Any Suggestions To Survive The Days Following Sleepless Nights?

[StrongMom]

from Gelatin, stress, longevity
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/gelatin.shtml

Although I pointed out a long time ago the antithyroid effects of excessive cysteine and tryptophan from eating only the muscle meats, and have been recommending gelatinous broth at bedtime to stop nocturnal stress, it took me many years to begin to experiment with large amounts of gelatin in my diet. Focusing on the various toxic effects of tryptophan and cysteine, I decided that using commercial gelatin, instead of broth, would be helpful for the experiment. For years I hadn't slept through a whole night without waking, and I was in the habit of having some juice or a little thyroid to help me go back to sleep. The first time I had several grams of gelatin just before bedtime, I slept without interruption for about 9 hours. I mentioned this effect to some friends, and later they told me that friends and relatives of theirs had recovered from long-standing pain problems (arthritic and rheumatic and possibly neurological) in just a few days after taking 10 or 15 grams of gelatin each day.

I take around 12gm with milk and sugar before sleep. No miracle cure but helps.
Also, I find ice cream with little honey and salt to help sometimes
The benefits of the carrot salad takes sometime to show, I believe.
It's not really after few months of eating it my digestion started getting better.

I have been making (salted caramel) milk share with gelatin for a while, sometimes it seems to work, sometimes it doesn't. But I am definitely going to experiment with the amount, I may not be adding enough.

 

[natedawggh]

Hi everyone,

I tend to suffer from insomnia. At least a few nights a week, I do not get enough sleep and as you can guess the following day I feel miserable. I try to do my best before going to bed, i.e. in terms of sugar, salt, and getting enough calories. But sometimes it just happens; that is something I haven't totally figured out. Besides, sometimes it happens because of having two toddlers at home even though I have potential to sleep well. So for those days, do you have any suggestions in terms of food, supplements, etc. to help my body?

I tend to have strong sugar cravings on those days and now that I know Peat I response to my cravings by eating sugar. What else? Any ideas?

Taurine. It is an energy supplying amino acid. Taken with minerals and carbs it greatly increases energy levels. I have only been getting about 5-6 hours of sleep a night and working ten hour days and I wouldn't be able to do it without taurine.

 

[StrongMom]

Thanks everyone, a lot of good suggestions here. I have been working on them and experimenting a bit to see what works. Not a great deal of improvements but a lot of observations. I will keep it posted as things change.

One more question. I have been taking magnesium citrate but noticed that others are using/recommending magnesium carbonate. Also, there are others; in the past used magnesium oxide for constipation, too. Which form of magnesium is the best?

 

[InChristAlone]

A lot are mag. glycinate with success. Or mag bicarbonate they make from combining milk of magnesia with carbonated water. Also there is topical mag chloride and some even use that orally, but thats more likely to cause the r uns.

 

[StrongMom]

Taurine. It is an energy supplying amino acid. Taken with minerals and carbs it greatly increases energy levels. I have only been getting about 5-6 hours of sleep a night and working ten hour days and I wouldn't be able to do it without taurine.

Taurine is something I would like to give a try as it helps with liver. But I am getting a bit confused; in other threads people mention taking it before bed to have a better sleep. How can taurine help with both?

 

[natedawggh]

Taurine. It is an energy supplying amino acid. Taken with minerals and carbs it greatly increases energy levels. I have only been getting about 5-6 hours of sleep a night and working ten hour days and I wouldn't be able to do it without taurine.

When I first took Taurine it actually disrupted my sleep. But it does no longer and I'm actually sleeping very well while taking it. Sleep is a high energy state and perhaps if you have insomnia or sleep troubles, increased energy at first might actually make you feel awake. But after things normalize sleep will come easily, because the ability to sleep is lost when energy levels fall too low. Taurine does help increase energy.

I experience digestive discomfort if I take too much Taurine, because it increases bile output. Ultimately this is a good thing because more bile means better absorption of fats (especially if your diet is restricted to good fats), and better detoxification. I found that copper supplementing stunted the output of bile (because copper is used in the synthesis of bile) but also Taurine helps escort copper into cells for use in enzymatic activity. Just don't overload on it. A small amount goes a long way.

