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How to normalise sleep pattern

WoolPippi

Senior Member
Messages
556
Location
Netherlands
Hi. Is anyone still looking at this thread? I dont want to post something and find out it hasnt been looked at since 2009.
some people are "watching" this thread (button on the top right of the page)
as soon as you post I get a notice.
Hi Shauna

my sleep pattern has now normalized. Not every night but most nights I now sleep solid from 11 to 6.
For this I had sleep therapy (talking and doing exercizes) to calm down the nervous system sufficiently. And change of diet.
I have to "do the work" during the day to ensure I have a good night rest.
 

snowathlete

Senior Member
Messages
5,374
Location
UK
My sleep pattern has improved a lot. Two things happened: I tried changing my sleep meds as they had stopped working well which was a disaster and now I am not taking any! And I got a very bad case of food poisoning that has meant I am even more exhausted than normal. Result is im going to bed at ten and getting up within 12 hours, usually 10. I am not sleeping well, but enough, and the change in rhythm has been really good.
 
Messages
48
like most I have sleep problems but one I think I should be able to get a grip of is when I am sleeping (or lying in bed trying) but it's been skewed for ages now. It's 2am I just got in bed and this has become normal. But it means I don't get up until midday.

I want to bring my sleep forward. Every time I try and make some progress but then fail again and I think I understand a bit about why now.

I have a bad day where my inflammation is very high and I tollerare it by distracting myself, but to lie down and relax I have to face it and experience it so I put it off till I am exhausted. Without really choosing to I am back to very late nights.

I'm hoping someone has some ideas...?
I realize this thread is from last year but if anyone is still reading it, it can be beneficial to eat regular small meals to lower your stress levels. Never eat high GL carbs in the evening before bed though it is ok to have a small snack prior to sleeping. Preferably with protein or fat.
 
Messages
1,082
Location
UK
I've tried many things and find that when I do actually get to sleep earlier than the wee hours, I fall into a deep sleep only to startle awake and hour or so later, and then I'm wide awake often until after sunrise.

If I go to sleep around 2 am, however, my awakenings are quite short in duration and I can string together about 7 hours of relatively decent sleep.

Thus, I'm stuck solidly in the 2 am crowd until further notice and will be following this thread, eagerly waiting for good ideas!

Same here @SDSue during the very rare occassions i've got to sleep at a decent hour (around 10pm) i will wake with a start a couple of hours later and be awake till after sunrise (even with sleeping tablets that often work when taken at a 2am bedtime) so its very deterimental to be sucessful in having an early night so i no longer bother.

2am is my normal. Anything after 4am and i class it as an unsucessful night.

Once i hear the birds, i often try to 'get up' and stay awake for the rest of the day to encourage a 2am bedtime next time, but what often occurs is by midnight again, its a clean slate and i ping awake again despite being on night two without sleep. So having a nap in the afternoon is sometimes better than nothing at all.

I own blu blocker glasses but hardly ever use them as i can't see what i'm doing all night and it doesn't help with giving an earlier bedtime, the odd time i have had an earlier night, i get the ping awake thing a couple of hours later so its pointless.

I try to cut out electrics/electronics from midnight on some nights,
other nights i use my lava lamp and ipad with a log fire app crackling in the background,
other nights i use a sleeping aid/muscle relaxant (doxylamine succinate) which is fantastic but it stops working if used daily unfortunately;
a hot bath right before bed sometimes works, by going in at 1am (handy when living alone)
nearly all nights i use my electric blanket.

Sometimes these methods work, but when wired, non of them do. It doesn't help when i love the night anyway. So i'd never be comfortable regularly sacrificing the hours before midnight as that's when i'm most creative.

I love a 2am bedtime, but being serenaded by birds... Just plain annoying :meh:
 

snowathlete

Senior Member
Messages
5,374
Location
UK
My cycle has improved lately. Not really sure why. I came off my sleep meds to try a different one but that didnt work out. I then got really bad food poisoning and so came off them all and have been off them for around a month now. My sleep quality, considering I am med free, has been better than expected. Adequate, just about. Though last night I had a bad night for the first time since, which was reminiscent of how it used to be, so will ahve to see.
I did notice though that yesterday was unusual in that my parents called out the blue to pop over and i ended up tidying up even though i didnt feel well enough to and so I overdid it, whereas lately Ive been pacing pretty well. Seems likely that the PEM impacted my sleep.
 
