Excellent 4.7 sur 5

My six year old grandson Owen asked me a question on Thanksgiving last year that I have not been able to forget.

We had just finished dinner. My daughter Sarah was at the sink. Hank and I were at the table with our coffee. Owen came around to my side of the chair and pulled on the sleeve of my sweater and said, "Grandma, why are you always tired?"

I did not have an answer for him. I said something about grownups needing more coffee. He was satisfied and he ran back to the living room to play. Sarah did not hear him. Hank did.

Hank looked at me across the table.

He said, "He is right, you know. So am I."

I am writing this because two friends from my old teaching staff asked me last month what I had been doing differently and I gave them the short version, and now three other people have asked me. I am writing the long version down.

I am Karen. I am 66. I taught fourth grade for 35 years and I retired two years ago. My husband Hank is 68. He was a mechanical engineer at the same company for 39 years and he retired three years ago. We have been married for 42 years. We have two adult daughters, Sarah and Beth, and three grandchildren. Owen is Sarah's boy. We live in the small ranch house in Fort Collins that we bought when Sarah was in kindergarten.

For most of our adult lives Hank and I had been people who slept.

Not spectacularly. Not the way our friends who slept twelve hours a night in college did. We slept eight solid hours from about ten at night to about six in the morning, six days a week, for 40 years. That was our normal.

When Hank retired three years ago I remember thinking he would finally get to sleep in. He had been getting up at 5:15 for most of his career.

He did not sleep in.

He started waking up at 5 anyway. Then at 4:45. Then at 4:30.

He said it was probably still adjusting.

About six months after Hank retired I started doing the same thing. I would go to bed at ten and wake up at 4:15 and lie there in the dark until 6.

I told Hank it was probably me adjusting. We had gone from very different schedules to having every day together. It was going to take time.

That was six years ago now.

Six years is not adjustment. Six years is a new normal.

Here is what we did over those six years, quietly, without ever really talking about it.

We started going to bed earlier. First we moved bedtime from ten to nine thirty because we were tired by nine thirty. Then we moved it from nine thirty to nine. Then somewhere in the last year we started brushing our teeth by eight thirty. We did not decide to do that. Our bodies got there first and we followed.

We cut the second glass of wine at dinner. We told our friends we were being healthier. We were being tired.

We stopped hosting the Saturday dinners we used to do with two other couples for years. Hank said it was too much cooking. It was too much staying up.

We stopped going to the movies. Hank could not make it through a nine o'clock start without falling asleep in the theater. He denied it for a while and then he stopped denying it.

We took the RV out one weekend last spring, the same weekend trip we used to do every year to Rocky Mountain National Park. Hank pulled over at a rest stop at three in the afternoon and slept for an hour in the passenger seat.

He said he had not slept well the night before. He had not slept well the night before either. Or the week before.

We told each other we were adjusting to retirement.

We told our daughters we were fine.

We told ourselves it was just our age.

Then Owen said what he said at Thanksgiving.

That night after everyone had gone home and the kitchen was clean and Hank had gone to bed, I sat at the kitchen table by myself with a cup of decaf tea and I made a list on the back of an envelope.

The list was the things Hank and I used to do that we did not do anymore.

There were 27 things on it.

I called my sister the next morning. My sister Nancy is 63 and still working part-time at the hospital where she has been for 40 years. She works the day shift now. She was setting up the coffee maker when I called her. It was seven in the morning.

I asked her when she went to bed the night before.

She said 11.

I asked her when she got up.

She said 6:30.

I asked her if she was tired.

She said not particularly.

I said do you sleep through the night.

She said yes, why.

I did not have a good answer. My little sister three years younger than me was sleeping seven and a half hours a night through the night. Hank and I were sleeping five, sometimes six, and telling each other it was just age.

I called my mother a couple days after that. My mother is 91. She lives independently in her own small apartment in Denver.

I asked her the same questions.

She said she goes to bed at 10 and gets up at 7. She sleeps most of it. She said she has always slept well.

Ninety-one years old and sleeping better than her sixty-six year old daughter.

It was not our age.

I am not going to pretend I figured out what it actually was by myself. I did not.

I went to see my doctor in early December. I told her what had been happening for six years. I told her I had a list of 27 things we had stopped doing.

She ran blood work. Thyroid. Iron. Vitamin D. She looked at everything.

Nothing was wrong.

She sat with me and she said something I have been thinking about ever since. She said the sleep loss over years is not the same as insomnia. It is a slow narrowing. Your body starts sleeping less, so you compensate by going to bed earlier. Then you sleep even less inside that longer window, so you get up earlier. Then you protect the day by giving things up. Every year the window gets narrower and the compensation gets bigger.

She said the compensation is the trap.

I am going to skip the reading I did over the next month.

Here is the short version.

