Insomnia

[megaresp]

I can go to my GP any time and get a prescription for morphine, but I had the exact same experience as megaresp had in getting some sleeping tablets.

** split from another thread to avoid derail **

What I find especially frustrating is that we have the technology to put the brain into sleep mode in less than 30 minutes. But we can't do so in a way that doesn't have at least two of the following side-effects...

• Feeling lousy/drowsy the following day
• Decreasing effectiveness of the drug
• Very addictive
• Requires an anesthetist to ensure breathing

I have had occasional sleeping problems for the last 25 years, and almost never get a refreshing night's sleep.


15 years ago I had a sleep-study done. This cost me a few hundred dollars and resulted in the following useless pieces of information...

1. No signs of sleep apnia (good to know, but not helpful)
2. It takes me a long time to get to sleep (well, duh...and what colour is the sky again?)
3. I do have restless sleep (explains not experiencing refreshing nature of sleep)
4. My sleeplessness will get worse as I get older (which has proven to be correct)

Has anybody battled insomnia and actually beaten it? Does anybody have a sure-fire method for getting to sleep when the brain is especially wired?


Your actual prescription sleeping pills work for me. I do wake up feeling refreshed if I've taken something like Zolpidem (Ambien in USA). But of course my GP isn't especially keen on presecribing them, and it's unwise to take them anyway.


Sedating anti-histimines are very easy to get, work well, but continue to work in my body throughout the entire next day. As a result, they're not an option for me during the week. And I don't feel refreshed anyway.



I've tried various herbal sleep remedies (no effect what-so-ever), sleep hygiene regimes (somewhat helpful), various woo (no effect what-so-ever) and in general find that when my brain is wired nothing works.


One non-medicine approach that does work is eating a LOT of carbs (main in toast form) and watching something distracting on TV. Typically I will be doing this out of desperation around 1am or so. This will usually, but not always, get me dozy enough to fall asleep. But this strategy isn't helpful to my wasteline.

I wish medical science would come up with something non-addictive that just damn well worked! How hard can it be?


If only my brain ran PHP, then I could simply enter: sleep(time() + (60*60*8));

 

[Monketi Ghost]

I've had mild-to-bad insomnia most of my life.

It's been so hot lately I have taken to drinking a couple of beers before bedtossing and turning and getting up every hour.

It has been a bit hellish.

 

[casebro]

One non-medicine approach that does work is eating a LOT of carbs (main in toast form) and watching something distracting on TV. Typically I will be doing this out of desperation around 1am or so. This will usually, but not always, get me dozy enough to fall asleep. But this strategy isn't helpful to my wasteline.

Have you tried delaying your big meal until an appropriate time before bed? That way you get the drowsiness without adding extra calories.

 

[Humphreys]

Whiskey fixed my insomnia.

But, you can't use it to put you to sleep, you have to use it only if you can't sleep. That way it acts as a comfort, you know that if you can't sleep, you have something that definitely will put you to sleep, and so the pressure is off.

As long as I am relaxed, and do not feel under pressure, I will sleep.

It's probably a terrible system so I won't actually recommend it, but it is of great help to me, and I don't drink a lot, or too often. After being on zopiclone, I'd also say alcohol is safer, and leaves you feeling less lousy the next morning, than addictive sleep pills.

 

[Colin99]

My first forum reply and unfortunately it's on a topic I'm way too well informed on. I've had issues with insomnia since I was about 14 or 15. It's on-again off-again but even on good nights it's rare to get 5 hours sleep.

I did a sleep survey a few years ago and they found I have insomnia

Currently I'm taking Seroquel for both sleeping and other problems. Some nights it helps but other nights nothing. The worst problem is that occasionally it does nothing in the evenings and I'm awake all night. This leads to a very bad following day (last night was one of those nights - a couple hours sleep then awake for the rest of the night).

I've had some success with Zopliclone in the past. For short term sleep problems it does help - but I build up a tolerance to it very quickly. There were other sleeping pill prescriptions in the past but they didn't work very well.

I've tried meditation before bed, exercise a few hours before bed, varying when I have my supper, and the occasional beer (I am Canadian after all) but none of them help very much.

In my case, my mind just seems to get into a race condition some nights where there is no way to calm down. Which is why they are trying Seroquel now as an attempt to calm me down in the evenings.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

I've suffered from insomnia for the best part of a quarter of a century. I've never found anything that worked, and nor have I ever found a doctor who'd take it even remotely seriously. So I'm afraid I can't help on that score. However...

