Mary
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I started taking a Now Foods hawthorn berries supplement a few weeks ago in an attempt to lower my BP. I started with 2 caps 2 x a day (2 with breakfast and 2 with lunch) and almost immediately started sleeping better. After about a week or so I added in 2 more with dinner. The bottle says to take 6 a day but you never know - sleep, or, rather, lack thereof has been my bete noire for many years! This last year it's been particularly bad (at one time I had 3 or 4 days in a row of 2 hours sleep each night) so I was afraid initially to take the hawthorn at night.
And the hawthorn has helped my BP, together with a couple of other things it's gone down some 20 points overall.
But the sleep - it's incredible. At a few points during this past year I'd wondered if my body had lost the ability to sleep - I'm serious! It took a lot of detective work to figure out each time wth was going on with my sleep, for there were 4 or 5 different things that disrupted it severely at separate times - here's what I can remember, (that time feels like the Dark Ages): (1) taking fish oil at night; (2) msg or any of its iterations with dinner; (3) hyperthyroid (switched from hypo) (had to take herb combo for several weeks to counteract this); (4) too much calcium, especially taken at night; a few years ago I had doubled my copper dose (forget why) and was taking it at night and that kept me awake all night - I learned that copper helps produce adrenaline! I cut out copper for quite awhile and have reintroduced it but only a single dose and only take it in the morning. I think there was something else that gave me killer insomnia (killer insomnia is where I'm awake about 3/4 of the night or the entire night)
Also, I seem to be tolerating foods that have msg in one of its many iterations better - in other words it's not affecting me so badly. Msgand and its derivatives are found in almost everything - mustard, mayonnaise, horseradish, V8! So to entirely avoid msg and all its minions could be difficult. They add citric acid to canned tomatoes - I love the salsa I make with canned tomatoes so I had to specially order tomatoes from Italy on-line - pricey! And used them very sparingly. But I seem to be tolerating tomaroes with citric acid now, so this is huge.
Anyways, I'm shocked at how well I'm sleeping. I also have a stack of things I've been taking before bed for years - inositol, niacin, l-thianine, melatonin, glycine, 5-htp - I think that's it, and then coupled with the hawthorn it's working very well for about 2 weeks now. I also recently added in resveratrol and relora which are helping too, but the hawthorn is making all the difference. I hope to be able to cut down on my stack because it's expensive. This is just the stuff I take for sleep - you should see what I take for everything else!
I haven't found any good drugs for sleep - I tried trazodone, it made me feel like crap even at quite low doses, low dose amitryptiline likewise made me feel like crap the day after, I don't want to take ambien, afraid of DUI or cooking DUI! And I was on lorazepam for 11 years - I liked it, but of course I was beginning to need more and I knew that wasn't good.
Fingers crossed!
And the hawthorn has helped my BP, together with a couple of other things it's gone down some 20 points overall.
But the sleep - it's incredible. At a few points during this past year I'd wondered if my body had lost the ability to sleep - I'm serious! It took a lot of detective work to figure out each time wth was going on with my sleep, for there were 4 or 5 different things that disrupted it severely at separate times - here's what I can remember, (that time feels like the Dark Ages): (1) taking fish oil at night; (2) msg or any of its iterations with dinner; (3) hyperthyroid (switched from hypo) (had to take herb combo for several weeks to counteract this); (4) too much calcium, especially taken at night; a few years ago I had doubled my copper dose (forget why) and was taking it at night and that kept me awake all night - I learned that copper helps produce adrenaline! I cut out copper for quite awhile and have reintroduced it but only a single dose and only take it in the morning. I think there was something else that gave me killer insomnia (killer insomnia is where I'm awake about 3/4 of the night or the entire night)
Also, I seem to be tolerating foods that have msg in one of its many iterations better - in other words it's not affecting me so badly. Msgand and its derivatives are found in almost everything - mustard, mayonnaise, horseradish, V8! So to entirely avoid msg and all its minions could be difficult. They add citric acid to canned tomatoes - I love the salsa I make with canned tomatoes so I had to specially order tomatoes from Italy on-line - pricey! And used them very sparingly. But I seem to be tolerating tomaroes with citric acid now, so this is huge.
Anyways, I'm shocked at how well I'm sleeping. I also have a stack of things I've been taking before bed for years - inositol, niacin, l-thianine, melatonin, glycine, 5-htp - I think that's it, and then coupled with the hawthorn it's working very well for about 2 weeks now. I also recently added in resveratrol and relora which are helping too, but the hawthorn is making all the difference. I hope to be able to cut down on my stack because it's expensive. This is just the stuff I take for sleep - you should see what I take for everything else!
I haven't found any good drugs for sleep - I tried trazodone, it made me feel like crap even at quite low doses, low dose amitryptiline likewise made me feel like crap the day after, I don't want to take ambien, afraid of DUI or cooking DUI! And I was on lorazepam for 11 years - I liked it, but of course I was beginning to need more and I knew that wasn't good.
Fingers crossed!
I'm sorry to hear that. Some things that have boosted my energy are thiamine, methylfolate, l-citrulline. Ironically, the l-citrullline was supposed to increase nitric oxide and lower my BP - instead it raised my BP a lot and also gave me amazing energy! I felt really good on it, but unfortunately it caused my BP to go way too high - dang! It did the opposite of what it was supposed to do. If your BP tends to be low as it is for many people with ME/CFS, perhaps l-citrulline might raise yours. I never understood how or why it did what it did to me.