 

[goodandevil]

Now gamma e complex has helped me a lot! I read a pubmed study on vitamin e and sleep deprivation, im on my phone now but ill try and reference.it later. That gamma e complex and maybe tyrosine has helped me a lot with sleel deprivation it takes away a lot of the physical sensations

 

[pboy]

stressed mom, if you feel adequately nourished, then trying to add more or a different food isn't going to help. The biggest factor regarding bad sleep once diet is ok, is not having a regular rythmn. If you're interested ill talk to you more about it. I think having kids, well..anything burdensome on the mind can add a lot of potential stress but...once they asleep you should be fine. Lack of a regular rythmn also causes constipation, seemingly...really it just messes with wake/sleep/action/rest digest hormonal cycles. Your body, all of our bodies, respond to light and if you don't plan and execute your day around that, then you'll run into all kinds of problems. To simplify or generalize, daytime is for eating and acting, night time is for resting and reflection and insightful thoughts

 

[StrongMom]

Hi everyone, i just wanted to give you an update. Yes, it is mostly the stress in my life causing insomnia and maybe other issues as well. Many of the things are beyond my control really. I am a full time working mom and also the breadwinner of the family as my husband is trying to open his bakery after many job losses. I am a mother of twin toddlers and trying to manage almost everything by myself. It is not easy.

A couple of things I noticed. Now I know it quite well that caffeine disrupts my sleep. I am very careful not to drink more than half a cup in the morning. For the supplement, I think b6 helps a lot but again I have to be careful with the dosage. I have 50mg capsules but I realized that is too much for me as that was disrupting my sleep as well. When it is around 10-15 mg it is best for me.

In terms of sleep, theanine made such a huge difference. I started taking it two weeks ago. I have been sleeping well since then. Such a relief! The other food/supplement combinations did not make a difference except magnesium. But even with magnesium, i was waking up after falling into sleep.

 

[sladerunner69]

Mindfulness helps me a lot. Don't shoot yourself twice by fretting over the lost sleep and how tired you feel. Just feel tired. If there's an hour or less before my alarm goes off I just bite the bullet and wake up and meditate. That provides some restfulness and lowers stress. It also makes me feel proactive.

This seems like the best advice.

 

[scarlettsmum]

Hi everyone, i just wanted to give you an update. Yes, it is mostly the stress in my life causing insomnia and maybe other issues as well. Many of the things are beyond my control really. I am a full time working mom and also the breadwinner of the family as my husband is trying to open his bakery after many job losses. I am a mother of twin toddlers and trying to manage almost everything by myself. It is not easy.

A couple of things I noticed. Now I know it quite well that caffeine disrupts my sleep. I am very careful not to drink more than half a cup in the morning. For the supplement, I think b6 helps a lot but again I have to be careful with the dosage. I have 50mg capsules but I realized that is too much for me as that was disrupting my sleep as well. When it is around 10-15 mg it is best for me.

In terms of sleep, theanine made such a huge difference. I started taking it two weeks ago. I have been sleeping well since then. Such a relief! The other food/supplement combinations did not make a difference except magnesium. But even with magnesium, i was waking up after falling into sleep.

Stressedmom, are you still taking anything to help you with sleep? Are you still using theanine and/or magnesium? Thanks.

 

[scarlettsmum]

As has been mentioned on this thread, sleep is a high energy state. So what can you do immediately if you are in a low energy state ? I have been having trouble sleeping after surgery and am considering cypro, theanine and magnesium. Already am doing glycine in form of gelatinous stock 3x per day. I'm just wondering with stress lowering supplements and inadequate thyroid what can one expect? Is it even a good idea to instantly lower stress hormones if you rely on them in the meantime?

 

[StrongMom]

Stressedmom, are you still taking anything to help you with sleep? Are you still using theanine and/or magnesium? Thanks.