Messages
84
Trying to normalize ones sleep pattern with CFS is borderline torture.

I have 8 years of experience of trying various things to improve my sleep cycle, and honestly the only things that work are the insanely obvious ones, that we are all probably following already like:

-Don't spend time on your computer 1-2 hours before going to bed

-Dont work 1-2 hours before going to bed

-Generally don't do anything that excites you 1-2 hours before going to be, so try to listen to an audiobook or a book before going to bed

-No sugar / caffeine before bed (duuuh)

-Don' try to go early to bed... This might sound counter intuitive. I mean you are trying to fall asleep faster, so why shouldn't falling asleep early work? Well the problem is that if you are used to fall asleep at 02-04 and you then try to sleep at 19.00-20.00, your body will think you are napping. You will be able to fall asleep, but you will wake up 30-120 minutes later, and you will now have royally ******** any chance you had of a normal sleeping pattern.


What helps most people with CFS getting a normal sleeping pattern is simply feeling better. If you are in ''remission'' or feeling better your nocturnal clock will usually improve on it's own. Whereas if you are crashing out, you will usually finish your crash with a completely wrecked sleep pattern. For some reason getting up earlier with CFS and walking around the entire day like a dying stressed out zombie hoping to go early to bed hardly helps us at all. And a weeks entire effort focused on getting up 1 hour earlier can be completely wasted in a crash... Which is sadly more likely to occur after trying to normalize our sleeping pattern, since it takes such a hard toll on us.

By the way, I have tried almost every supplement / diet and nothing has helped my sleep. Surprisingly exercise is also absurdly horrible for our sleep.

It's really one thing where people without CFS will never be able to understand us. Even the people with the best intentions almost start laughing when I tell them how hard it is to just get up 15 minutes earlier.
 
Messages
36
My sleeping patterns are often linked to my anxiety level, as well as my level of boredom. I believe it may be linked to personality as well. For example, procrastination plays a heavy factor in determining some people's willingness to take a nap - however, if something needs to be done, however small, I find myself unable to sleep.

What I try to do is, do everything I need to do, to create some sense of contentment at the end of the day, then remove all forms of entertainment at 10.30 pm to lower Beta waves(visual stimulation/entertainment) and encourage higher Thetha waves.
 

xena

Senior Member
Messages
241
Panthetine has been amazing for normalizing my sleep. I now sleep 10 PM - 6 AM after years of thinking i was a night owl. Methylation also helped me from to move from sleeping at like 2 am to more like midnight. Panthetine has been really amazing though and I was taking it for completely diffferent reasons. I got good fx at 300 mg/2x daily and now take 600 mg t.i.d

And the orange glasses have helped as well as morning/daytime outside light exposure (sunshine!) and b2 and b6 makes a pretty big difference. the glasses, b2 and b6 have made me more sleepy but the panthetine seems to have shifted my sleep cycle backward. it's amazing!

NO idea of the mechanism; Lmk if anyone has an idea.

Realized that panthetine is a precurso for acetyl co-a. perhaps it helps with energy metabolism w/ fx on brain and/or body clock
 
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redaxe

Senior Member
Messages
230
Absolutely get orange-tinted glasses or the flux app - https://justgetflux.com/
**Can't recommend these enough**
These reduce the stimulating blue-light which you don't want to expose yourself too at night. Even if you are happy with the 2am sleeptime cutting out blue light from 9-10pm will help to ensure you can get to sleep at 2am and not lie awake to 4am.

I'd also consider the following drugs to reduce morning sleepiness - IF you can tolerate drugs without crashing

-Modafinil (provigil) works to increase wakefulness but it typically has to be taken each day to get effect. The bonus is it works within 30 minutes so the effect is pretty immediate.

So if you can tolerate it, what you can do is 1 hour before you have to get up; set your alarm and leave a caffeine pill and a modafinil tablet beside your beside table and take those both - that way when you need to get up you'll feel more alert.

The other thing people can try is wellbutrin (buproprion) - extended release. I started Wellbutrin (Buproprion) about 10 days ago. It takes about a week to start working but I found its very effective as a minor stimulant and wakefulness promoter and helping me get through things in the day. I've also found I'm less dependent on modafinil and caffeine now.
Although it can cause insomnia as well but if you have to be an early riser it's good.

