Insomnia
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Goddess0921
Posts: 91 Member
I suffer from severe insomnia. I was prescribed medication and that medication has been upped in dosage and I STILL cannot fall asleep before 2am - on a good night. Does anyone have any experience with this or any suggestions? I've tried a million things...no phone at night, no caffeine after the AM, etc.
I am so tired of being exhausted.
(I know this isn't LC related...I hope that's ok...)
I am so tired of being exhausted.
(I know this isn't LC related...I hope that's ok...)
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Replies
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Most common issues have to do with messing up circadian rhythm. This can be addressed by:
- getting at least a few minutes of sunlight in the morning
- getting at least 15-20 minutes of sunlight between 10am and 3pm (I do this by taking a walk around the parking lot of the office complex at lunch)
- avoid brightly lit rooms for the later part of the evening - at least the last couple hours before bed. You can use dimmers possibly.
- Avoid using computers and handheld devices like phones and tablets for the last 1-2 hours before bed. If you have to use these, get some blue blocker glasses to wear
- black out shades if your bedroom is not dark enough
- keep your room slightly colder than would normally be comfortable
Exercise can be very helpful with sleep, but a common mistake is exercising too close to bed time. I have heard different amounts of time with the most extreme being no exercise within 3 hours. Personally, I have no issues with walking my dog, which I do at a very rapid pace, as long as I am done at least 90 minutes before I go to bed.
Hope something on here helps. Good luck. Not getting enough (quality or quantity) sleep is a significant cause of lots of problems.1 -
Absolutely what @cstehansen said. I would add:
Making sure to take any D3/K2 supplements during the day (it's called the sunshine vitamin for a reason), a sleepy form of magnesium at night. Also, check into whether you might have neurotransmitter issues. I take 5 htp with cofactors at night, tyrosine during the day, as part of a protocol tangentially related to this article:
http://carbsyndrome.com/is-your-brain-two-quarts-low/
I would also make sure you have a full workup on your thyroid. Having a wonky TSH or T3/T4 conversion issues, spiking at dinner or whatever are generally not great.
Also, splitting your carbs into <20% ratio at breakfast, 30-35% at lunch, remaining ~50% carbs at dinner can help... So 1:2:3 per meal. This doesn't account for snacks, so that would skew things a bit more...
So if you carb goal is 30, that would be 5 at breakfast, 10 at lunch, 15 at dinner... Or 60 grams would be 10, 20, 30 respectively. 90 would be 15, 30, 45.... and so on an so forth (I just picked these numbers for easy calc examples.
I find that I'm more alert in the AM this way, and I naturally taper in energy more at night... I'm naturally a night person, but using a this type of protocol makes it easier.2 -
Just wondering if you need to be up early for a job or kids or?? I work nights and have always been a night person (I was born at night) and I get my sleep in from 5:30 AM when I get home til 1PMish. That still leaves me the whole afternoon to do my business downtown (errands groceries etc) and the whole evening with my hubby until I go to work for 10 pm.
Maybe you could sleep from 2 - 10 AM and slowly work it backwards til it's where you want?0 -
Insomnia is the absolute pits. I ferking hate it as an occasional sufferer myself; usually the night before something big is going to happent he following day...
Others have made brilliant suggestions, and there's no doubt that there are also different things that work for different people.
I drink banana tea if I need a bit of shut eye. Along with the other advice, it seems to work for me....0 -
My insomnia is exacerbated by stress. Once I do get to sleep it isn't restful.
Sometimes I need TV off, very dark room, no noises. Other times, I need the TV to distract me from my own internal dialogue. A big glass of scotch usually helps too. (Smoking pot works, if you are so inclined)
I've heard people taking Melatonin with good success. I haven't tried it. Sometimes going to bed earlier and "trying" to get to sleep is counterproductive. I will just go with it, stay up, and get chores done. Folding laundry is an anesthetic for me.
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Thank you, everyone! I'm going to look into some of these suggestions that I was not already previously aware of. Many of them, I was, but not all. I do have to be up early in the morning for my children, so sleeping later in the day won't work, unfortunately. :-/0
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I've never been a good sleeper by any standards. Recently I've started taking magnesium at night and it drops me like a rock. Another option is to try a meditation app or youtube video. I've found I sleep sounder if I do one of these before bed. Do a search on youtube and you'll find all sorts for various faiths/non-faiths.1
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LowCarb4Me2016 wrote: »I've never been a good sleeper by any standards. Recently I've started taking magnesium at night and it drops me like a rock. Another option is to try a meditation app or youtube video. I've found I sleep sounder if I do one of these before bed. Do a search on youtube and you'll find all sorts for various faiths/non-faiths.
for meditation, I have recently heard multiple recommendations for headspace as an app to use. I have no first hand knowledge of it, but thought I would throw it out there since it came up 3 times in interviews I heard with 3 different people.1 -
I agree with the magnesium.....I feel like I've been getting much better sleep since I started supplementing that!0
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I'll have to check into that app. I had an app before but I can't remember what it was and I've switched phones. There was also an app were you could play nature sounds with or without music. Listening to that with my eyes closed was therapeutic but, again, it was with the old phone which is now dead.0
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If I remember right, Headspace is an "eventually" paid app, and I didn't care for it much. (I think it's free the first 10 times or something). OR maybe that was the one where you have to be online to use it. I downloaded a few of the recommended ones at some point. I just remember this one by name, because it was inconvenient for some factor or another. If I'm going to do online, I'd probably just YouTube one (a meditation piece).
(Ironically, the chanting style dwarf song from The Hobbit, "The Misty Mountains Cold" is one of my favorite for just relaxing in general). The "Vikings" TV Show opening theme song is another good one.
I downloaded one that is just called "Meditation Music." On Android, it is a green circle with a white shape of a person sitting crosslegged with hands folded in front. It has a timer and many selections. I have one piece of music I don't use for anything else that I use as my "drift to sleep" music. It helps if you have to get up to pee overnight, too, to get right back to sleep. It works completely offline.
Conscious meditation can stress me out, so this works well. Many "types" to choose from.
Then I also use a sleep time app (Sleep Time on android, forgot the name on Apple, but similar), that tracks your sleep depth and wakes you in a 30 minute window of your lightest sleep so that you aren't groggy waking...1 -
KnitorMiss you reminded me, for those who use Spotify there is a meditation playlist.2
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Youtube is full of self hypnosis videos and meditation type music "videos". I have listened to some of the videos posted in this forum with the volume turned down real low and they put me right to sleep. I don't mean for that to sound negative though I know it might. I think it was more of a case of it taking my mind off the inability to sleep and placing my focus elsewhere while comfortably laying in bed. I turn my tablet or cell phone over so I don't have the glaring light and am not tempted to watch. Shhhh. Just listen.2
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I forgot all about something like meditation/sleep music!! Thank you, guys!
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