Unresponsive Insomnia

[August59]

Haha, not sure what tattoos have to do with it, but it sounds funny. Crank it up! lol. : P

Something in the ink is magnetic and if it is under the MRI it will pull or boil their skin off!

 

[August59]

I am going to be scheduled for a sleep study again in a few weeks and am not so sure I will sleep this time either. No matter what I take I don't get refreshing sleep either. I have tried at least 10 or more different Ycombos including OTC and prescription. There is nothing that gives me that refreshed feeling when I wake up in the morning. All though I did just find out I have high cortisol at night. I can fall asleep with meds but never feel good in the am....

If you sleep 3 to 4 hours or through a cycle they consider it a "good" test. My sleep doc says they are close to having a "Wi-Fi" version that you do at home, but the insurance industry is causing a problem with it somehow. You will still have the electrodes all over you, but no cables. The electrodes transmit to a router on night stand which sends it to sleep technician.

 

[August59]

Read up on darkness therapy and how that affects natural melatonin production. I've managed to completely turn around my sleep problems using darkness therapy and light therapy, it's as good as a strong sleeping tablet for me, and wrote a website about it at In Search of Mornings. There are other good sites out there too, look at the links section. I was really surprised to learn that merely sitting in ordinary indoor lighting in the evening was enough to mess up my sleep pattern. I was on a 25 hour sleep cycle before I started these treatments.

The one time I've had sustained bad sleep since taking up darkness therapy was when I was coming off gabapentin. Vicious stuff. It did settle down eventually, thankfully.

I'm on a 1 hour minimum electronic black out before bed. I have every possible crack in my room blocked from light. I use my air purifier for white noise.

Gabapentin is what they gave me to suppress REM sleep. At 900 mg I did not have a memorable dream for 6 months.

 

[soxfan]

I have had 2 nights of either adrenaline or cortisol streaming through my body and have slept a total of about 5 hours the past 2 nights. I just hope I am not having one of those nights during the sleep study....it will be another waste of money like the first one. Since I only slept a total of 2.5 hours (not all at once) I am guessing the study was totally useless...

 

[Calathea]

I'm on a 1 hour minimum electronic black out before bed. I have every possible crack in my room blocked from light. I use my air purifier for white noise.

Gabapentin is what they gave me to suppress REM sleep. At 900 mg I did not have a memorable dream for 6 months.

If you want to try darkness therapy, the way it works is that you need to be blocking out blue light for more like three hours before bed. That includes lighting, not just electronics. Yellow bulbs and orange filters are one way of doing it, if you don't want to try/can't afford tinted glasses.

 

[Dreambirdie]

If you want to try darkness therapy, the way it works is that you need to be blocking out blue light for more like three hours before bed. That includes lighting, not just electronics. Yellow bulbs and orange filters are one way of doing it, if you don't want to try/can't afford tinted glasses.

Are there special kinds of tinted glasses for this?

I imagine that candles are okay...?

 

[invisiblejungle]

Are there special kinds of tinted glasses for this?

I imagine that candles are okay...?

This website sells light bulbs that block the blue spectrum, along with special glasses that block blue light.

https://www.lowbluelights.com/products.asp

 

[invisiblejungle]

Hi OkRadLaPok,

I'm sure you've probably tried everything so far, but one remedy I recently learned about is hypothalamus glandular. Someone on the MTHFRDiscussions Yahoo group said it really helps with her sleep.

Phenibut helps me, but it isn't something to take regularly due to tolerance.

 

[dannybex]

Haha, not sure what tattoos have to do with it, but it sounds funny. Crank it up! lol. : P

Tattoo inks are loaded with heavy metals...and other crap.

"Heavy metals used for colors include mercury (red); lead (yellow, green, white); cadmium (red, orange, yellow); nickel (black); zinc (yellow, white); chromium (green); cobalt (blue); aluminium (green, violet);titanium (white); copper (blue, green); iron (brown, red, black); and barium (white). Metal oxides used include ferrocyanide and ferricyanide (yellow, red, green, blue). Organic chemicals used include azo-chemicals (orange, brown, yellow, green, violet) and naptha-derived chemicals (red). Carbon (soot or ash) is also used for black. Other compounds used as pigments include antimony, arsenic, beryllium,calcium, lithium, selenium, and sulphur."

I wonder what the health consequences will be in the coming generations due to this insane fad/craze of the last 10 years...?

 

[danceintherain]

Sorry to hear of your horrible insomnia. I have had similar bouts in the past, once lasting for weeks of total non-sleep after reaction to an SSRI. I took near 50mg of melatonin, all kinds of herbs, benadryl, etc. - nothing even touched it. That's when I started getting into neurofeedback and found a social worker locally who offered it. Once learning the basics, I was able to get my own equipment and do some basic training on my own.

You've got to think that those huge magnets in MRI are going to do something to your equilibrium. I felt whacked out in a kind of daze for almost a week after an MRI once. They're using "Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation" experimentally now in depression and testing it on some other things, so it's pretty clear that magnetic energy can really depolarize and affect your brain. I remember reading recently where they've found they can even change people's moral judgments using transcranial magnetic stimulation, affecting part of the brain called the temporal parietal juncture. I'll bet they start using it on prisoners soon, to experiment and see if they can change their behaviors, etc.

So the point is that no doubt can MRI really affect your brain function, even I would suspect causing bad insomnia. Of course, the mainstream people would probably dispute that MRI would do anything to your neurofunctioning, but I think we all know how clueless they are when it comes to diverse populations and very sensitive people. My guess is that over time the response will probably correct itself, but it's possible that it got "stuck" in that pattern. Neurofeedback could probably really help you in either case, either to accelerate things back to normal, or to get you "unstuck." In the meantime, all you can really do is start experimenting with herbs, supplements, meds, etc. from all the great suggestions you'll get here, to find what works best for the symptoms. Hope it resolves for you soon - insomnia is totally awful!

I did a preliminary neurofeedback treatment (the dr I go to does this before an EEG, which she then uses to determine what is best to target in when you start the actual treatment.

After the prelim I got horrible nausea and a terrible headache. And ever since that day, my insomnia has been so much worse than it had been prior. No matter what I do, the earliest I can fall asleep is 2am, but most days it is 4 or later. And it is unrefreshing sleep. I am going on 7 years of insomnia but this past year has been worse than the other 6 combined. I don't respond to meds or supplements...or any kind of sleep hygiene. The EEG of course revealed tht I need help most in the area of sleep, but I am terrified to try the treatment, even though they say it works differently that the prelim did.
Has anyone tried anything like the Fisher-Wallace device?Or the Alpha-Stim?