Missing my mornings!

For me the worst thing about not sleeping during the night is not having my mornings.  It does my head in. 

When I was younger, I was always one of those people who used to get up at 6am and be in the office by 7.30am or 8am.  My activity level in the mornings was always phenomenal.  I always had a hit list of things to be done each day and  usually had most of them done by midday.

Nowadays, with my sleeping pattern running from about 3am to 10am and most mornings waking with a migraine, I rarely get anything productive done before "lunchtime".  More like "breakfast time" as far as I'm concerned.

Not only that.  Living on my own, there is no routine in the house.  When things were very bad and I often just didn't sleep at night at all, it felt as though I was in some sort of netherworld and really wasn't part of human society.  It was horrible, quite bizarre.  I felt so isolated as even when I was awake, I was so spaced out and exhausted that I couldn't really do anything productive at all.  At one point my sleeping hours were running from about 5pm to midnight, just frightening.  The consultant wondered why I laughed when he told me to get out of bed at 8am every day no matter how badly I'd slept.

I know that my condition now is much improved and most days, I'm able to get a decent amount of productive stuff done in the afternoons and evenings.  I do try to avoid doing "work" in the evenings, but on a good day I can get a decent 5 - 6 hours done between midday and 7pm ish and often do an hour or two in the late evening/early morning.  Occasionally I get nothing done, but most days at least a couple of hours.

I think it's important to try to have some sort of normal routine that makes you feel at least part of the human race.  Even if I can't control my mornings, and sometimes don't get much done in the afternoons because I'm very exhausted or my head just hurts too much, having a traditional evening with a normal meal and relaxing and knitting/watching tv makes life a lot more bearable.  

But I still really miss the mornings.  I miss those walks to the office or the railway station or the bus stop in the early morning, especially when the sun was coming up or shining on a crisp cold dawn.

Hope you get some decent sleep tonight!
Marie

So how is that sleeping working for you at the moment? 

I thought I'd talk about a few non-medical ways of helping you get off to sleep, just some sensible do's and don'ts that might help you fall off each night.

DO

• Try to stick to a routine - the body and brain respond well to routine and most of the time your body will recover from a short bout of insomnia by simply following your normal routine.

• Just try to follow a normal healthy lifestyle, but don't go to extremes.  Do your normal exercise - whether it's a visit to the gym or walking to the bus stop.   Eat sensibly and do enjoy a bit of something nice, be it chocolate or a glass of wine.

• Have a relaxing bath or shower before bed.

• Try putting some lavender in the bedroom - maybe some drops of lavender essence on the pillow.  A lot of people swear by this to help them get to sleep.

• Drink camomile tea if your brain is overactive before you go to bed - it does seem to help calm me down.

• Something relaxing - maybe read a book in bed, or watch a relaxing tv show before going to bed (don't watch tv in the bedroom).  Anything that will help your brain to slow down.

• Have sex.  We all know how relaxed it helps us feel! 

DON'T

• Go to bed hungry.  I'm convinced that one of the reasons I couldn't sleep when I was younger was going home every night and starving myself to loose weight.

• Go to bed straight after a large meal.

• Exercise late in the evening.

• Start working late in the evening.

• Drink too much or eat too much - either in the evening or during the day.  Keep things moderate!

• LIE IN BED TRYING TO GET TO SLEEP.  If you're not asleep within about 20 - 30 minutes, get up and go into a different room and do something else.  

You have to experiment a little to find out what works for you. 

I know that the best thing I can do is to promise myself that I'll have a good half hour read before I go to sleep.  I look forward to getting through the next chapter or two of my book.  And guess what happens?  As soon as I start reading, I'm asleep within 5 - 10 minutes.  And if I wake up during the night and can't get back to sleep, I get up and go into the sitting room and sit down to read for half an hour.  And 9 times out of 10, I'm asleep in a few minutes. 

You have to find out what works for you.

Hope you have a good sleep tonight!

Bernadette

So what is insomnia?

I was thinking that everybody has a bad night now and again, or a bad week or a bad month or two.  Most people have disturbed sleep if they're worried or excited, maybe busy at work or concerned about family or health problems.  So I guess we're all insomniacs now and again.  In my case, it's always just been an inability to relax. When I'm awake, it's as though my brain is permanently switched on. I've tried all sorts of relaxation techniques and while some of them help to some degree, they really just don't make any significant difference to the way my brain works.

