Waking up too early every morning. How to adjust sleep cycle?

[future_man]

Hi Beyond,

Thanks for the follow up. Yes, adrenal dysfunction definitely seems to be a factor in all of this.

I also found out that my levels of the Anti-Diuretic Hormone (ADH or Arginine Vasopressin) are also very low. I suspect that it is at least partly due to a high fluid intake during the day. I've previously reduced the amount of water and fluids I'm drinking daily, and have noticed that I'm waking up fewer times during the night for a bathroom trip.

However, I also still suspect that there may be a metabolic and/or methylation component to the low ADH levels. Someone more knowledgeable than I in these matters commented that Arginine levels can be related to methylation. They said that it reacts with BH4 in order to make Nitric Oxide, and that BH4 synthesis can become compromised in people with methylation issues. They also suspected that I could be low in SAM-e as well which is responsible for Creatine production which also affects water storage.

I'm currently in the early stages of a methylation protocol, have recently started mild thyroid hormone support, and have been working on correcting the adrenal dysfunction for a couple of months now.

 

[Beyond]

Hey Futureman! Turns out now my problem is the same as yours! I used to wake up in the middle of the night but the most consistent problem is that no matter the hour I go to sleep, I will wake up around 6 and a half hours later. So if I fall asleep at 1 AM I will wake up at 7:30 AM etc, but if I fall asleep at 12 AM I will wake up at 6:30...

Any luck trying to correct this? I have very low cortisol and low all the other adrenal biomarkers for what is worth.

 

[future_man]

Hi Beyond,

I have some good news to report in that I'm now sleeping better. The frequent nighttime urination turned out to be drinking too much water during the day. Since I've reduced that (mostly at night), I'm now waking up only once for a bathroom trip. This of course is helping my sleep.

Here are the other things which I'm doing that seem to be helping:

NDT (Nature Throid) at 1 grain a day
Methylation protocol
2.5gm LDN
Cutting caffeine to 1 cup in the morning at 8am (no other caffeine for the day)

My thyroid hormones are at better levels now, I think my cortisol is coming back, and I'm listening to my body more during the day, trying to take breaks when needed and not push through on adrenaline. I now have little trouble falling asleep and generally only wake up once for the bathroom and then go back to bed. I tend to sleep for about 7-8 hours of pretty good rest.

 

[Beyond]

Sounds pretty good! Yep my thyroid was low as well in urine tests. Blood tests suck, but if you are very sick they will show a problem. What NDT do you take? Armour?

 

[future_man]

Nature Throid. .5 grain in the morning and .5 in the afternoon. My sense is that its one of the main things helping.

 

[Beyond]

Nature Throid. .5 grain in the morning and .5 in the afternoon. My sense is that its one of the main things helping.

Oh sorry, I thought "Nature Throid" was a typo and googled "Nature Thyroid" :thumbdown:

It could very well be, my extensive and frantic research on sleep disorders shows thyroid as a biggie. There have been also reports of getting refreshing and normal sleep patters with methylation. I am impatient to try!

 

[future_man]

Cool. Good luck with everything. Happy to help if there's anything I can do.

 

[MeSci]

Hi Beyond,

Thanks for the follow up. Yes, adrenal dysfunction definitely seems to be a factor in all of this.

I also found out that my levels of the Anti-Diuretic Hormone (ADH or Arginine Vasopressin) are also very low. I suspect that it is at least partly due to a high fluid intake during the day. I've previously reduced the amount of water and fluids I'm drinking daily, and have noticed that I'm waking up fewer times during the night for a bathroom trip.

However, I also still suspect that there may be a metabolic and/or methylation component to the low ADH levels. Someone more knowledgeable than I in these matters commented that Arginine levels can be related to methylation. They said that it reacts with BH4 in order to make Nitric Oxide, and that BH4 synthesis can become compromised in people with methylation issues. They also suspected that I could be low in SAM-e as well which is responsible for Creatine production which also affects water storage.

