Unrefreshing Sleep

[xlynx]

Hi Athene

my brain fog is worse than I thought I missed out Reading two of the replies you sent me. Thank you for that info. Would love to know how u get on with the h2s treatment with antibiotics ( that's the 1 of the posts I missed )

Are herbal teas ok to drink like peppermint of chamomile?

Also Athene do you ever get dizzy even if breathing is ok?

I have been super dizzy the last week do you think it could be related to the same thing?

The label cfs is such a joke fatigue is just scraping the iceberg of all these symtpoms.

Thanks

 

[MEKoan]

I think unrefreshing sleep is not only just one more symptom of CFS, but I believe it is also a result of us laying around all day. Exercise can improve sleep quality quite a bit, but of course most of us can't do that. It's a paradox.

Hey 1998,

I don't think this particular brand of unrefreshing sleep is a consequence of lack of activity. It's something else.

Yesterday was a beautiful day and I took my little dog to the dog beach a block away from my apt. and strolled slowly with him for about 45 minutes, while he played with the other dogs, and I chatted with the other dog people. I also enjoyed the myself but knew I was pushing way too much and have been, in general, lately. While I am not bed-bound or, strickly speaking, completely home-bound, I have quite a small envelope.

Last night... well, this morning, actually, when I had slept for >8 hours, I was plagued by dreams of exhaustion. In my dreams, I had to walk, or climb stairs or have conversations and I was too exhausted... the effort in the dream was almost unbearable. The subject of my dreaming was exhaustion. Finally, I gave up trying to sleep because exhaustion was too hard to manage while sleeping. The extremely unpleasant sensation of "fatigue" is easier to endure while awake.

This is not the first time I have dreamt of being exhausted.

ME exhaustion is so complete, so unrelieved by rest, that even sleeping has little impact on how fatigued every cell of one's body is. During sleep, one can feel the kind of exhaustion healthy people feel at the end of a marathon. During sleep!

Writing this has been torture. Thinking my way through this post has been painfully exhausting. My brain hurts.

ETA I had slept a seemingly deep and dreamless sleep for 8 or 9 hours before morning came and I began to dream of how exhausted I was.

 

[xlynx]

Hi Koan,

I am also amazed at how my sleeps are always stressful. I think this is one of the hardest things to understand.

Even on the nights I feel well rested and feel really quite good I go to sleep happy and wake up feeling destroyed and in panic with wild dreams, you put it rightly when you said you have to get up to deal with the fatigue its easier.

My body refuses to rest even when sleeping it seems preoccupied and busy.

I have found that sometimes activity improves sleep and sometimes it makes it worse, all in all I think that majority of what is happening is outside of my control.

I am trying to identify patterns to improve but this appears to be a master challenge.

 

[Hysterical Woman]

Sleep

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Xlynx, camomile tea is good but peppermint can be an irritant to the intestine if it is inflamed, so avoid that. If you're on a calcium supplement take that at bedtime because it is quite soporific. Also if you are allergic to foods you are eating they will fill you with histamine which make it almost impossible to sleep no matter how exhausted you feel. That can give you dizzy spells. If histamine is a problem for you, you are likely to get extra bad from eating fruits, pickled things, preserved/delicatessen meats, alcohol, etc. Ask me for more on this if it sounds possible to you.


......
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Hi Athene,

Interesting information thanks for posting. I know that some people find taking a calcium supplement at night can be relaxing, but I have always been curious about the fact that it does the opposite for me. I do find that magnesium helps me sleep. In searching the internet looking for answers about why calcium doesn't seem to work for me I came across the following:

"CALCIUM In the autonomic dominant, calcium usually acts as a stimulant by innervating the sympathetic system. Thus, in the sympathetic dominant, calcium supplementation before bed is not recommended. However, in the extreme parasympathetic dominant who has problems awakening in the night with hunger pains, calcium may help diminish the appetite by restoring autonomic balance. In this type, calcium supplementation before bed may help prevent the body chemistry from going too parasympathetic during the night.

In the oxidative dominant, calcium tends to have a sedating, calming effect by slowing down the rate of oxidation. When the oxidation rate gets too fast, carbohydrate is "burned" too quickly. The result is that one also runs out of fuel too quickly as well. When this occurs at night, insomnia may result. Calcium supplementation before bed for the fast oxidizer may help prevent this from occurring. (CAL-COM)

MAGNESIUM In the autonomic dominant, magnesium acts as a natural tranquilizer by inhibiting the influence of the sympathetic system. In the sympathetic insomniac characterized by racing thoughts or an inability to shut the mind off when trying to sleep, magnesium has been found to be an excellent bedtime supplement. (MAGNESIUM-COM) "

If anyone is interested, I can post the link to the site where I got that info.

So, if I understand this right, calcium really helps those in the parasympathetic dominant or oxidative dominant. Magnesium seems to help those in the autonomic dominant.

Who knew this stuff could be this complex???

Take care,

Maxine

 

[MEKoan]

Hi xlynx & Athene,

In my case, my dreams are not particularly vivid or disturbing or intense, they just fill in a storyline for the intense fatigue I continue to feel while I sleep and, particularly, as I begin to emerge from sleep and should feel refreshed. I think my brain is trying to make sense of the situation: You haven't just woken up from a long night's sleep; you are actually involved in some kind of exhausting activity. In this morning's dreams I was just hanging out with some Canadian film directors at a very nice rooftop lounge and the only problem I had was that I was so exhausted and had to walk up some stairs.

During my "remission" years I was exhausted all the time and often dreamt that I was walking on all fours and it was waaaay easier. It was a kind of lightbulb moment: oh, walk on all fours and you'll feel way better! Then I would wake up and realize that walking on all fours wouldn't really be easier at all.

Although yesterday's activity was in mid afternoon and I did not go to sleep until after midnight and spend most of my life reclinging on my couch/bed, I do resonate with the idea that I have built up substances during my walk that I cannot rid myself of.

What really strikes me is the fact that I dream that I am exhausted because I still feel exhausted while I sleep and as I emerge from sleep after more than 8 hours.

I think this really illustrates the idea of "unrefreshing sleep" in a way that people who don't experience it might find helpful.

The experience and sensations of "fatigue" are not addressed or altered by sleep. It is such a profound exhaustion as to continue unabated during sleep. I wake up exactly as befuddled and impared by exhaustion as I was when I went to sleep.

 

[boomer]

I would suggest that people pay close attention to the bed they are sleeping on if they feel worse in the morning than when they went to bed. We bought a new memory foam top to put on our mattress a couple of weeks ago. I finally made the connection that I feel nauseated when i wake up in the middle of the night and in the morning. There are petroleum products and flame retardants in mattresses. It is worth sleeping on other surfaces such as leather couches or other mattresses to see if you feel better because you have a sensitivity to the flame retardant in your mattresses.