Your nervous system has a layer that keeps you under during the night. It is not the same as the part that puts you to sleep. Melatonin makes you sleepy. This is different. This is the hold. That layer runs on several inputs that your body normally makes and manages on its own. It runs on magnesium as a cofactor for a lot of things. It runs on amino acids the body converts into what quiets it down. Plant compounds have supported the same layer for centuries.

When that layer wears out, you fall asleep fine and then wake up too early and cannot fall back asleep. That is not an aging problem. That is a nervous system layer problem. It has been quietly wearing down since Hank and I hit our sixties.

I read about a small company called Tryluvre.

They make one thing. A melatonin free sleep gummy. Eight active ingredients on the label with the amounts printed next to them. Magnesium glycinate at 150 milligrams. GABA at 160. L-tryptophan at 100. Tart cherry, passionflower, chamomile, wild jujube, hops.

The gummies are deep red cubes. Cherry flavored. One gummy about 30 minutes before bed. Thirty in a jar.

I called my doctor's office before I ordered anything. I read her the eight ingredients over the phone. She said the stack was reasonable, to add it to what I was already doing, and to give it six weeks.

I ordered the three pack. It came with a weighted sleep mask (I use it), a written ritual guide (I skimmed it), and a thirty-night sleep reset (I have not gotten to it). Free shipping.

I told Hank we were going to try it together. He was skeptical because he does not like anything trendy. He said if I ordered him a bottle he would give it a fair chance.

We started on a Sunday night in January.

I want to tell you what happened. I am not going to make a claim about what caused what.

The first four nights, nothing changed. Hank still woke up at 4:15. I still woke up at 4:30.

The fifth night I slept until 5:20. I did not know that was different in the moment. I noticed it when I looked at the clock.

The next week Hank slept until 5:15 and then again until 5:30. He did not say anything at first. Neither did I. We both knew.

The third week Hank told me at breakfast that he had slept until 6:04 on Tuesday and could I please pass the pepper.

The fourth week we invited our friends the Bergens over on a Saturday night for the first time in almost three years. We ate late. We had a second glass of wine. Hank told a long story about a car he was thinking about. It was 10:15 when they left. Hank and I were up until 11 doing the dishes together.

The next morning we slept until 6:45.

We looked at each other in bed and neither of us said anything for a minute. I have known Hank for 44 years. I know what his face looks like when he is trying not to cry.

The fifth week I made a list of the 27 things and I started crossing them off one at a time as they came back.

By the eighth week we had booked the RV trip to Rocky Mountain National Park for June. We had not gone the year before.

I went back to my doctor at the three month mark. She ran the panel again. She said the numbers were the best they had been since I retired.

Owen was over the following Sunday. He climbed up into my lap on the couch. He said, "Grandma, you are not tired anymore."

I said, "You noticed?"

He said, "Yeah. You are like at Christmas now."

Owen has never been at Christmas with a tired grandma because we cut back on Christmas hosting three years ago. He was three. He does not remember me any other way.

He is going to remember me this way now.

I want to be careful here.

I am not a doctor. I am not a scientist. I am a 66 year old retired fourth grade teacher who spent six years quietly making her life smaller because she thought that was what growing older meant.

I do not know for certain that Tryluvre was responsible for what changed. I know we had been walking one road and I added one thing and we started walking a different road. I know Hank slept until 6:45 on that Sunday. I know Owen said what he said.

What I am telling you is what we did. What I noticed. What my doctor said. What my grandson said.

That is all.

If you are in your sixties and you are telling yourself the sleep loss is just what happens now, and you have been making your life smaller for a while to work around it, here is what I would say.

Ask your mother if she sleeps. Ask your aunt. Ask a sister if you have one. Compare notes with the generation that made it further than you have. If they are sleeping and you are not, something is wearing that has nothing to do with age.

Talk to your doctor. Have her rule things out.

If everything comes back fine, ask her about adding something in the nervous system layer. If she agrees it is a sensible thing to try, add it to what you are doing. Do not change anything else.

Give it a few weeks.

Bodies are different. Some people notice something in the first week. Others take a month. Be patient with yours.

That is the whole story.

P.S. Owen is at our house tonight. He fell asleep on the floor with the dog. Hank carried him to the guest room. I am writing this at the kitchen table. It is 10:20 pm.

In a minute I am going to take a gummy and go to bed and sleep until whenever my body wants to get up.

P.P.S. Here is what I would tell you if you are thinking about trying it. Check with your doctor first. Take one gummy about thirty minutes before bed. Do not stop anything else. Give it six weeks.

P.P.P.S. Tryluvre has a thirty night money-back guarantee. They have a 4.9 star rating from over four thousand customers. They send the jar back to themselves if it does not work for you.

P.P.P.P.S. The Bergens are coming over again this Saturday. My sister Nancy is driving up too. I am making the chicken.