Insomnia -- Let's Have a Discussion That's Exciting Enough to Keep Us Awake -- Or So Boring That It Puts Us to Sleep! :)

[Deuteronomy]

Lol!!

When I was in school, I had this exact same print -- except on a yellow sweatshirt.

"Education: The Strongest Tranquilizer You Can Buy Without a Prescription!"

THAT is hilarious Did you ever wear it to class?

 

[blueluna5]

I'm so sorry your ex did that to you! Have you talked to someone about it or a therapist? I think you have ptsd or an extreme anxiety disorder that's keeping you up.

Do you worry a lot at night? That's typically when it comes out anyway.

Don't sleep with a light or TV. Light keeps you from getting to the deep sleeping part.
If you need the noise try a sound machine.

Exercise is great for anxiety and limit caffeine. Drink a lot of water (but not before bed obviously), keep temp cool 72 or lower, invest in comfortable mattress, blankets, pillows.

 

[stingray72]

I actually can relate to sleeping problems the way your saying. I sleep for so many hours and wake up and sometimes three times in a night. I have found that melatonin works for me better where ill sleep longer before waking up and then sometimes ill take another melatonin if i need to go get more sleep that night. Hope this helps some. Prayer of course works too.

 

[seoulsearch]

THAT is hilarious Did you ever wear it to class?

I went to a Lutheran school where we had to dress up during the week...

But I did wear it to school events on the weekends.

 

[stingray72]

Are you still lutheran? Thats where i started out.

 

[seoulsearch]

I'm so sorry your ex did that to you! Have you talked to someone about it or a therapist? I think you have ptsd or an extreme anxiety disorder that's keeping you up.

Do you worry a lot at night? That's typically when it comes out anyway.

Don't sleep with a light or TV. Light keeps you from getting to the deep sleeping part.
If you need the noise try a sound machine.

Exercise is great for anxiety and limit caffeine. Drink a lot of water (but not before bed obviously), keep temp cool 72 or lower, invest in comfortable mattress, blankets, pillows.

Thank you so much.

My divorce was many years ago and I did go through a lot of Christian-based counseling... Sometimes I still have a few rough patches.

Thanks very much for all the great tips.

I'm trying to cut caffeine completely -- I've gotten down to less than one cup of coffee per day before 10 AM and no other caffeine -- but it's just been too comforting to give up just yet.

 

[seoulsearch]

Are you still lutheran? Thats where i started out.

I was WELS Lutheran, then Assemblies of God, with visits to Baptist and Methodist churches while my family was on the move.

Right now I alternate between a Lutheran and a non-denominational church.

 

[stingray72]

I do have

Thank you so much.

My divorce was many years ago and I did go through a lot of Christian-based counseling... Sometimes I still have a few rough patches.

Thanks very much for all the great tips.

I'm trying to cut caffeine completely -- I've gotten down to less than one cup of coffee per day before 10 AM and no other caffeine -- but it's just been too comforting to give up just yet.

I do have to be honest caffeine for me seems to mess with my brain chemistry and can help keep me from sleeping right.

 

[stingray72]

i go to a non denom myself and find its the best church ive found around me so far. They do have a thing about healing for me which i no wont come until the Lords perfect timing. (I have cerebral palsy)

 

[stingray72]

Well im going to go to bed now but ill be sure to pray for you before i go to sleep. Be blessed and sleep well.

 

[Ballaurena]

Hey Everyone,

I've noticed several people on the forum have mentioned sleeping problems, so I thought it might be helpful to talk about.

I've been an insomniac for years. It seemed to have been triggered by my divorce. I came home from a typical day at work to find the house empty -- he had moved out to be with his girlfriend without telling me. I would stay awake for days at a time, hoping he would call to say he'd changed his mind, but he never did. And so, I started working all the time, both to pay the bills and to keep myself from constantly dwelling on a now half-empty house.