I don't know what the medical definition of insomnia would be, but I guess that it becomes a problem when it affects your ability to function. We all feel grotty after a restless night, but as long as you can get up, get to work, live a normal life, then while it makes you feel lousy, it's not affecting your ability to get on with your normal routine.  It's a problem when it affects your ability to function. I used to regularly fall asleep at my desk, once for a couple of hours!  But I realised it was a real problem when I started to fall asleep driving, usually on the motorway!  And then the migraines started....

Our body needs a balance of excercise, rest, nutrition (ie food and drink) to enable us to live.  If you only had 60% of the food you need to survive, you'd eventually die of starvation.  So if you only have 60% of the the rest you need over a long period of time, it's bound to have a significant effect!

Of course the occasional bad night or bad week will balance out over time.  So if you're going through a difficult period and it's affecting your sleep, chances are that it'll sort itself out over time and you'll fall back into your normal sleeping pattern once things in your life have settled down.

The problem is when your life settles down but your sleeping doesn't get back to normal.  Then the insomnia becomes a problem in its own account.  And if you start worrying about not sleeping, that just exacerbates the problem!


So we all suffer from insomnia from time to time.  It becomes an issue and a health problem when it affects your ability to function.  And the best thing you can do is to try and not stress about it.  Don't go to bed thinking "oh I hope I sleep tonight" because chances are you'll get yourself stressed up about it all and not sleep.

There are loads of things you can try to help sleep and I'll talk about them over the next few months, from lavender on the pillow to medication.  I'm sure you'll find something eventually that will help without having to resort to medication, but I do think that the best advice is simply not to worry about it. 

Bernadette











 

Calling all insomniacs!

Hi World

Thought I'd start a blog about something I'm really good at.  Yes, I guess I'm the world's most skilled insomniac! 

For over 20 years now, I've suffered from lack of sleep on a regular basis and it has completely changed my life.  I can't work normal office hours so have had to start working for myself.  It has caused me to be a chronic migraine sufferer and I suffer from depression.  It was a major factor in my marriage ending - guess it can't be much fun being married to someone who is totally exhausted all of the time.

There is a lot to talk about when it comes to insomnia.  But there are lots of long sleepless nighthours to blog about it!  More than anything else, I just thought it would be good to set upa blog so that people know that they aren't alone - there's nothing worse than living in the surreal world of being wide awake at 4am night after night and thinking that you're on your own.  There are only so many times you can watch reruns of Frasier on Sky!

Anyway after years of trying to make it go away, I've sort of come to terms with how I am and don't fight it any more.  I'm building a business that I can do from home and in the hours that I'm awake, rather than trying to fit into the corporate world of 9-5.  

So this is me saying hello and hoping it helps you to know that you're not alone. Over the next few months I'll be talking about the practical and psycological effects insomnia has had on my life and how some of the medical/non-medical things I've tried to help.  Clearly they haven't worked for me, but most people find something that helps at some point, so it's worth knowing about them so you can decide for yourself whether you want to try them. 

I'll welcome your comments and any suggestions you may have for others to try. 

But although I'm still an insomniac, I'm feeling a lot more relaxed and confident about life since I stopped trying to fit into the 9-5 world.  And I really think that the most important advice that I could give anyone suffering from insomnia, whether long term or short term is to relax and try not to fight it.  I know that's difficult when you have to get up for work at 6 or 7am and you're counting down the hours.  But surely you're better having 3-4 hours of decnet sleep than 3-4 hours of interrupted/light sleep. 

So I'd suggest the following:

• First, get out of bed - you should only be in bed if you're sleeping or having sex!  You'll make things worse lying in bed TRYING to sleep.
• Next, make a cup of chamomile tea or something else soothing.
• Then put some gentle lighting in the sitting room and read a book.  Something relaxing, not revision for your physics finals!  If you TRY to stay awake to read, I'm betting you'll be asleep within half an hour.  It might be in the armchair but chances are, you'll wake up at some point and get yourself to bed for the rest of the night.

Of course, this won't cure a long term problem, but will probably help if you are having an occasional bout of sleeplessness.   The main thing is not to TRY to get to sleep - you'll simply tense up your brain and your body and probably make the problem much worse.

I'll be back soon with my next Insomniac's blog!  Wherever you are in the world, I hope that you have a good sleep tonight.

Bernadette