[Ski]

#1075042

Hi MadameX,

I don’t recall what stage you are at in your treatment, but if you’re hyper, this would be a pretty common experience.

At the conference we had a few years ago, there was a speaker talking about sleep disturbances, and he had some tips that may help.

First, it is NOT a good idea to find out what time it is when you awake in the middle of the night. Your brain starts to form opinions around the time ~ "how long since I fell asleep?" "how long until I have to get up?" "why is this happening, how long will it last?" — and all that processing of information literally wakes you up and makes it harder to go back to sleep.

If you are waking up and really feeling as if you’ve had enough rest, you might want to just go ahead and get up, fix yourself something to calm you again ~ warm milk, hot tea ~ and do something relaxing (reading, maybe) until you feel sleepy again. No TV, it’s bright, colorful and noisy, and there’s a lot of activity on the screen, which is not relaxing. Then again, if you’re like my husband, pick a black & white movie and you’ll be asleep in minutes. ” title=”Very Happy” />

If you feel tired, yet cannot seem to fall asleep, just get as comfortable as you can and lay there resting. Resting is nearly as good for your body as full sleep, and so you don’t need to be anxious that you’re not all the way asleep.

If there is ANY chance that you are really getting enough sleep prior to 3am, you may want to consider going to bed later, so you’ll wake up closer to the time you really want to be getting up in the morning.

I hope something in this message helps!

[Madame_X]

#1019922

I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night, usually between 3 and 5 am and I’m having the damndest time falling back asleep. This has gone on nightly for the last 5 weeks or so.

This morning was the worst. I woke up at about quarter after 3 and didn’t fall asleep until a couple of hours later.” title=”Sad” />

[cathycnm]

#1075043

MadameX – I can identify. I have a mild sleep disorder from all my years of on-call. My body just has a harder time falling asleep because I taught it to resist the urge for 20+ years. So, it is not a surprize that my most pronounced, early Graves symptom was insomnia. It was aweful – up sometimes every 45 minutes – which is about once a sleep cycle. I was going through ambien like m&m’s but could not stay asleep. I did go on an antidepressant (thinking this to be work-stress-anxiety) that is also used for sleep. I still take 1/2 dose of that and usually a very small (1/3rd of the lowest dose) of ambien. I sleep great doing that. Talked to my PCP about going off and she said to wait until my thyroid levels had been stable for awhile.

There is some recent research that says 8 hours sleep a night (consistently) makes us as happy as a 50K a year raise! Seriously. I know with being prone to irritability when hyper and depression when hypo – it is probably a good thing to be able to sleep like a baby.

Of course – a relaxing read, bath, exercise (earlier in the evening), etc are all very valuable. Sleep is important to our well being because we produce less cortizol or stress hormone while sleeping. Cortisol has a wonderful purpose of helping us deal with stress short term – we run fast and punch hard. Too much cortisol can lead to health problems. Also – our brains need the full night’s sleep to cycle through everything correctly. Good luck – or sweet dreams! Cathy

[cathycnm]

#1075044

Interesting article on sleep and its benefits:
http://www.healthnews.com/family-health … -2285.html

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