I also started working every shift there is -- early mornings, late nights, and finally overnights (10 PM to 6 AM), as well as in different time zones. But no matter where I am, my natural body clock always wants to sleep early, just for an hour or two at most, then wakes up in the middle of the night, staying up and wanting to sleep again -- usually about 2 hours before I have to get up anyway. I might sleep through the night 3 times a week, but even then, I'm constantly waking up.

I've worked with several different doctors and have tried a few prescription remedies like allergy pills -- and one that literally made me feel like the words were melting off the pages when I tried to read -- so I stopped taking that after a few days.

Right now, under doctor's supervision, I use Unisom Sleep Tabs (for some reason, they have to be the tabs, not the gels, and it has to be Unisom -- the generic and store brands don't work for me) and a small dose of melatonin. It's definitely not a perfect solution but it's been enough to help me get by.

A while back, I also came across a video about a woman who talked about having a Non-24-Hour Circadian Rhythm, and this made a lot of sense. Her system doesn't work on a 24-hour wake/sleep cycle like most people are assumed to be. I started watching videos about people who have shorter and longer cycles than "normal" -- for instance, someone with a 40-hour circadian rhythm -- and they all talked about how hard it is to live in a 9 to 5 world.

I haven't done as much research about it as I'd like, and I don't know yet if there are effective treatments -- but I wanted to mention it in case it might help anyone else. It does sound like something I could have, as my system seems to only want to sleep a full night once every 3 or 4 days.

What about you?

* Do you have problems sleeping? Was there anything in particular that seems to have brought it on?

* What have you done in order to try to diagnose, treat, and cope with your lack of sleep? How long have you been struggling?

* Does living with/around other people make a big difference? Do you think you'd sleep better if you lived alone? Do you have a spouse with sleeping problems that literally keep you awake?

* What things have you tried that both have and haven't worked? Were there any times when you felt God intervened to change or heal your sleeping?

I would really be interested in hearing how this affects other people, and how they've found ways to deal with it.

Actually, this sleep for 8 hours straight idea appears to be relatively new, coming about with the industrial revolution or some such societal change. I generally can sleep for 7, but as someone with a history of daytime sleepiness and a lot of loved ones that are insomniacs, I asked God why our circadian rhythms seem to invite problems with modern expectations and what He intended. I think it was at least a partial answering of my question that I encountered an article explaining how different cultures all over the world historically practiced biphasic sleep, which means you sleep in two shifts. For example, maybe a person snuggles into bed around 7 pm and wake up at 11 pm, gets up for a few hours then sleeps for another 4. Not very friendly to modern schedules, I'm sure, but might be worth a try for some.

For whatever its worth, the article cited one of its sources on this as court documents in I think England hundreds of years ago. The witnesses would just refer to first sleep and second sleep as though they were concepts everyone was familiar with.

Oh, and as for the daytime sleepiness, He has also shown me helps like changing when I eat what and possibly drinking A2 milk since some brands of dairy products are like taking an opioid for me. It was cool being able to swim without feeling a need to breath, though, but kind of scary.

 

[Mem]

A couple of mentions of prayer reminded me of what I used to do whenever a peak of anxiety would impede my ability to relax enough to drift off into slumber. I'd whisper gibberish with an awareness that God would have no difficulty 'hearing' my thoughts even while I was speaking a made-up language. It's not like He'd say, "Shhh, what? I can't understand what you're thinking! Hush now, and think that again...?" Anyway, I would do this and, soon enough, I'd start yawning. And if I kept going, I would yawn again, without fail, and continue until I reached that relaxed state conducive to drifting securely off.
Come to think of it, I have done this in a while (my anxiety must be sufficiently minimized lately), but I'm feeling a yawn coming on right now just thinking of it.

 

[Lynx]

i go to a non denom myself and find its the best church ive found around me so far. They do have a thing about healing for me which i no wont come until the Lords perfect timing. (I have cerebral palsy)

Oh good. Those non demon churches are the best!

