Dr. Alan Pocinki talks about the importance of treating our sleep issues in the last ME/CFS Alert video. There is another great talk by him in which he goes into more detail about which medications he used You can find it on vimeo and it is completely relevant even though the title is, "Clinical Autonomic and Sleep Disorders in Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. (Vimeo would not allow me to post the direct link on this site.) He spoke about how he treats pain, which is an important part of frequent arousals for many of us, said he might have a patient take four different medications at bedtime and was more specific about what those are. A full night's sleep, as he sees it, is the foundation for any sort of improvement.
Also, major papers carried research information in the past few weeks which shows that a lack of deep sleep is associated with a higher incidence of Alzheimer's and other dementias later on. The reason, it is believed, is that in deep sleep the brain is bathed in cerebrospinal fluid which washes away protein fragments and other toxic substances or end products. Deep sleep is when the brain gets its detox treatment! So a lack of deep sleep is very very important to treat.
What has worked for me is the smallest effective dose of trazodone, clonazepam and gabapentin, but well over a year ago I got off the clonazepam because my doctor did not want me taking anything addictive. It was a slow taper down of tiny increments of pill, but I did fine, as far as the dependency went. However, sure enough, I went back to exactly the same sleep issue as before--waking up in the middle of the night then having multiple awakenings or even no sleep after that. Pain definitely feels like the reason I have all those "arousals".
