Sleep

Start with the guide

• Hypersomnia: Why You Stay Sleepy After a Full Night

  Hypersomnia means excessive sleepiness, not just low energy. Learn what can cause it, how it is assessed, and why more time in bed is not always the answer.

• Sleep After 40: What Changed and What Restores It

  Deep sleep falls, the body clock shifts earlier, and the night breaks into more pieces — but the amount you need does not change. Sets out why “I slept badly” is five separate problems with five separate answers, and which one you are probably in.

• How Much Sleep Do You Actually Need After 40?

  Seven or more, and it does not fall with age. What falls is how much of your time in bed comes back as sleep — which is why most men report the wrong number, and why giving yourself another hour in bed usually makes it worse.

The five problems, one at a time

The guide sorts “I slept badly” into five separate problems. These go deeper into two of them, and add two the guide leaves out: legs that will not stay still, and waking up unable to move.

• Waking at 3 a.m. and Cannot Get Back to Sleep

  The awakenings are not new — everyone has them. What changed is the ability to fall straight back asleep, and why spending longer in bed makes it worse.

• Snoring or Sleep Apnea? What Separates Them

  Volume separates nothing. The silence between the noise does — and the sign that would settle it happens while you are unconscious.

• Restless Legs at Night: Why the Iron Test Comes First

  An urge to move that starts at rest and peaks at night. The current guideline begins with an iron panel and a medication review, and the pills that used to come first have moved down the list.

• Sleep Paralysis: Why You Can't Move, and When to Worry

  About three in ten people go through this at least once. What is actually happening, why the hallucinations feel so real, and when frequent episodes are worth mentioning to a doctor.

• Teeth Grinding at Night: Why It's So Hard to Stop

  MedlinePlus is direct that the nighttime version is the harder problem, precisely because you're asleep for it. The symptoms that point away from the mouth, and where it overlaps with sleep apnea.

• Night Sweats in Men: When Soaked Sheets Are Worth a Check

  The NHS line is soaking wet in a cool room, not a warm night. The common causes, the prostate cancer treatments that cause them in men, and the honest answer on testosterone.

• Trazodone for Sleep: Widely Used, Weakly Supported

  Approved for depression, also used off-label for sleep. A Cochrane review found there may be a small, short-term benefit in self-rated sleep, the US sleep guideline suggests against it, and the label warns men about prolonged erections.

• Unisom for Sleep in Men: The Prostate Warning on the Box

  SleepTabs are doxylamine; SleepMelts and SleepMinis are diphenhydramine. Every label warns men with trouble urinating from an enlarged prostate to ask a doctor first, the sleep benefit is small, and both drugs are on the avoid-after-65 list.

Written from experience

One of our contributors writes here under a pen name, from his own life rather than from research. We fact-check him, and where his account and the evidence disagree, we print both.

• My Wife Says I Stop Breathing When I Sleep

  She has watched it for years and she used the word apnea herself. He has never been tested, feels fine in the morning, and is treating it with his wife’s magnesium. He still thinks he does not need to go yet.

Getting it looked at

The step most men picture wrongly, and skip because of what they pictured.

• What Actually Happens at a Sleep Study

  What is attached and what each sensor is asking, whether you can get up in the night, what happens if you barely sleep, the home version and who it is not for — and what the number at the end means.

What treatment involves

We earn nothing from any of this, which is why we can point at the treatment nobody sells.

• The Insomnia Treatment That Works Better Than Pills

  Guidelines put a behavioral program first for long-term insomnia, not a drug. Five techniques over four to eight weeks — and its effect holds after it ends, because what it changed was the pattern.

• Sleeping Pills After 40: What Each Kind Actually Does

  Four prescription classes doing four different jobs, and every recommendation in the guideline is a weak one. Includes the risk nobody mentions: the trip to the bathroom taken while still sedated.

• CPAP: What to Expect, and Why So Many Quit

  The standard treatment for sleep apnea, and the honest number on who sticks with it: about a third of patients, averaged across 20 years of research. What the rough first weeks involve, and what actually fixes each problem.

What you can change yourself

The levers that need no appointment and no prescription.

• Alcohol and Sleep: What a Nightcap Really Costs You

  A drink taken six hours before bed, cleared from the blood before sleep began, still raised time awake in the night from 39 to 67 minutes. Which is awkward for the advice to simply drink earlier.

• Melatonin for Sleep After 40: The Dose and the Timing

  A time signal rather than a sedative, which is why men who expect to feel something conclude it did nothing. Where the evidence is strongest, why the shelf starts where the research stops, and why an older body clears it more slowly.

The section is finished

Nineteen articles, published one at a time. We complete a section before starting the next area, because a half-built section helps nobody — and the next area is already being planned.

• Next A new area, built the same way: one guide, then the problems underneath it

Where sleep meets the other two sections

Sleep overlaps with the prostate in one place, and with testosterone in another. Both are places men commonly get wrong.

• Nocturia or Insomnia: Which One Woke You?

  The question that comes before the causes. Waking because of the bladder and waking first and then going look identical on paper, need opposite treatment, and are separated by two things you can check tonight.

• Testosterone and Sleep: Why the Number Needs the Night

  Testosterone climbs while you sleep and needs about three unbroken hours to do it. Why a hormone reading taken during a bad stretch of nights is hard to interpret, and where the popular version of this claim overshoots.

• Why Do I Wake Up 3 Times a Night to Pee?

  Three different mechanisms produce the identical symptom, and they need different treatments. Most men spend months treating the wrong one.

• The prostate section

  Twenty-six articles, from the first change you notice to whether any supplement is worth trying.

• The testosterone section

  Nineteen articles: what counts as low, how the test has to be done to mean anything, and what treatment involves.