Update: Melatonin got me back into a regular sleep schedule. Took it every night last week for seven days total. The max, 3 pills, worked best for me. For some reason this week I've been getting tiered around 9pm and get to sleep around 11. Wake up is 6am. That totals seven hours of sleep a night. But this week I also find myself taking lots hour naps....so I'm confused about that...maybe its a side effect from Melatonin? What's this? ---->_> Helpful article on Melatonin http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/tc/melatonin-overview Found this informational article on Insomnia for young adults. http://www.cyh.com/HealthTopics/HealthTopicDetails.aspx?p=240&id=2053&np=297 _____ @T.Trian---Option 1 is me, but I have stayed up 24 hours a couple of times. Oh and you made me ROFL----->"...at least now I know how to describe the physical effects of staying up so long if, say, I'm writing a stake out scene." @Everyone- As this thread has been going on a while now, I'm now glad that I made it. Feel free to discuss all Insomnia and continue to share experiences. Hey, who knows, If we collaborate enough experiences we might invent a psychological cure! ((Off to write @_@ wish me luck, my mind is mush right now...been tired since 2pm...))
Always look on the bright side of death, right? Anyway, I've now found quetiapine (Seroquel, Ketipinor etc) is good for falling asleep, but sometimes when I'm just on the brink of dozing off, I get lucid dreams/sleep paralysis. It's always the same: I lay in bed, everything's dark, quiet, and I'm absolutely certain there's someone hostile in the living room. And I can't move or speak/scream. Pretty much every time I eventually manage a gasp/grunt and that breaks the paralysis. Twice now I've "woken up" from a lucid dream like that reaching for the gun and flashlight in my nightstand (because, like any husband worth his salt, my first instinct is always to do whatever it takes to keep my better and prettier half sleeping next to me safe, dag nag it!) and once I sat up and, for some reason that escapes me even now, tossed my pillow at the adjacent wall. Of course as soon as I manage to break the paralysis, I know it was just a dream, but the intense feelings of fear and anxiety are still very real. Usually after a lucid dream/sleep paralysis like that, I get up and do something fun for a while or if it's morning already, I just get up even if I don't have to yet. I just never feel like going back to sleep after something like that because, well, lucid dreams just plain suck.
I tend to take a more pragmatic approach and scuff down a quarter of Jack Daniels. Have you ever been profoundly drunk and not been able to sleep? Insomnia has never been an issue for me. I'm being very serious. I look at the bottle approximate whatever I feel to be 25% and just devour it straight from the bottle to that 25% percent margin. You should give it a shot.
Hm... I've had a similar experience, specifically extreme difficulty getting to sleep, and no sleep meds have worked. This was before I started drinking tea and, when it really has hit the fan, coffee, which admittedly haven't helped. Might have to do a bit more research into it.
Try taking magnesium, L-Ornithine and potassium also if you have problems with getting enough energy throughout the day you should change your diet.
Can you point to any evidence supporting either of these suggestions? I've never heard of either before.
Magnesium helps calms the nerves and relaxes your muscles. http://www.livestrong.com/article/28480-magnesium-aid-sleeping/#ixzz22q13Ng4Q Potassium works best with magnesium so its recommended to take together, it also helps eliminate leg cramps so it can help aid your sleep. http://www.livestrong.com/article/545450-can-a-lack-of-potassium-disturb-sleep/ L-Ornithine is a amino acid that helps reduce ammonia in your body. From wikipedia So basically if you don't have carbs or fat to fuel your body, the protein in your body will be broken down to be used as sugar and it will create ammonia. http://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/emergency/chemical_terrorism/ammonia_general.htm http://www.livestrong.com/article/542405-ornithine-for-sleep/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8151104 If interested GABA (Gamma-Aminobutyric acid) also helps with sleep http://www.invigorate360.com/reviews/gaba-inhbitory-neurotransmitter-that-naturally-induces-sleep/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11983310
Because we know if it's on the Internet it has to be true. This is an unsourced claim by someone who has an MBA and works in health care administration. There's a difference between the symptoms of a magnesium deficiency and the claims in that article about what extra will do. People do not generally have magnesium deficiencies without a serious medical problem. By source I mean a scientific study. This is one of the links: Less Sleep Associated With High, Worsening Blood Pressure In Middle Age It's a leap of the absurd to claim an article on hypertension supports the claim magnesium calms you. Here's the NIH link from the article: So this health care administrator has decided on her own that since a symptom of magnesium deficiency is sleep disturbance, extra Mg must be a sleep aid. It doesn't work that way. And the third reference, MAGNESIUM, DRINKING WATER, & HEALTH is full of absolutely unsupported crap. It's a website by the quack, Dr Harold Foster. Foster claims to have cures for Alzheimers and MS, among other things and earns money scamming desperate people. He's not even a medical doctor. Take a look at his video on what really causes AIDS. OMG! He claims you can cure AIDS with diet and that the cause is a nutritional deficiency. What a total scam artist. Scary stuff convincing people this scam artist can cure AIDS. He should be arrested for fraud. I'm guessing the rest of your claims are just as unsupported but I'll look at them later if I have time.
