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Insomnia

Cheese. Not sure if you are referring to me.

My wife has indicated on numerous occasions that she has often thought I died as I take an in take of breath when asleep then I seem to stop for a long time.

I am about a stone over weight which at 40 (today) I do not consider to desperate.

I have a fair amount of stress at work, but the good kind, I desire to do better not pressure put upon me. I have lots of demons as I am sure we all do, but don't tend to directly think of them at night. Though it has to be said when in the zombie state in the middle of the night, your mind can really f**k you over.

My problem is I drink too much. Sometimes I arrive home so knackered, and should just go to bed, but I have a glass of wine, knowing full well its going to be a bad night.

However, and conversely many of my worse nights are two or three days off the booze. Not sure if its connected or not. But all in all my sleep is pretty disrupted. The other issue being that I wake at 6 every morning without fail. don't even need an alarm
 
I guess there are many root causes - for me it was being unable to switch off from work. Only fix for me was to get up and go for a walk - helped I had a dog at the time, not sure he liked the 3-4 hour long walks in early hours of morning though. Fix was a very conscious decision to understand that mentally the work stuff was never going to end, but that it was also separate from my private life. I basically learned to not give a shit and switch off at the end of each business day. It's served me well - I suffered early 2000s and I still sleep well (& have been more successful professionally as a result I believe), even in the always on world of constant electronic connection we now live in.

But I guess the same could be caused by a personal or physical issue - you need to find out what could be causing it for you.
 
garyi said:
Cheese. Not sure if you are referring to me.
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I was.

garyi said:
My wife has indicated on numerous occasions that she has often thought I died as I take an in take of breath [...]
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And she is not far from the truth. Every single time this happens, you would simply stop breathing - if there weren't this life-saving mechanism of the brain getting aware of the danger and running the survival procedure, i.e. ordering the trachea to open itself immediately no matter how.

The problem is, it only works if you don't fall into a deep sleep. In other words, your sleep is crappy and you don't really take some rest. You got used to it over the years, but it isn't recommended.

The only thing I can say is that in my (severe) case of apnoea, I feel about ten times more energetic during the day since I got this problem solved. Bliss again.
 
The CPAP machine worked wonders for me. I was waking up choking in the middle of the night which was a scary sensation.
The periods of not breathing is scary for your partner as well, she kept prodding me to get me breathing again!
 
I can't advise for any sleep apnoea problems but I do suffer from insomnia.

Most of it is stress related and I found that all of the usual recommendations help to some degree (warm milky drink 30 minutes before bed, always going to bed at the same time, relaxation exercises).

The one that helps the most is the easiest; no computer / tech an hour before bedtime and read a book instead or draw or some other non-electronic pursuit.
 
Though not the answer, if you do find yourself twiddling your thumbs at night, I use 'Flux' on mac which totally changes the colour tint on mac depending on the time of day/night.

As mentioned before the point at which you eventually start drifting back to sleep is a very unusual experience, its worth the hassle in a sense, hard to explain. For me its like electrical shocks across the brain, combined with what can only be described as a weirdness. Hard to explain, but not horrible by any means. The worse bit is the waking up in the middle of the night and the immediate understanding that you are f**ked for the next 4 hours.

Work stress if very much related. However I am a 'worry'er' If I don't actually have anything to worry about and I wake up, I find something to worry about.
 
garyi said:
Though not the answer, if you do find yourself twiddling your thumbs at night, I use 'Flux' on mac which totally changes the colour tint on mac depending on the time of day/night.
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Leave the computer switched off. It's not the colour tint or blue LEDs that cause the problem, it's the mental stimulation of using the damn thing.

You'll soon find yourself feeling sleepy again.
 
Hey, listen, it makes no odds. If you have been laid awake for three hours with your eyes open in the dark, who gives a shit? I am not going to sleep ay time soon so thats that.
 
garyi said:
Hey, listen, it makes no odds. If you have been laid awake for three hours with your eyes open in the dark, who gives a shit? I am not going to sleep ay time soon so thats that.
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I'm just passing on the benefit of my experience that constant mental stimulation is a pretty good cause for insomnia. It might not work for you so I hope you find something that does.
 