Yes, i am still using them. Theanine has been the best for me and I can tell that it is really a good cortisol antagonist. If you are dealing with high adrenaline, taurine seems to work better. Magnesium helps, too, in terms of falling into sleep, but in order for me to stay asleep I have been taking theanine. Dosage depends on my stress level, so it changes day to day.

Also, for the last few weeks, I have been taking thyroid before going to bed with some food. That is helping, too. For a long time, I was scared to take it before bed, but I gave a try and it worked!

 

[scarlettsmum]

Yes, i am still using them. Theanine has been the best for me and I can tell that it is really a good cortisol antagonist. If you are dealing with high adrenaline, taurine seems to work better. Magnesium helps, too, in terms of falling into sleep, but in order for me to stay asleep I have been taking theanine. Dosage depends on my stress level, so it changes day to day.

Also, for the last few weeks, I have been taking thyroid before going to bed with some food. That is helping, too. For a long time, I was scared to take it before bed, but I gave a try and it worked!

Thanks Stressedmom! how can I be certain if it's adrenaline or cortisol? And why taurine for adrenaline and theanine for cortisol? I still haven't plucked up the courage to dive into supplementing thyroid even though it could possible help since my cholesterol is high.

 

[StrongMom]

Thanks Stressedmom! how can I be certain if it's adrenaline or cortisol? And why taurine for adrenaline and theanine for cortisol? I still haven't plucked up the courage to dive into supplementing thyroid even though it could possible help since my cholesterol is high.

In my case, if it is racing heart and high pulse, I think it's adrenaline. I tend to have low pulse, if it is rising without thyroid supplements and without warm feeling I think it is adrenaline. If it is general awakeness with low pulse, it is cortisol. Also my cortisol tends to rise when my estrogen goes up.

 

[milk_lover]

Maybe sleep for +12 hours during the two days of the weekend? Just relax, sleep is important but thinking too much about it makes the problem worse I think. If it happens, that's great. If not, you learn what could be eaten/avoided to improve it the next round. Fine tune it and enjoy the process :)

 

[milk_lover]

Good tip: Shine red light on the face and neck areas and let it activate your metabolism and drink some juice and sleep soundly.

 

[tyler]

Mindfulness helps me a lot. Don't shoot yourself twice by fretting over the lost sleep and how tired you feel. Just feel tired. If there's an hour or less before my alarm goes off I just bite the bullet and wake up and meditate. That provides some restfulness and lowers stress. It also makes me feel proactive.

This seems like the best advice.

As someone who has overcome years of debilitating insomnia, this was the thing I was most reluctant to try- but it ended up being the ONLY thing that gave me lasting results.

Do not underestimate the mind-body connection. I learned (slowly) that the quality of my sleep is directly correlated to how I feel when I enter my bed. If I'm stressed about how it's so late, worried that I won't fall asleep, that I will be tired in the morning, etc- this is exactly what manifests.

However, when I repeatedly affirmed to myself that I was getting enough sleep (no matter how soon I had to wake), that it's okay if it took me a long time to fall asleep, and it was okay if I woke up throughout the night- the better I felt in the morning, the faster I fell asleep, and the faster I drifted back off if my sleep was disrupted.

The results are accumulative, and the more you practice this, the more your sleep will improve. You must fake it till you make it. If you cannot become the master of your own mind, you will never become the master of your sleep. Drugs and supplements will only help you so far.

So yeah, just watch your thinking! You can't help what pops up, but you can choose to believe what you want. Don't feed into the stress.

 

[scarlettsmum]

@milk_lover thanks for the tip. I am shining red lights on me before bed and it seems to help. Also I am feeling better now since it has been a week since the surgery.
@tyler you actually reminded me of a book I read that was explaining precisely the mind body connection when trying to induce sleep and how important it is not to fear whether I am going to fall asleep tonight or not but rather convince myself that I sleep well every night and relax into sleep with this though. Thanks for reminding me! :)

 

[tara]

I still haven't plucked up the courage to dive into supplementing thyroid even though it could possible help since my cholesterol is high.

I recommend not diving in - better to start by dipping a toe, if the signs indicate a need. :)
(If you are getting plenty of carbs and other nutrients.)