I wish I could learn to fall asleep.

[witzend]

I've had problems since I can remember. It's been a problem again for a while. I just can't bring myself to get into bed before 2 or 3 in the morning. I know that there must be a way to turn off my wandering mind, and dropping into sleep. Do they teach it, and does insurance pay for it?

 

[Numina]

Oh dear! Been there. Done that.

Do you ever practice progressive relaxation?

Have you tried 5HPT or Tryptophan? I had good luck with calcium/magnesium.

 

[Marcie Mac]

Am reading this at 3 something in the morning...sigh..

About 5 hours is my max time to sleep and then I am wide awake, so I have no real answers. I heard something on TV about some kind of eye mask that is good for sleeping, one of those "Newsupdate at 11:00" but missed the darn thing. Since I am sitting here surfing, will go look for the TV Channel to see if I can find out what the heck it is. I will head back to bed around 4:30 for about three more hours before I am up again. Sort of is 8 hours sleep with a break inbetween LOL

I did notice when menopause hit this sleep pattern sort of became permanent. Before that I used relaxation and self hypnosis tapes, and they worked. Unfortunately they kept SO awake so that pretty much ended that.

If I find the info on this "mask" I will let you know..

Marcie

 

[hearts and roses]

There is a homeopathic remedy that you can pick up at a local health food store called "Quietude". You dissolve one tablet about an hour before your designated bedtime and then another right as you're getting into bed. The ingredients are natural herbs and the idea is that the tablet you take an hour before sort of lulls you and slows you down in preparation for sleep. The second one sends it home and you drift off.

For me, I need the perfect setting to fall asleep or I will be up all night, well, at least until 1/2 AM. I need to be dressed lightly but my bed needs to be warm. The air in my room needs to be cool. I can't have any background noise, such as a tv or the sound of someone tapping on the computer. I bought a white noise machine to block out any outside interruptions and tiny noises that will wake up my mind. It helps. And lastly, I have to put a rolled up blanket between H and me at the bottom of our bed so his twitching doesn't bother me, which it always does. If none of this works, the following night I will take melatonin - usually one 4mg capsule does it. If that doesn't work, the following night I will try half of a .25mg xanax. That almost always works.

 

[CrazyinVA]

The neurofeedback I did really helped me with sleep issues. It's not usually covered by insurance, as far as I know, though.

I also resort to Lunesta when I absolutely have to. I don't need it as often any more, though.

 

[Jena]

Witz i'm so sorry that stinks for lack of better words.

Ok bare with me here, have you ever heard of kava kava tea?? tastes like umm carp, but it works. A cup of that, and a melatonin at 10mg. a quiet room and meditation breathing??

just a thought, not getting sleep is a horror and affects everything we do.

(((Hugs))) i hope you get rest tonight.

 

[susiestar]

Witz,

Man I am in the same boat with you. Totally. But I have been since high school. And my dad has been for years, every time he was on break (he was a teacher, so he had a different yearly schedule than most of the other dads I knew - and during school breaks would go onto "Vampire Shift" as my mom called it.)

His mom did it also.

I had a sleep test, and thought they would have ideas to help me with the sleep issues. But they didn't. They said I didn't have apnea, and that was it. They DID offer me the option of a test to check my O2 saturation during the night, but it isn't covered by insurance and I opted not to do it.

I sometimes have luck with ambien or lunesta. Better than with-o it, but I can't take either of them all the time. After about 10 days whatever one I am taking quits working.

I have a bunch of guided meditation tapes that can be helpful. husband bought them before we met, and the guy's voice can be pretty good at puttingme to sleep. But not often enough for me to count on it.

Vitamin world has a product called Calm Tabs that is basically an herb tea in a tablet. It helps husband, and it helped Wiz for quite a while.

I hope you can find some help with this.

 

[Ropefree]

I do not sleep through the night..I have the mask...I like valerium tincture for a sleep
aide. I call it coma in a bottle. For me it works for exptreme pain, which I sometimes have, after I begin to fall apart emotionally because I am exhausted .....
I follow the get up at the same time everyday. If I am sleepy like I can nap during the day I "go for it" woo! And I get into bed about the same time...even if I do not stay there. I feel that when sleeplessness is ON it is important to rest the body and to "shut down" the brain as much as possible. So even though not really asleep I am relaxing and resting. If I can not be asleep and dreaming I can be relaxLaxing and dwelling on dreamy terraine of my inner imagination...like coaxing the wiff of the dreams on the other side of that elusive edge.
And I have a cat who is very upset if I am up and around. She will ignor me attention wise when I can not sleep...accept she will stroke my arm with her tail.

 

[KTMom91]

I have the same problem. Once I get into bed, it can take two hours or so to get to sleep. Melatonin helps, but if I don't have time to sleep it off, then I'm dopey the next day. Same with Benadryl. Hubby's REALLY LOUD SNORING doesn't help with being calm and relaxed, either. I have a boom box, off station so it's fuzzy, and really good earplugs, and that sort of blocks the snoring, but I still have trouble.

 

[goldenguru]

Chronic insomniac here too.

I have taken to the spare bedroom. I just can NOT sleep when hubby is snoring.

I read in bed to help myself relax.

I follow a strict bedtime routine (shower, brush teeth, glass of water, etc.)

I try not to get anxious about my sleeplessness. It's a vicious cycle.

Lastly, I have come to figure out over the years that sleepless nights won't kill me. Doesn't me I function very well the next day - but I'm not dead. Eventually, I get tired enough that I collapse and sleep soundly.

Can't wait to see what menopause brings. :/

 

[witzend]

The lunesta helps me, but I can still lay there and think, think, think for hours. I did the sleep study, but it showed exactly what I thought it would. With the lunesta, I fell asleep, woke up 90 minutes later before I hit REM, and didn't get back to sleep because my mind was going. So I sat there in bed for 5 more hours getting more and more angry because they wouldn't let me go home. I'll never do another one. That's how I sleep at home, too. I always wake up before REM.

