Hi, Monique,

I too have had trouble sleeping more than 7 hours a night. I have menopausal night sweats - that has a lot to do with it. Hard to change.

I never even heard of taking supplemental melatonin before reading this book. If you have a hard time sleeping, no wonder you want to keep taking it. It must seem like things would be really worse without it.

When I started going to bed at 9 pm, a lot of times I would just lie there, wide awake. Somehow, the act of going to bed and turning off the lights caused my brain to wake up. I would eventually fall asleep though, and before the previously usual time. (previously usual?)

It would be a handyman project, but I got a mental picture of a short curtain rod and a little curtain over your alarm system. What do you think?

I need to get new shades. The ones we have really let a lot of light through the edges.

A sort of corollary idea to Lights Out is that we also need lots of natural sunlight, and for those of us visually impaired to take off our glasses/contacts for at least a few minutes so we get the light in our eyes without lenses. Maybe spending more time outdoors is needed for us to really sleep well.

Spending more and more time outdoors has been one of my cave person goals, but I haven't got very far in achieving it. I'm a real softie, used to the creature comforts indoors. Intuitively, I feel that there is a strong connection between our need for real darkness at night and real sun and daylight during the day.

Hope this helps. We have to feel our way through this together.

By the way 2bthn, I'm rolling on the floor.

Daylily