One non-medicine approach that does work is eating a LOT of carbs (main in toast form) and watching something distracting on TV. Typically I will be doing this out of desperation around 1am or so. This will usually, but not always, get me dozy enough to fall asleep. But this strategy isn't helpful to my wasteline.

...this shouldn't be so much of a problem. There's a lot of nonsense taught about carbohydrates when it comes to weight-gain. There's nothing in eating lots of carbs which will cause you to gain weight. There is, in fact, evidence that high-carb diets are better for keeping weight down than low-carb ones.

And I don't even mean diet as in trying to lose weight, there. Low-carb diets in that sense seem to make people lose weight rapidly by reducing the amount of water in the body. They also reduce muscle mass and, as muscles burn calories just by existing, this means that at the end of your low-carb diet you'll burn fewer calories doing the same things that you normally do and you'll therefore find that even eating less than you did before you dieted will probably make you gain weight.

The issue with eating carbohydrates is that when we eat them we usually eat them after they've been cooked in fat, or we add fat like margarine or cheese to them. Avoid doing that and your waistline should be fine.

Not that that helps with the insomnia, but I hope it's still helpful nonetheless.

 

[Soapy Sam]

One problem I hear from insomniacs , and one I think we all have sometimes- is when we can't stop our brain continually obsessing on events of the day or some matter of concern. It's like the governor has failed and the boiler's going to blow...

This can be stopped by training and practice.

That is in no sense a cure for all insomnia, but it is a prerequisite for most types of cure.
Not easy of course, if you have three young kids, noisy neighbours and you work shifts. But learning to shut down is worth a bit of work.

 

[DavidS]

One problem I hear from insomniacs , and one I think we all have sometimes- is when we can't stop our brain continually obsessing on events of the day or some matter of concern. It's like the governor has failed and the boiler's going to blow...

This can be stopped by training and practice.

I'd be grateful for a link to further information on this topic, particularly for anything I could give an initial try on my own.

 

[Humphreys]

I've had some success with Zopliclone in the past. For short term sleep problems it does help - but I build up a tolerance to it very quickly.

I had the same experience. It will put you to sleep, but I built up tolerance so fast it was scary, and the situation I got myself in very quickly was just awful:

Days 1-3: 2 tablets a night, got me to sleep, but still took an hour
Days 4-7: Had to start taking 3, as 2 was not working
Day 8: Ended up taking 4 of them with alcohol on top, and was bordering on hysteria at this point

I stopped cold turkey right after that, and after just 8 days of use I found the rebound insomnia horrendous. I had an entire week after that with about 10 hours sleep in total to get myself off them.

Sleeping pills can be very dangerous, and I am not a person who becomes easily dependent on things.

 

[DavidS]

@megaresp:

You might try:
a) For several hours before bedtime, avoid "bright" lights, even to the point of wearing sunglasses indoors.
b) Melatonin *promptly* before retiring

The above were recommended by a sleep therapist so long ago that he characterized them as "experimental". I have no idea whether they're accepted therapies today.

I used to be much more dysfunctional with respect to circadian rhythm, and back when I was young and strong simple exhaustion wasn't enough to put me to sleep at a respectable hour... which made it extremely difficult to rise reliably. Working effectively late into the night isn't often as well recognized as arriving late and groggy in the morning.

That said, the good news is that both seemed to give me some success with ordinary sleeplessness; nothing seems to touch the obsessing brain thing, but hopefully Soapy Sam can give me a hint. The bad news is that it was an incremental improvement and not a reliable solution, possibly because both are easy to screw up.

Actually, for me the bright light effect was more negative. That is, dimming the lights early wouldn't reliably help me sleep, but it didn't take that long under bright lights to pretty much guarantee I'd be awake for a while. The therapist actually had me try spending a couple hours in bright light early in the morning in an attempt to synchronize the waking end of the cycle, but no joy on that end.

Melatonin was helpful sometimes, but for me it seemed only to offer a window of opportunity to get to sleep. If anything kept me from sleeping for the half hour after taking the pill, I missed my chance. I haven't tried melatonin again for some years.

 

[Modified]

Doctors need to take sleeplessness more seriously. A week without sleep can do permanent psychological damage, but tell an ER doctor you haven't slept in a week and they'll probably tell you there's nothing they can do, and to make an appointment with your family doctor (even if you just saw him that day). I was lucky enough to survive such an experience, thanks mainly to Propofol given for an upper endoscopy / colonoscopy (the lack of sleep had caused severe stomach and intestinal spasms and pain) that at least got me to sleep for a few hours, followed by a brief stay in a mental health facility, where they put me on Restoril along with anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications. Still, I suspect that my brain has been permanently altered by the experience, and that earlier intervention would have been much better.

