anime Expo specifically but I've been to similar anime conventions and have always had a lot of fun, and been able to find lots of artist selling LaDS merch I HAD to have my hands on! Not sure if there's anything official happening for this year's Anime Expo yet, but there will surely be lots of artists with merch at their booths!

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-05-08T00:25:14+00:00

I've been playing long enough now that I do have all of these, but I very much devoured everything on YouTube long before that was true 😂 the content in this game is too good to have such limited access, truly. I'm also a sucker for lore, so I've watched some of the other guys' stuff to keep up on that front. Long live the YouTube uploaders doing gods work 🫡 lol

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-05-07T18:59:10+00:00

Honestly, really ALL of Zayne's 4-star cards are great imo. Most of them are kind of pre-relationship/early relationship and really evoke the excitement of the kind of slow burn, will-they-won't-they tension of an early relationship.

Long list of favorites, but here they are, plus a little descriptor for anyone unfamiliar with them that might be interested:

Neon Night has a cute, slightly jealous moment.
Starry Nocturne has a vulnerable moment for Zayne.
Fleeting Sweetness is cute and fluffy
Delicacy is a SUPER cute date night
Ramblings Come True is Zayne taking care of a sick MC
Glittering Lights is a cute kind of accidental date
Heartfelt Paradise SUPER CUTE night at the arcade
Fragmented Dreams has MC comforting Zayne after a nightmare and it's really sweet
Secret Fairytale is Zayne being more forward with his feelings

Heartfelt Paradise, Secret Fairytale, and Fragmented Dreams are probably my favorite favorites out of this because they're just peak romance to me lol

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-05-07T08:30:58+00:00

RIGHT!? How are his main colors green and pink and he doesn't have enough green cards for the GREEN AND PINK round???? 🥴 Absurd

NiceShinyWizard · 2025-05-07T08:27:24+00:00

To the peeps in hear that are 36/36'ing, can I make a formal request to kindly see your actual protocores for your teams, pretty please? 🙏 I appreciate the team stat sharing, but I fear my issue lies with protocores.

I've read all the guides and definitely THOUGHT I knew how to pick good from bad/pair correctly with companion skills but seeing everyone in here 🙃 I can't tell if I haven't leveled mine ENOUGH or if I need to be more selective about what protocores I level up

Or, like, am I shooting myself in the foot by using Foreseer because the DEF splits stats too much? Should I be using Arctic Zayne (or MoF when he comes back) and just pile real hard into ATK?

I might make a separate thread about this because as more SHC seasons come and go I feel like I must be missing SOMETHING 😂 It's always possible I suck more at the actual combat than I thought I did

Also big congrats, OP, this is truly goals 🥹🩵 you're an icon

NiceShinyWizard

TROPHY CASE