Insomnia Support Group
Insomnia is a symptom, rather than a disease, and is characterized by inadequate quantity or quality of sleep. People with insomnia complain of difficulty falling or staying asleep, which results in significant impairment of daytime functioning. Insomnia is categorized as transient (shorter than one week), short-term (one to three weeks) or chronic (longer than three...
I stayed up all night yesterday and wasn't tired, of course, all day yesterday. First thing this morning I layed down on the couch and closed my eyes,even though I wasn't tired. Within a few minutes, I jerked really hard, which meant I was already starting to fall asleep. I took that as a hopeful sign that I had started to fall asleep. I layed back down and quickly fell asleep. I briefly woke up a couple hours later and fell right back to asleep for a couple hours. When I woke up I discovered that I had taken my glasses off and my cat had goten up on the couch. I think I fell asleep again briefly after that because I remember dreaming. I wonder how I have fallen asleep when I don't even fell tired. Does this mean I am tired, but I just don't feel tired for some reason? This has happened several times after I have stayed up all night the night before. On those nights is it a good thing to lay down on the couch and atleast relax, if not sleep, although it is hard to lay down and relax when I'm not tired and wired. If I don't fall asleep I will just take Seroquel and another pill and hopefully it will "work".
After careful consideration, I'd have to agree with the doctor on that one. I never figured out what causes the jerk but I did figure out that taking a little bit of L-Tyrosine (200mg) stopped the jerking and in fact, it improved my sleep tremendously. Instead of waking up every 2 hours, like I had been doing, I went 6hrs straight.
I found L-Tyrosine when researching seroquel. You see, seroquel, amongst other things, tells your brain to produce norepinephrine. Of course, as you know me.... I didn't want a drug telling my brain it was ok to produce something, I wanted to fuel it instead and so, when I found L-Tyrosine would fuel my brain, I simply took a little bit of it.
In my opinion, you're really not that far from a normal sleep. I was waaaay further out there. Anyway, I'm still convinced that you're just overly stressed beyond normal.
Maybe you should just pop one of those stress tabs found at walgreens and take it easy.
L-Tyrosine will help fuel dopamine and norepinephrine. These two in the right level will not help you sleep any better. However, if there is an imbalance (let's say, too little or too much), then your sleep is going to be broken and you will suffer other symptoms. That sounds a little strange but it's like saying, having $1,000 in your savings account isn't going to make you rich but you won't have to worry about not having enough money.
With that said, here are the symptoms that I've encountered while low....
1) broken sleep, waking up every hour or two, on the hour
2) not motivated to do anything (depression)
3) tremors (the jerk right before going to sleep)
4) The muscles in my neck and behind my legs get a bit tight
I used to take 200mg a day, twice a week (like Monday and Thursday; I found this by trial and error. I couldn't handle 500mg which was the size of the capusle, I had to open the capsule and empty out a little more than half so i'm guessing it was about 200mg)
The odd thing about this is that, let's say you take 200mg on Monday and on Monday night, you sleep quite well. Tuesday/Wednesday, your sleep is not bad but by Thursday, you can't sleep at all because, as soon as you're about to fall a sleep, BWAM!! you jerk real hard. So, thats why I had to take another 200mg by Thursday.
At first, things used to get burned real quickly and I couldn't sustain the levels very well so I had to keep taking a little L-Tyrosine all the time but adding L-Lysine to the mix helped sustain the levels.
On another note, too much L-Tyrosine (meaning, you raised your levels to cause an imbalance), will cause insomnia because then, you become too wired. The only cure is time. That is, if you happen to take too much, then you need to just wait for your body to get rid of it.
If you do decide to give it a try, make sure you take it with a quality multi-vitamin that should include vitamin b-complex, c, zinc, copper, calcium, magnesium/manganse, vitamin D...
Also, as things got better, I'd wait longer and longer before I took another 200mg. It wasn't like I did Monday/Thursday every single week but it was more of "as needed". So, in the begining, I did this M/Th thing like 3 weeks in a row and then, instead of Monday, I'd see how long I can go without jerking before I took another one. ;)
TRIPLE SEGMENT MODE: Every finger has 2 cross lines, dividing it into 3 parts or segments. Place the tip of the thumb at the top segment of the little finger and breathe three times. Move the thumb to the middle segment and breathe three times. Move to the bottom segment and breathe three times. Repeat the same steps at the next 3 fingers. At the thumb, place the tip of the index finger on its segments and follow the same steps. Then switch to the other hand and repeat the process all over. Continue to practice, switching the hands. When you wake up in the morning, you will be surprised how you slept so well last night!
The detailed article on insomnia can be seen in this page: http://countingbreaths.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Insomnia-Hand-out.pdf
But, then.... my muscles in my leg got a little tight and then my chest muscles started to get tight too, so at around 11pm, I broke down and took 200mg L-Tyrosine + 500mg L-Glutamin with my regular vitamins. I also listened to that hypnotherapy video. It was so nice. I woke up at 6am and went back to sleep only to wake up again at 11am. :)