Apart from that and some lesser episodes, I usually take an hour or so to fall asleep, due to restless thoughts plus myoclonic jerks and RLS. One thing that really helps is exercise, like an hour of jogging or swimming, ideally ending just before dinner.

 

[megaresp]

Have you tried delaying your big meal until an appropriate time before bed? That way you get the drowsiness without adding extra calories.

I have done this occasionally, with mixed results. It seems to require a combination of it being very late, no lights on, and carb-delivered drowsiness. The sort of drowsiness one might experience after a big Sunday lunch for example.

The other requirement is darkness and general calm. So my wife is in bed and I am sitting in a room with only the TV on, usually lying down on the sofa and letting myself drift off. I go to bed when I realise have dozed off I will usually then fall asleep.

In more general terms it isn't really practical to delay the meal until very late unless I want to cook twice (too arousing), or eat toast for dinner every day of the week during bad spells.

 

[megaresp]

Whiskey fixed my insomnia. But, you can't use it to put you to sleep, you have to use it only if you can't sleep...After being on zopiclone, I'd also say alcohol is safer, and leaves you feeling less lousy the next morning, than addictive sleep pills.

I understand. I don't drink alcohol (liver issues) but suspect there is something out there that will have the same calming effect on my brain.

This is almost certainly about quieting down the brain during stressful periods.

 

[megaresp]

I've had issues with insomnia since I was about 14 or 15. It's on-again off-again but even on good nights it's rare to get 5 hours sleep

You have my sympathies. We are in the same boat, but it sounds like yours is more frequent.

Currently I'm taking Seroquel for both sleeping and other problems. Some nights it helps but other nights nothing.

I'm reasonably certain I don't have bi-polar disorder, so assuming I've correctly determined what Seroquel is for I doubt it would be prescribed.

I've had some success with Zopliclone in the past. For short term sleep problems it does help - but I build up a tolerance to it very quickly.

It's certainly effective, but as you say it's not a long-term solution. It also leaves a bad taste in my mouth the following day.

In my case, my mind just seems to get into a race condition some nights where there is no way to calm down. Which is why they are trying Seroquel now as an attempt to calm me down in the evenings.

Bingo - very similar to my own issues - just can't seem to switch off for the day.

 

[megaresp]

There's a lot of nonsense taught about carbohydrates when it comes to weight-gain

I don't mind eating carbs. It's the fact I'm adding an extra meal or two to my day that bothers me. I do it when I'm desperate but don't want to make it a nightly occurrence.

As it happens I am 3 months into Weight Watchers right now and can assure you I was not within my doctor-approved healthy weight range (now only 6.5 Kgs to go). Eating extra meals at any time isn't an ideal solution

 

[megaresp]

I'd be grateful for a link to further information on this topic, particularly for anything I could give an initial try on my own.

Me also.

 

[megaresp]

You might try:
a) For several hours before bedtime, avoid "bright" lights, even to the point of wearing sunglasses indoors.
b) Melatonin *promptly* before retiring

I do indeed find dark helps, and now use a mask as well I've found this helps sleep onset and delays waking. For Brits who are interested, Amazon.co.uk has some great sleep masks that are far superior to those you typically get in supermarkets/luggage stores.

Unfortunately Melatonin is not available over the counter in the UK. My sister-in-law has recommended it and picks it up in the US from time-to-time. I'll ask her to get me some on her next trip.

 

[megaresp]

Doctors need to take sleeplessness more seriously...

I agree with you, but ultimately I don't think Medical Science has much of a clue at this point. I sorry to hear of the sleep issues you've endured. They are far worse and more persistent than my own - which eventually pass.

 

[EdG]

This usually works for me: 1. Start winding down after dinner to give my thoughts time to clear. 2. Keep a regular to bed / from bed schedule even on weekends. 3. Drink a glass of 0% fat milk a bit before bedtime. 4. If I'm not to sleep within 30 minutes or so, get back up for a while. 5. Don't watch TV if I get back up. Reading works better.

 

[Pope130]

My insomnia seems to be more of a sleep aversion, rather than an inability to sleep. If I sleep more than about two hours at a time I will start having nightmares that will leave me debilitated the next day. I typically get three to five hours a night, in one or two hour blocks, with a half hour to an hour awake between.
This seems to be a stable condition, thirty years or so now. Doctors advice is: "Try to get more sleep." I agree that would be a good cure for insomnia, but a bit more practical advice on implementation would be nice.