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I've had sleep issues as long as I can remember (I'm in my mid-40s now) and I've recently made some lifestyle, dietary, and supplement changes in order to address what appears to be longterm CFS.
Overall, I feel like these recent changes have been moving me in a better direction as I'm taking less supplements and have eliminated some of the stressors and things that were aggravating the condition.
However, one area which hasn't improved as much as I'd hoped is sleep. While I'm generally able to fall asleep better now (probably due to reduced caffeine intake), I'm not sleeping through the sleep and generally waking up before I'm fully rested.
I'm usually in bed by 10:30pm, asleep by 11pm or a little after, but then waking up around 1-2am to use the restroom, the again around 3-4am or 4-5am. When I wake up in that 4-5am range, there's a good chance that I won't go back to sleep without taking some kind of sleep aid. This amounts to about 5-6 hours of broken sleep leaving me unrested and adding to the next day's exhaustion.
After much research and testing, I've come to the conclusion that I have elevated nighttime cortisol (resulting in very low morning cortisol), so I've recently started experimenting with Seriphos supplementation. *I think* it may be helping to reduce the nighttime cortisol levels as I feel more even in the evening now, but I'm still waking up through the night to urinate and my brain/body thinks its time to get up around 4-5am every morning.
Due to family and other obligations, my bedtime is pretty much set around 11pm, which means that I would ideally need to sleep to at least 6-7am to get a good night's rest. The way it feels to me is that I've been losing at least two hours of sleep for months now.
I could go on and provide a lot more details, but rather than make this post too long, I thought I'd end it here and see if any one has similar experience or insight and and answer any questions.
Any help is appreciated.
John
Overall, I feel like these recent changes have been moving me in a better direction as I'm taking less supplements and have eliminated some of the stressors and things that were aggravating the condition.
However, one area which hasn't improved as much as I'd hoped is sleep. While I'm generally able to fall asleep better now (probably due to reduced caffeine intake), I'm not sleeping through the sleep and generally waking up before I'm fully rested.
I'm usually in bed by 10:30pm, asleep by 11pm or a little after, but then waking up around 1-2am to use the restroom, the again around 3-4am or 4-5am. When I wake up in that 4-5am range, there's a good chance that I won't go back to sleep without taking some kind of sleep aid. This amounts to about 5-6 hours of broken sleep leaving me unrested and adding to the next day's exhaustion.
After much research and testing, I've come to the conclusion that I have elevated nighttime cortisol (resulting in very low morning cortisol), so I've recently started experimenting with Seriphos supplementation. *I think* it may be helping to reduce the nighttime cortisol levels as I feel more even in the evening now, but I'm still waking up through the night to urinate and my brain/body thinks its time to get up around 4-5am every morning.
Due to family and other obligations, my bedtime is pretty much set around 11pm, which means that I would ideally need to sleep to at least 6-7am to get a good night's rest. The way it feels to me is that I've been losing at least two hours of sleep for months now.
I could go on and provide a lot more details, but rather than make this post too long, I thought I'd end it here and see if any one has similar experience or insight and and answer any questions.
Any help is appreciated.
John