I don't think I've ever really suffered from insomnia as such, though I've been kept awake by restless leg syndrome, and/or sciatica on occasion.

I sleep less easily if I've not had a drink but that's hardly surprising and I just take the view I'll fall asleep eventually. And I do.

That said I think a lot depends on not getting to hung up about getting a regular 8 hours. I've done lots of shift work over the years and learned to function reasonably well on little sleep or on odd sleep patterns.

I've got a friend who suffers the opposite. He gets sleep paralysis. Wakes up unable to move which he describes as very scary.

We shared a room last year for a few days. (Separate beds you understand.... :eek: ) while on a short trip to 'That London'.
I awoke to hear him calling out to me in a strange voice. His mouth was moving but not his jaw. For a moment I wondered if he'd had a stroke. Eventually understood that he needed to be shaken by the shoulders quite robustly to bring him out of the paralysis.

Very odd. His son suffers from the same thing.

Mull
 
Mullardman said:
I've got a friend who suffers the opposite. He gets sleep paralysis. Wakes up unable to move which he describes as very scary.
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Sleep paralysis is the source of the incubus / succubus myth and is extremely distressing as I found out when I went out with a girl who suffered from it. She'd lay there terrified but unable to let me know; even worse, she was convinced it would trigger her epilepsy thus amplifying her distress.
 
muzzer said:
I thought it was a great tune.
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Me too...... I had a friend who suffered terribly and what helped him was an evening routine that wound him down, this included a warm bath with lavender oil in it, no computer or phone after 6pm, a camomile or ginger tea, reading whilst in bed, writing down any thoughts on a pad to be looked at the next day he also wore ear plugs and covered his eyes. It helped but he still had problems. Eventually he resorted to taking stilnox and I would often find him wandering around in the early hours doing daytime things whilst being basically asleep the next morning he would have no recollection of it.
 
Personally for me I have found a mantra given to me by my doctor works. It's strange as you repeat this mantra in your head, next thing you wake in the morning. I find I am sensitive to the full moon but otherwise could sleep on a washing line.
 
Too much caffeine was a problem for me. It would not stop me going to sleep but I would wake up soon after. I try not to drink it after lunch time now.

I think some people get into a cycle: crap night -> tired -> lots of coffee -> crap night.
 
garyi said:
Cheese. Not sure if you are referring to me.

My wife has indicated on numerous occasions that she has often thought I died as I take an in take of breath when asleep then I seem to stop for a long time.

I am about a stone over weight which at 40 (today) I do not consider to desperate.

I have a fair amount of stress at work, but the good kind, I desire to do better not pressure put upon me. I have lots of demons as I am sure we all do, but don't tend to directly think of them at night. Though it has to be said when in the zombie state in the middle of the night, your mind can really f**k you over.

My problem is I drink too much. Sometimes I arrive home so knackered, and should just go to bed, but I have a glass of wine, knowing full well its going to be a bad night.

However, and conversely many of my worse nights are two or three days off the booze. Not sure if its connected or not. But all in all my sleep is pretty disrupted. The other issue being that I wake at 6 every morning without fail. don't even need an alarm
Click to expand...


http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Sleep-apnoea/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Booze: makes you fall asleep quickly but you wake up within a couple if hours and can't sleep.

Abstention: takes longer to fall asleep but a longer uninterrupted sleep is more likely.

This was the advice from my GP. My sleep improved when I stopped drinking on a nightly basis.
 
Insomnia, gotta hate it. Nothing like being knackered and brain dead day after day to grind away the spirit.

A pre-bed cocktail of kava caps + 5HTP + Mg has eased things for me in the thankfully few past episodes.

I've also come to appreciate listening to documentary podcasts via an earphone at low volume as relief for casual insomnia. No matter how interesting the subject and how much I want to stay awake, I'm nearly always nodding off after about 20 minutes.
 
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