Board 8 > anyone here suffer from really bad insomnia?

(+) Yeah! (+)

in the past week i've slept 8 hours one night, 6 hours another, and every other night was 3-4. feels like I'm going insane. i've seen a doctor and there's nothing physically wrong with me. he thinks I'm suffering from depression and I'm supposed to see a therapist next week, but in the meantime I still can't sleep. I feel like everything would be fine if I could string together two nights of decent sleep in a row.

I don't think that qualifies as insomnia.

Melatonin.

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I used to.

Stop eating sugar and refined white flour and rice. 100% serious here.

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"What if you just eat vegetarians?"-neonreaper
"^ You are what you eat. ^_~"-Koiji

Stop eating sugar is a pretty tall order. No orange juice, no fruit...

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Yeah, this isn't insomnia, it just sounds like a bunch of external and internal factors (****ed up bed, nerves, depression, screwed up sleep cycle) but not actual insomnia. Try skipping a night and then going to sleep at a timely hour the following day? Might be what you need to help you stabilize a bit.

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you can eat fruit and brown rice, and even drink milk.

refined sugars, though, will kick your body's ass.

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"What if you just eat vegetarians?"-neonreaper
"^ You are what you eat. ^_~"-Koiji

hmmm, I've always had terrible insomnia and my diet basically consists of a lot of white bread

I will have to try this!

Smoke weed

I have these insomnia spells every once in a while. Like once a month, there will be a 4-5 day stretch where I can only sleep 1 or 2 hours a night. It sucks.

Melatonin helps me fall asleep faster on normal nights, but it does nothing for the bad nights.

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wg64Z posted...
Smoke weed

weed is what started this whole thing. smoked a lot of it on an empty stomach, blacked out. haven't slept right since.

From: NioraptH | #006
Sugar... maybe I can do...but no rice? That's nearly impossible! Curse this Asian blood and its need for rice everyday as a staple diet

^5

rice for lunch and dinner every day wheeee

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"What if you just eat vegetarians?"-neonreaper
"^ You are what you eat. ^_~"-Koiji

Melatonin helps me fall asleep faster on normal nights, but it does nothing for the bad nights.

similarly hit or miss for me, except it doesn't make me fall asleep faster at all, it makes me sleep a lot longer sometimes, other times it actually makes the insomnia worse(waking up an hour or so later unable to sleep for the next day...)

Yeah a lot of times with Melatonin I will doze off for about 30 minutes then just wake back up and not fall asleep for a while.

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I used to very occasionally have nights here and there where I could not sleep. Then I did some research on various sleep aids and discovered melatonin. Pretty cheap stuff too. I use 1 mg tablets at a cost of like...$8. Works out to like..7 cents a night I use it. And I don't have to use it every day.

Valerian root extract is another common natural sleep aid I see. Haven't messed with it a bunch (it was a component of a supplement I used to use), so it might have better results if melatonin doesn't cut it.

I also see various suggestions tossed around like not eating so many sweets or lowering the light levels or using relaxation techniques (breathing regulation and targeted muscle relaxation...this also happens to be nice things to put yourself in a hypnotic trance :p)

I suppose if you are desperate you could give more pharmaceutical drugs a try, but eh...that invites a fair share of other problems.

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There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out

whoa Gwindor has me in his quote and we both made our accounts on 24Aug2003

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Donny: Are they gonna hurt us, Walter?
Walter: No, Donny. These men are cowards.

that's crazy that we made our accounts on the same day

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"What if you just eat vegetarians?"-neonreaper
"^ You are what you eat. ^_~"-Koiji

I've been trying meditation techniques. I end up feeling really tired, but everytime I feel about to drift off to sleep my body jolts and the feeling goes away. I hear so much about the bad side-effects of melatonin that I'm afraid to try it. I should say that due to my sleep deprivation I'm also feeling very emotional, like paranoid, fearful and at times depressed or angry. The only thing I've tried so far is benadryl and all it's done is make me feel extra groggy the next day, after 3 hours of sleep.

I haven't gamed the entire time. I put down Tales of Graces for this!

colliding posted...
I've been trying meditation techniques. I end up feeling really tired, but everytime I feel about to drift off to sleep my body jolts and the feeling goes away. I hear so much about the bad side-effects of melatonin that I'm afraid to try it. I should say that due to my sleep deprivation I'm also feeling very emotional, like paranoid, fearful and at times depressed or angry. The only thing I've tried so far is benadryl and all it's done is make me feel extra groggy the next day, after 3 hours of sleep.

I haven't gamed the entire time. I put down Tales of Graces for this!

What bad side effects of melatonin have you heard about?

Because like...your body makes the stuff. It is literally the thing that helps regulate your sleep/wake cycle.

Now, there has been some concern over chronic use of melatonin supplementation potentially lowering the amount your body makes which could foster a dependance of sorts if you want to use it like this, but for occasional insomnia? Nothing bad is gonna happen.

There have been tests done regarding dosages, It is pretty much one of the safest supplements you can take. Doses of up to like.. grams of the stuff have been studied, with headache and upset stomach the only reported concerns. That said, the lower the dosage that helps you sleep, the better. I would probably start with something like 1 mg.

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There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out

SovietOmega posted...

What bad side effects of melatonin have you heard about?



bad nightmares, vivid dreams

Vivid dreams I would consider a plus. Unless you just...don't like remembering dreams?

Nightmares wouldn't be something caused by melatonin itself, though the aforementioned heightened vividness might make nightmares worse if you are prone to them. Maybe. There are plenty of other things I have taken that have been more potent for dreams than melatonin.

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There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out

there's also what me and EODO have experienced, it's really about 50:50, I don't take it anymore because it's just as likely to completely rob me of sleep

There are plenty of other things I have taken that have been more potent for dreams than melatonin.

what would these be?

Liquid Wind posted...
there's also what me and EODO have experienced, it's really about 50:50, I don't take it anymore because it's just as likely to completely rob me of sleep

There are plenty of other things I have taken that have been more potent for dreams than melatonin.

what would these be?

Vitamin b6 mostly. Dabbled in calea z a bit (and also learned why some plants do not make good teas...bleh. Pill form was less vomit inducing >_>).

There's plenty of stuff I have not tried though, so if vivid dreams/lucid dreams/dream recall is your goal, then maybe things like this could help (yay google)

http://dreamstudies.org/the-truth-about-lucid-dreaming-supplements/

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There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out

mmm, I've tried b6, it had some effect but barely noticeable on it's own. ZMA has actually been kind of decent for me, apparently magnesium deficiency is frequently linked with poor sleep quality. the ZMA I have also has b6 in it so that helps. goals are more on the vividness side, in my experience dream recall is simply a matter of intent, when I make it a priority I can remember 3-4 dreams a night, if I stop putting effort into it I revert back into never remembering any dreams except ones I get killed in...