- these 2 drugs (modafinil and wellbutrin) are prescribed for excessive daytime sleepiness and atypical depression.

I don't particularly like the name atypical depression but curiously some of the symptoms of those conditions are what people here complain about quite regularly (namely tiredness, low energy, lethargy and muscle weakness). My feeling is if you don't crash too hard after exertion and you tolerate meds ok these 2 drugs could be helpful. That said this probably only applies to people with minor/moderate/recovering ME/CFS that don't crash too readily.

Wellbutrin is considered an atypical-antidepressant - thus its mechanism of action is actually quite different from other true antidepressants. It doesn't effect serotonin, and has much less side effects and risks associated with other anti-depressants, i.e. it doesn't carry the increased risk of suicides that the other drugs do, doesn't reduce sexual function (and can actually increase libido), doesn't cause weight gain and doesn't usually cause withdrawal problems.
(Whereas most of the SSRI antidepressants cause problems with all of the above)

It works mostly on dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. This means it enhances cognition, alertness & vigilance.

Aside from that wellbutrin also has a mild stimulant effect so you might feel more energetic. Although there are plenty of people on the internet that report negative side-effects so personally if you try it I'd recommend the lowest dose (150mg day) and supplement it with 2400mg of N-Acetyl Cysteine daily as that is well demonstrated to reduce inflammation and has a calming effect on the central nervous system.
 
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Messages
6
You can watch some funny videos before you go to bed. This way you won't get any negative thoughts and you will be able to sleep on time.
 
Messages
3
like most I have sleep problems but one I think I should be able to get a grip of is when I am sleeping (or lying in bed trying) but it's been skewed for ages now. It's 2am I just got in bed and this has become normal. But it means I don't get up until midday.

I want to bring my sleep forward. Every time I try and make some progress but then fail again and I think I understand a bit about why now.

I have a bad day where my inflammation is very high and I tollerare it by distracting myself, but to lie down and relax I have to face it and experience it so I put it off till I am exhausted. Without really choosing to I am back to very late nights.

I'm hoping someone has some ideas...?
Follow some simple tips like practicing good sleep hygiene, don't drink anything with caffeine after dinner, don't drink anything with alcohol, minimize external distractions, analyse your sleep needs and obey the routine.
 
Messages
1,082
Location
UK
I think none of these work if we've always been that way. They've never worked for me. My sleep has become great in the last year or so. Still going to sleep at around 2-3am but waking up at around 9.30am instead of midday.
I love waking up in the morning hours now, i have no idea why its happening though :thumbdown:
 

snowathlete

Senior Member
Messages
5,374
Location
UK
Follow some simple tips like practicing good sleep hygiene, don't drink anything with caffeine after dinner, don't drink anything with alcohol, minimize external distractions, analyse your sleep needs and obey the routine.

Problem is that this doesn't work. All that stuff is where people should indeed start, but if you do it and it doesn't work, then what?

I found that I can't normalise my sleep, but I have made some progress by accepting that laying in bed awake is still of some use as it allows my body to rest to a degree. This helps take the pressure off when I am laying there awake for long periods so I don't exacerbate the problem by getting stressed out and upset about it.

I am sleeping adequately now, still unrefreshing and constant waking but I am off medication for sleep and doing just as well as when I was on the medication...but of course, no side effects.
 

xena

Senior Member
Messages
241
I figured out why the panthetine fixed my insomnia
Turns out my gut candida was releasing acetaldehyde why is a powerful cause of insomnia. Panthetine helps the liver detox acetaldehyde

I know because when I started to try to kill candida my insomnia returned with a vengeance. Panthetine and b1
 
Messages
3,263
Follow some simple tips like practicing good sleep hygiene, don't drink anything with caffeine after dinner, don't drink anything with alcohol, minimize external distractions, analyse your sleep needs and obey the routine.
Are you a patient, @Surky245? If so, you are a very lucky one, if these sleep hygiene measures work for you. For most of us, this just doesn't cut it.
 

SDSue

Southeast
Messages
1,066
I think none of these work if we've always been that way. They've never worked for me. My sleep has become great in the last year or so. Still going to sleep at around 2-3am but waking up at around 9.30am instead of midday.
I love waking up in the morning hours now, i have no idea why its happening though :thumbdown:
This is exactly what’s happened with me in the past year or so. I think in my case I finally got the right combo of meds ...... for now. ;)