Sleep Has Gone Off the Rails - Need Help

[-Luke-]

OP, I find your diet pretty dangerous. There is no variation, these are all for increasing metabolism, but your body is not sustaining it obliviously and your situation is probably causing learned helplessness if it;s seems inescapable. Therefore, pick just one or two foods that increase metabolism. And pick a steamed potato with lots of salt and white fish. be more creative. and clear apple juice can be much more of consistent quality than unripe oranges, they are risky and irritate your gut.
Chocolate is risky if it's not dutched. it is high in cadmium and catechins that prevent liver from binding estrogen. better to use just it's fat cocoabutter or white chocolate.
Gelatin doesn't add any nutrients.
Then, you are supplementing more stuff that also does this. pick just one of them.
Try some chinese herbs that calm you. to check out the most common click here

What does "dutched" mean? Never heard the term before.

 

[Frankdee20]

I no longer get sufficient sleep since I’ve had another return of a depressive cycle back in May 2021. I believe depression and insomnia are two sides of the same coin. I seem to get 4 hours if I’m lucky, but I don’t feel deprived. I know it’s all genetics and I am unable to take supplements or medication at this time. It’s mostly why I stopped posting since May of 2021. Good luck. You can always take doxylamine succinate over the counter. It helped me quite a bit

 

[PeskyPeater]

What does "dutched" mean? Never heard the term before.

Dutched cocoa is processing the fermented cocoa nib after removing its shell with potassium carbonate. It makes it less acidic have better color and flavor

 

[-Luke-]

Dutched cocoa is processing the fermented cocoa nib after removing its shell with potassium carbonate. It makes it less acidic have better color and flavor

Thanks for the explanation.

 

[LLight]

I'm not sure if it has already been said : your intake of liquid is too high. You need solid foods, as Redsun said, meat and starches could be best if you tolerate these foods.
And I think it's best that you lower your sugar consumption as it appears to be nefast to you at the moment.

Try to limit your fluid intake to a window like 8AM to 10AM for a week and please report if it helps you regarding that issue.

I (logically, but it might depend on the amount of fluid I take during that window) don't wake up during the night to go to the bathroom anymore. I also feel like my sleep is somewhat deeper. It also caused me to be "drowsy" at night (even if I feel like it doesn't do it much recently, or is it just that I'm being used to, but I'm experimenting other things like boron, molybdenum and iodine supplementation which might have affected my sleep), a feeling I've very rarely felt during my life, even having major trouble to fell asleep as a child and a young adult.

Some theoretical perspectives:
- vasopressin (the antidiuretic hormone) stimulates melatonin in some studies (on rats), and should be thus maximized before and during your sleep with this fluid drinking window, and by the way IIRC, melatonin is a powerful antioxydant against dehydration in plants;
- it seems like IDP (Intrinsically Disordered Proteins) might play an important role in the mecanism of circadian rythms. The structure of these proteins might be influenced (their arrangement might be more structured) by osmotic stress/osmolytes and thus not drinking fluid might influence circadian rythms synchronization (though a big hypothesis).

That being said, not drinking during such long periods is not necessarily easy at first and might require some "training". One thing is to try to eat foods that are not too dry or to combine dry and "wet" food (learnt recently on this forum that it was a concept of Ayurveda IIRC) not to trigger too much thirst.
I also hypothesize that the water homeostasis issue that some people have (particularly CFS patients I believe) is a fundamental part of their issues. By the way, CFS patients have half the vasopressin levels of controls. Maybe CFS patients have deficiencies of the crucial nutrients that make the water homeostasis possible. These nutrients might be osmolytes themselves, minerals (boron, molybdenum for example) or vitamins (B1 for example).

Sources:

Vasopressin potentiation of the melatonin synthetic pathway via specific V1a receptors in the rat pineal gland - PubMed

The pineal gland releases the "time-keeping' hormone melatonin following a rhythmic sympathetic input which translates light information. The aim of this work was to study the role and mechanism of action of the central vasopressinergic input on pineal cAMP-dependent melatonin synthesis in the...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Potentiation effect of vasopressin on melatonin secretion as determined by trans-pineal microdialysis in the Rat - PubMed

The mammalian pineal gland is known to receive a noradrenergic innervation originating from the superior cervical ganglion which corresponds to the primary regulatory input for melatonin synthesis. However, many peptidergic fibers containing peptides such as vasopressin and oxytocin have also...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Intrinsic disorder is an essential characteristic of components in the conserved circadian circuit - Cell Communication and Signaling

Introduction The circadian circuit, a roughly 24 h molecular feedback loop, or clock, is conserved from bacteria to animals and allows for enhanced organismal survival by facilitating the anticipation of the day/night cycle. With circadian regulation reportedly impacting as high as 80% of...

biosignaling.biomedcentral.com

Folding propensity of intrinsically disordered proteins by osmotic stress

Proteins imparted with intrinsic disorder conduct a range of essential cellular functions. To better understand the folding and hydration properties of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), we used osmotic stress to induce conformational changes in ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Osmolyte-Induced Folding of an Intrinsically Disordered Protein: Folding Mechanism in the Absence of Ligand

Understanding the interconversion between thermodynamically distinguishable states present in a protein folding pathway provides not only the kinetics and energetics of protein folding but also insights into the functional roles of these states in biological ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

PS : I've just found this interesting paper on the impact of melatonin on the bladder capacity lol

American Urological Association

 

[LLight]

By the way, I've seen a testimony of someone lowering her heart rate with help of dry fasting (I think it was prolonged dry fasting but maybe intermittent dry fasting could work too) from high to normal (maybe a bit too low but if it's prolonged fasting it could be an explanation of such low values) values :

Spoiler: Full testimony

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dryfasting/comments/favyir/comment/fj1p0bz/

I want to believe they have never been back. I used to cry pretty much every single night for more than 2 years. I also had anxiety attacks every single day. My partner at the time had to often stay up at night even tho he had to work the next morning because how bad things would get for me. Life was sad honestly.

Another thing I learned is that my heart rate slowed a lot during my dry fasts. I had a pretty high resting heart rate, which had always worried me as I am a young girl. I'm talking about 85 to 95. >.< When I dry fast I'm between 55 - 60 during pretty much the whole time. I bring that up because it used to keep me up at night to have a heart constantly racing. Dry fasting helped a lot with that.

Edit : I'm really fascinated by how dry fasting seems to be able to help some people psyche, or at least, they seem to have these weird emotions "release" during the fast and then their anxieties are improved. It has been theorized that water can store memories and I wonder if it can be linked to that phenomenon.

 

[Rinse & rePeat]

Dutched cocoa is processing the fermented cocoa nib after removing its shell with potassium carbonate. It makes it less acidic have better color and flavor

Great explaination!