I have trouble sleeping because I can't stop thinking stressful things when all is quiet. Much as the medical advice is not to sleep with the TV or radio on, like I said earlier, I've found it's sometimes the only way I can keep my brain from obsessing.
I shouldn't have pulled random links from google (I should have known better uncited sources on a writing fourm..) but I will assure you that magnesium can be beneficial as a sleeping aid, and no I did not based my personal magnesium consumption on that article. =) The deficiency and as a sleep aid was kind of universal to me so I just grabbed some random links. If magnesium is required to do all these things: Can't you agree that normal muscle and nerve function, steady heart rhythm, normal blood pressure, etc.. is essential for quality sleep? MOST Americans do not meet the RDA. How does it not work that way? Magnesium is absorbed by the body fairly quickly someone who isn't taking an adequate amount of magnesium is going to benefit from it. Are you saying magnesium needs to be built up in the body first? I don't think it works that way... I'm sure you don't have all the crazy symptoms they mentioned but if you are part of the large percentage of Americans that are deficient and you have trouble falling asleep I don't think it will hurt to give it a try. You can always find a doctor to check if you are deficient. I thought you would have been more open because you take Melotonin. The amount you are taking is more than your body naturally produces, you run the risk of your body under producing its own melotonin and you can become dependent on it for sleep. That's why its recommended to cycle it, hopefully that is what you are doing.. a friend of mine been taking it for over a year now and it takes him a hours to fall asleep without it.
Call the most boring-est friend you have, at around 9:00 pm. Sit and watch the spin cycle in your washing machine. Lie on the warm dryer in motion. Read a brochure on how to put a kids toy train set together. Then do it again. Watch Oprah reruns, drink warm milk, listen to Chopin, buy a vibrator, (to relax your feet of course) brush your hair. You tube hypnosis for sleeping. That's all I got.
You're making the mistake I noted, assuming that if a deficiency causes X then extra beyond correcting the deficiency should decrease X even further. But our bodies function in a narrow homeostasis when it comes to a lot of things, especially electrolytes. Excess magnesium is just as harmful as a deficiency. I'm pretty sure it causes the kidneys to excrete too much sodium. Definitely not a good thing. I take melatonin, not because I am open, but because there is valid research supporting its use as a sleep aide. The biggest problem is that dietary supplements are not well regulated in the US and you can't count on consistent labeling when buying the stuff. The second problem is melatonin is a natural hormone that functions in a negative feedback loop, so probably I've suppressed my natural melatonin levels by taking it on a regular basis. But with the invention of the electric light and my own propensity to keeping an irregular schedule, it's not an issue for me. I'm sure if there was a sudden shortage my body would resume making normal levels eventually. If you want to know if some supplement claim is valid, try a PubMed search, not a general Google search. Don't believe the lie that the studies haven't been done. Most supplements have indeed been tested in legit studies. About 99% of the claims fail the test of true scientific evaluation.
And how do you know that you are taking excessive? If you read the study it clearly shows most Americans do not take enough magnesium from their diet. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12949381?dopt=AbstractPlus "Magnesium is needed for more than 300 biochemical reactions in the body. It helps maintain normal muscle and nerve function, keeps heart rhythm steady, supports a healthy immune system, and keeps bones strong. Magnesium also helps regulate blood sugar levels, promotes normal blood pressure, and is known to be involved in energy metabolism and protein synthesis [2-3]." This is from your source/, You are focusing on the effects of deficiency but you are not looking at what you are missing if you aren't taking enough. Assuming if you fall into the category of most Americans your diet does not meet the RDA standards, thus you aren't fully benefiting from the effects of magnesium. If you taken melatonin for a while, how long do you think it will take your body to get back to normal or will it ever get back to normal? What about your body's tolerance to melatonin? Even if your body regulates its production, will you be able to fall asleep? Unless you are willing to take the risk of being fully dependent on it... Don't you agree there is some optimism?
I've gone through melatonin and a few other sleeping aids, but so far ketiapine has been the only truly working med for me. The side effects just suck, but I suppose I can live with them for now. Hopefully they will get milder over time as now my doc suggested I start taking small amounts daily a few times a day to get my body used to the substance and to help even out my sleep cycle. Oh, I've tried that too. Coincidentally enough, back then JD was my choice of whisky as well (along with true music of pain, old Muddy Waters). My recipe was to down 2/3 of a 0,7l bottle, sleep for 2-4 hours, wake up, still drunk, and even before I'd get out of bed, I'd down three more gulps straight. Then I'd stumble to the bus stop and go on to pass out in the first lecture at the uni. I remember being prodded awake by a panicking class mate, desperately trying to wake me up before the name list being circulated passed me by. Good thing she succeeded even though I passed out again shortly afterwards. Luckily more than once a friend jotted down my name, but usually I did wake up to someone holding the list before my face, not quite certain if I was just tired or, as I was, wasted. Despite all this, I don't think the teacher ever noticed (or then she just didn't care). I did that for about a month (although sometimes I subbed JD for beer or drank both) before things started to get a bit more bearable. That was when I was in my early 20s. Don't think I could pull that off anymore, being a less diligent student and more apt to skip a class than to suffer through the abovementioned torture. Then again, I don't drink anymore so it's a non-issue for me.
