Insomnia.

Ta. I wonder what reduces it?

"abrupt muscle action flexing movement, generalized or partial and asymmetric, which may cause arousal, with an illusion of falling."

nope, just the falling

http://5by5.tv/b2w/156

TOPIC: Better Sleep Habits

This week, Dan and Merlin do a deep dive on building better sleep habits with a focus on the paradoxes and planning of daily activities that can make all the difference.

also references conferencecall.biz toward the end (!)

(on-topic conversation starts around 10 mins)

http://delgadomd.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/insomnia-300x298.jpg

has anyone tried medical marijuana to help with serious sleep problems?

mine is better since i got on ADs - i don't lie awake for hours, and i initially fall asleep fairly quickly by my standards - but i'm not getting much restful sleep: i toss and turn and wake up a lot during the night, i have lots of intense dreams, and generally still feel tired in the morning. i have klonopin which i can take up to 3x a week, and that's great bc it helps me catch up. but i'm wondering about other options (melatonin, magnesium, valerian, etc. - none of that has any effect for me).

Sure, 4.30am is a fine time to wake up, no problem.

4:30am, still not asleep, i've had enough i'm def not gonna sleep at all, hopefully this means i'll sleep like a baby tonight

trying valerian root. been on trazodone for years and found myself taking more and more of it to get to sleep...not a good idea. Melatonin worked for me for about 2 weeks and then did nothing.

So, twitching (as if being given an electric shock) every time I get close to sleep ... what's that about?

― djh, Wednesday, 29 January 2014 20:29 (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Need to do something about this; it's ridiculous.

quick google search suggests that it's best served by all the old "sleep hygiene" stuff: quiet mind, calm body. One sure fire I learned as a (sleep-troubled) kid was to tense up my muscles in waves (feet, then legs, then groin/buttocks, then midsection, then chest, then arms, then face/neck, then whole body) for fifteen seconds then release, then pause and move on. Do two or three cycles of that while focussing on deep breathing generally makes a difference.

That's good advice, always useful to have a routine for getting to sleep.

Hypnagogic myoclonus is almost always a benign, normal phenomenon. Can happen in clusters (multiple episodes over a short period of time) and can become habitual, like hiccups (another form of physiologic myoclonus). Sleep disruption / exhaustion is the most common cause. Sedatives (including most psych meds) tend to make it worse. There are medications for myoclonus but we don't usually treat that form of it. It'll tend to settle down on its own over time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk
http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/hypnic-jerk/

plasmon, you're a doc?

because we should probably just have an in-house ilx physician to take questions. i'm pretty sure that's the way this is done.

yeah, plasmon is, to the best of my knowledge, a doc. at least he dispays a certain doctorly familiarity with the stuff you'd learn in med school.

Yeah, I'm a neurologist.

i temporarily wrote christopher nolan off after this film.

lol

Thanks Plasmon/Forksclovetofu.

thanks amateurist

it's gonna be a bad day

i stopped getting any more than 3 hours sleep a night a few weeks ago, so i'm off gabapentin and klonopin. tried 5mg of melatonin but it was giving me nightmares and making groggy in the morning. trying trazadone now :/

that suuuuucks. hope trazadone helps.

me too! just switched today from celexa to wellbutrin, so it might get worse before it gets better.

oh shit, wellbutrin's awful for sleep. hope trazadone will counteract it ok.

i can't sleep b/c i'm super anxious but it feels like weakness to pop a pill on top of my usual stuff. ridiculous. ugh.

still only getting 3-4 hrs a night . the trazodone knocks me out for 3 hrs and then i wake up and that's it, even splitting a dose didn't make a difference (the second dose didn't work at all). i'll eventually try doubling the dose, but i'm kinda hesitant to do that til the situation starts to get out of control.

surprisingly, i feel ok - i mean, it's relative, but i don't feel any more crazy or irritable than i normally do, and i haven't gotten more than 5 hrs a night in weeks and weeks.

Wondering if any of the sleepless of ILX have tried following a segmented sleep pattern. There's some historical evidence that a single nightly period consolidated sleep with no awakenings has only recently been considered normal, and that pattern may not be physiologically natural (at least for some people).

The wikipedia article outlines the idea -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep

For the patients I see with sleep maintenance insomnia (able to get to sleep but waking after a few hours), I recommend trying (deliberately) to segment sleep: going to bed a few hours earlier than usual, expecting to sleep and then wake after a few hours, then planning to stay awake for 2-3 hours before even trying to go back to bed again.