Sleep labs seem to only be interested in apnea. It's not much help for those of us who don't have a problem with snoring.

 

[Star*]

Dear madame.......

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With our program you'll literally be driven....to sleep. You'll get all the tips and tricks for getting a quality nights sleep. Included in our program is one totally butt boring book 9567 pages long on prehistoric Russian rocks and plants, a video of a common yawn that loops over and over and over and YAWn.....OVER...herbal tea packages to read and if you order today an electric non-whistling tea kettle. And as a bonus we'll include a Ronco lullaby machine. This little diddy puts pictures of little lambs and kittens on your bedroom ceiling, sprays a fine mist of soft scent in the air and has white noise effect that you control with a remote.

For the low low introductory price of $1,685,493.12 - a good nights sleep can be yours.

Worry free/Risk free -

tax,tag, and license not included, may not be available in all areas, subject to promotional fees, finders fees, sleep habit fees, fees, and more fees yet to be determined.

Nothing equalls a good nights sleep - hope my solution bores you to snores

 

[katya02]

Wow, a board full of insomniacs. Maybe it's hereditary ... comes with difficult children.
I hardly ever get a full night's sleep. If I get past the 5 to 6 pm energy crash, I can
stay up - and up - and up. About the only thing that works is total exhaustion after a number of days with 2 - 3 hours' sleep, and then I get closer to 7 or 8. For one night.

Melatonin works for a day or two for me, then it doesn't. I wish I knew some solution. Mostly I read in the middle of the night if I wake up (or if husband's snoring drives me out of the bedroom).

 

[flutterbee]

I've had problems since I can remember, too. Now I just wait until I'm falling over before I go to bed. If I'm not falling over tired, I get in bed and my brain wakes up and it's like the energizer bunny. That's the only thing that's worked for me - even with sleep medications.

As far as waking up, I don't know. I wake up a lot, but generally fall quickly back to sleep.

I actually woke up more often on Lunesta. You might want to try another sleep medication. I take .5mg klonopin at night because of my restless legs and body, and I don't wake up and stay awake. And I don't feel hung over the next day.

 

[janebrain]

I don't have problems but my difficult child/easy child does and my difficult child 1 did as a teen as well. So, difficult child/easy child can't fall asleep and when she finally does it is time to get up for school. Then she has to have a nap after school--just seems like a vicious cycle. Yet, she says even if she is really tired she can't get to sleep at night.

If nothing else, at least I feel like difficult child/easy child isn't the only one with a problem after reading all these replies!

Thanks,
Jane

 

[witzend]

Star, you had me at the Ronco lullaby machine, but lost me with the price tag!

Seriously, I'd like to look into that brainwave thing where they can show you what is and what isn't relaxing for you. Nights that I am having a hard time, I lay there and each time I begin to get drowsy, my mind goes That's it!!! I'm falling asleep!!!! YAY YAY! - oh - that's not helping..." Then it just repeats over and over. I'm so cognizant of every little thought in my head. It's awful!

 

[goldenguru]

Ya know witz - I had another thought that might help. What if you listened to quiet music (with-lyrics) or had the TV on for background 'noise'. Sometimes when my mind is running marathons in my head, the diversion of something else is helpful. Just a thought.

 

[witzend]

GG, I have a portable DVD player that I sleep with. Most nights an old quiet movie does the trick. I can play the same movie over and over most times. Some nights, though, the dialogue goes through my head and it's just like thinking. White noise never worked for me, though.

I know that a lot of the problem is that I can't close my eyes. I do wear a sleep mask, but even so, when it's really bad, I'm just looking at the inside of the sleep mask!

 

[mom_to_3]

Me too! I've had this problem forever it seems and it's aggravating. I didn't have this problem that I can remember when I was in school or working. I think maybe that I brought this on myself after we had children and I quit working. I would stay up late for some quiet, me time after everyone else went to bed. I would get up early with our children and when I needed it, I took a nap when they did. I don't want to do this any more. I'd like to go to sleep between 10 & 11 and get up at a decent hour.

But like others here, I just cannot shut my brain down and I lay awake sometimes until 3a.m. it drives me bonkers. Things were really bad for me when I got Graves disease and went hyper thyroid. I'm on high gear when that happens. For whatever reason, my thyroid likes to swing from hyper to hypo and that definately affects me. I also had to take high doses of prednisone for about 6 months or so and that will really mess with your ability to sleep!

My family doctor gave me an rx for lorazepam. I was having anxiety and trouble sleeping. He actually said to take it twice a day. I was feeling and sleeping great, but........... I don't want to become addicted to it! I started only taking it in the evenings and only half the rx'd amount, I was still sleeping well. Then I began to worry again about taking it every night and thought I probably shouldn't. So I am now going thru lorazepam withdrawal and one of the symptoms is interrupted, poor quality sleep. Yessireee, it does do that. I haven't had any for a week now and plan to continue but I too have to learn to go to sleep.

 

[susiestar]

I don't feel nearly as alone now as I used to with this problem. I get so frustrated when the docs tell you to just "lay down and close your eyes" because "the problem is that people don't actually lay down and close their eyes".

I was ready to punch the sleep doctor that told me that - all 3 of them!

I can lay down and close my eyes for an entire night and not go to sleep. I can also sleep for 8 hours and NEVER enter REM sleep. I did that on one sleep study years ago.

The docs said i was "faking" sleep. But I SNORE. And on the videotape you could HEAR me snore. Not apnea, just a snore.

But nobody is interested. Now they say it is just part of the fibro.

At least we know we are not alone now.