I'm currently in the early stages of a methylation protocol, have recently started mild thyroid hormone support, and have been working on correcting the adrenal dysfunction for a couple of months now.

Hi, future_man

I'm interested in the fact you you have had vasopressin level tested. Did your primary care doctor do this? When I saw mine in 1999 (the start of a long saga frantically trying to get desmopressin prescribed for my polyuria) and I asked if vasopressin could be tested, he said that was a strange thing to test for! I have never had it tested, but I'm sure it fluctuates erratically, and this has been found by some ME researchers.

I did a load of online research on vasopressin and related hormones, and can copy the abstracts into a message here if you like. It includes things like desmopressin increasing cortisol. I also found a paper saying that melatonin does this too, but specifically in older women, maybe not in men. The abstract for that is here.

There are links to related papers on that page which may help re the male situation.

 

[future_man]

Hi MeSci,

Yes, my primary care physician ordered that test as a result of my reports of frequent urination. She's a pretty open doctor who works in a relatively open and progressive facility.

My result came back very low, almost negligible, and the doctor then wanted me to get a brain MRI to rule out a pituitary tumor or something else physically going on in my head which could contribute to this. I went ahead and got one, and thankfully the results showed very normal.

The more I started thinking about it, I suspected that I was drinking too much water for what my body needed/could process right now. I reduced my water intake significantly at night and somewhat during the day, and the frequent urination issue seems to be resolving itself. I now suspect that the low ADH reading was somewhat meaningless, or better yet what it was supposed to be, as my body was not secreting ADH because it wasn't necessary. It had no need to store water because I was drinking too much.

That's my current theory at least.

 

[MeSci]

Hi MeSci,

Yes, my primary care physician ordered that test as a result of my reports of frequent urination. She's a pretty open doctor who works in a relatively open and progressive facility.

My result came back very low, almost negligible, and the doctor then wanted me to get a brain MRI to rule out a pituitary tumor or something else physically going on in my head which could contribute to this. I went ahead and got one, and thankfully the results showed very normal.

The more I started thinking about it, I suspected that I was drinking too much water for what my body needed/could process right now. I reduced my water intake significantly at night and somewhat during the day, and the frequent urination issue seems to be resolving itself. I now suspect that the low ADH reading was somewhat meaningless, or better yet what it was supposed to be, as my body was not secreting ADH because it wasn't necessary. It had no need to store water because I was drinking too much.

That's my current theory at least.

OK. Glad your problem seems to have been resolved. Funnily, I had the opposite situation from you in a way - I knew I wasn't drinking too much fluid, but all my docs have insisted that I do, despite my providing detailed fluid charts for them and stressing to them that I got very thirsty and knew it was due to dehydration. They clearly believe that I am lying, perhaps based on an alarming page I found in the BMJ 'Best Practice' section here which says:

PPD is commonly seen in people with chronic schizophrenia and in middle-aged women with anxiety disorders.

I was diagnosed in my 20s with 'anxiety complex', and have been anxious for most of my life, but had a very stressful childhood and now know that I have always probably had abnormal carbohydrate metabolism, and since reducing carbs my anxiety is hugely reduced. But even when I was anxious, I knew that I was anxious and it didn't make me irrational or delusional!

But this psychiatric tendency gets everywhere...

So I should have had my vasopressin tested as I have abnormal secretion (as evidenced by the fact that desmopressin normalises my output), but didn't, and you probably didn't have an abnormality but did get tested!

 

[future_man]

Yeah, that's pretty interesting. Do you have a doctor through whom you can get the levels tested?

 

[MeSci]

Yeah, that's pretty interesting. Do you have a doctor through whom you can get the levels tested?

I don't think so. The fact that desmopressin corrects one of my polyuria types is evidence that I am short of vasopressin (at least at those times), and as there is evidence for vasopressin deficiency in ME, that's good enough for me now. It just might have helped me in my battles to get desmopressin, which were considerable.