Wait, you said non denom. That's different. Never mind. =^.^=

 

[Lynx]

For anybody who has trouble sleeping, I volunteer to rock you to sleep... With a real rock! None of those concrete imitation rocks.

If that is too violent for some people, I do have other options. I can talk about Linux for hours at a time, and I can talk about music for DAYS STRAIGHT. You are guaranteed to get so bored your eyes glaze over.

 

[stingray72]

Got six hours of sleep here...wish i got more though

 

[seoulsearch]

Oh, and as for the daytime sleepiness, He has also shown me helps like changing when I eat what and possibly drinking A2 milk since some brands of dairy products are like taking an opioid for me. It was cool being able to swim without feeling a need to breath, though, but kind of scary.

Is there a way of knowing/intently purchasing only A1 or A2 milk and dairy products?

I had never heard of this before and did some quick Googling last night. It said that here in the USA, most dairy is a combination of both, and the only way to know which one you were consuming is genetic testing.

After reading your posts, I'm wondering if I would see any difference between consuming one or the other -- if I could figure out how to isolate them.

Thanks for your post!

 

[stingray72]

seoulsearch how was your sleeping last night?

 

[seoulsearch]

I've really been enjoying reading the answers here.

Thank you to all who have contributed and I hope people will continue to do so! It's always good to know we aren't alone in our struggles and maybe the tips here will help others.

I pray that God helps us all find proper rest.

Thanks again to everyone for taking time out of your busy day to share!

 

[seoulsearch]

seolsearch how was your sleeping last night?

You know what, I actually had a very good sleep last night, thank you so much!!! How about for you, Stingray?

I'm sure this discussion and prayers have helped -- thank you everyone. I hope others are receiving a better sleep as well.

However, this was also kind of right on schedule for my natural patterns... I had several nights of very fractured/poor quality sleep, so I knew a better night was coming... eventually.

Still, I know the discussion here has been a blessing to me and I hope it is for others as well.

 

[Ballaurena]

Is there a way of knowing/intently purchasing only A1 or A2 milk and dairy products?

I had never heard of this before and did some quick Googling last night. It said that here in the USA, most dairy is a combination of both, and the only way to know which one you were consuming is genetic testing.

After reading your posts, I'm wondering if I would see any difference between consuming one or the other -- if I could figure out how to isolate them.

Thanks for your post!

For me, I have been asking God for years why I often feel disconnected from reality and struggling with day-time sleepiness, though it is rare for me to encounter the really extreme reactions that make me non-functional. Basically there have been two really extreme encounters, and they were stark enough for me not to need genetic testing to know something was wrong. In college I would fall asleep standing up during my chemistry lab until I quit drinking the milk at lunch in my college cafeteria, and suddenly I was completely fine. Recently I was drawn to look again at the literature for the likely cause of casomorphin I had previously discovered, when my household happened to buy a different brand of cottage cheese and I had similarly extreme reactions, being very sleepy and finding that when I swam crawl stroke laps I didn't have the usual argument with my lungs over oxygen need (respiratory depression is a potentially deadly side effect of narcotics, legal and non). I quit eating that cottage cheese and no further symptoms developed, though I must say I didn't have as many servings this time around to be as clear-cut of an assessment.

Perhaps it was intentional timing by God that it came up now, though, because there seems to suddenly be A2-only options available, at least for milk and yogurt. The milk turned out to be available at my local Safeway and Fred Meyer, but God previously showed us to eat organic, and Safeway had only non-organic A2 milk, while Fred Meyer sold an organic version but for $16/gallon. Then we discovered that Costco now sells organic A2-only yogurt and milk. I don't know the price but I'm sure it is better than the boutique price at Fred Meyer, especially since Costco seems to stock it as their only whole-milk option. I wish I could get 2% and didn't have to buy 4 half-gallons at a time, but to me it's worth those issues to get to find out how my brain can function without any narcotic-like interference. A1 has also been implicated in a host of diseases that I would rather steer clear of since I seem to be genetically vulnerable to it, especially if I ever have a baby since one of those is SIDS.