This is sometimes helpful for those with sleep initiation insomnia too (trouble getting to sleep at all), especially for people who are super-tired in the evening but fight to stay awake until a "normal" bedtime with the idea that they'll be so sleepy this time, they'll fall asleep easier. Circadian rhythms being as they are, some people are much sleepier at 8:30pm than at 11:30pm, even when they feel exhausted.

started trying different mixes of medical marijuana edibles and didn't find it helpful at all. but it was fun getting stoned, more fun than i remembered (the last time i had weed was probably at least 8 years ago).

so after a little research on mixing with rx meds, i tried a little cbd brownie with gabapentin, and two nights in a row i've gotten a full night's sleep. still feeling cautious about whether or not this will keep working for me.

i had to take gabapentin for neck pain/headaches lately and it left me VERY dazed all the time. you don't have that issue?

i take it for sleep (off-label use) so i'm supposed to get that dazed feeling! but no, no day time effects. and i take the maximum dose (i've been on it 2 yrs tho).

What dose of gabapentin do yous all use? I've tried 400mgs a few times and it certainly didn't make me dazed, and inconclusive thus far whether it helps me fall asleep.

Ambien 10 or 12.5 works great for me until my body gets used to taking it frequently, and I occasionally have to stop taking it for awhile before it will become effective again (a hellish experience) so I'm trying to find something that will work during those times.

i take ambien about once every two weeks or so .... or three times a week and then not at all for two weeks. I'm pretty worried about building up resistance or dependence.
Gabapentin was a low dosage iirc but it left me dizzy and out of sorts pretty much 24-7
i'm on nortriptyline now which doesn't do much but it is getting me through the night

600mg

thx.

I had a neurologist once who put me on nortriptyline for a week (due to a misdiagnosis I'm still peeved about) which turned me into a walking zombie. A day didn't go by where I wouldn't do something like use an ATM machine, remember to take my card and receipt afterward but forget the $20 bill. No more nortriptyline for me.

see that's the opposite way for me! body chemistry is funny.

it's 9 am and i don't know if i should even try to sleep at this point, i have dinner with my family tmrw (today) and i don't want to be a huge rambling mess or crash the car but i have to wake up in a few hours anyway to drink coffee because if i don't give myself a few hours with super strong coffee on the weekends my crohn's gets crazy, and i'm sleeping on a pile of towels on the floor because the mattress makes me lose all feeling in my neck and i'm right outside the window with my shitty apartment's blinds (which we can't alter) that don't keep any of the sun out. meanwhile my s.o. is snoring like a motorboat because she took a klonopin (to get to sleep!) and i can't put in earplugs because then i'm liable to sleep TOO good and go right through my alarm (which won't wake her up either because klonopin sleep) and the cat's going to wake me up for food soon anyway

but i really don't want to be a horrible mess, i'm basically a stupid drunk when i don't get any sleep

i wish i could go back to like 2012 when i didn't have these problems (except the never sleeping)
i blame ilx

i've pulled 6 or 7 of these all nighters over the past few weeks, for no reason

i just don't get tired at all

even when i'm not on the pile of towels

fuck now i'm hungry

I woke up at 2:30 today when my alarm was set for 4:45. Couldn't get back to sleep. Tried taking melatonin and drinking chamomile tea (necessities before bed for me), but it didn't work. Now I'm just super dozy at work.

I'm really surprised I haven't posted on this thread before! I've had insomnia problems for years.

I went on a caffeine binge at the end of last week that kept me pretty wired through the weekend. I'm way too sensitive to the stuff and try to keep my consumption scaled back, but will overdo it sometimes if people expect me to be up past 9 pm for whatever reason. The buzz carried over from day to day. No good.

worst-ever night from the steroids i take w/ my myeloma treatment -- 40 minutes of sleep max, between 1:20 and 2:30 am. I got up and watched a Larry Sanders ep so the night wouldn't be a complete waste.

And i'm at work of course, bcz God fuck this shitty country.

Is there any rational reason why a magnesium oil/spray might help with poor sleep? (I often seem to twitch/jump in my sleep and I think the spray limits this).

there's lots of info about how the effects of insufficient magnesium levels - it's legit that it can cause insomnia, or the inability to stay asleep through the night. magnesium deficiency is related to restless leg syndrome, so that's prob why it's helping you sleep.

Apparently, I look like I am being electrocuted in my sleep.

Any ideas for treatment for twitching in sleep?

drugs

gabapentin (neurontin) might help? it works like a benzo, kind of (but not as good), is non-habit forming, and i think it's often prescribed for restless leg syndrome (it's an anti convulsant). depending on your insurance, the generic is pretty cheap too.

Thanks. I'm in the UK so insurance isn't an issue (yet).

Apparently dehydration can be a cause so I might try drinking something other than coffee/wine and see if that helps ...

oh if you haven't tried a magnesium supplement, that could help too.

bop, boze-de-boze-de-bop, se-de-bop

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