Sleep apnea and other disturbances Archives

For Happygal - Info Regarding Sleep

Hi Happygal,

I receive emails from this coconut oil group, and this one came in yesterday, and I instantly thought of you. I hope this helps you some.

Namaste`

Joanie

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 23:02:15 +0800
From: "Discussion Group"
Subject: Re: high cortisol - Tish

I suffered terribly from high cortisol at the wrong times and there
doesn't seem to be any quick fix for this. Here is what I've learned
and what my doc suggested:

The biggest thing with the most long term improvement potential,
aside from finding the cause, is to get more sleep. This is a
cunnundrum with adrenal fatigue. Apparently, the less you are able to
sleep the worse the cortisol situation becomes. My doctor gave me
several samples of sleep aids and a muscle relaxant. I was to not use
any one sleep aid for long to avoid addiction and loss of efficacy.
She suggested melatonin, which I use. She said that when I get sleepy
at all, I was to go to bed. Because if you stay up past that moment,
you'll get a second wind or rise in cortisol and will not sleep for
hours or at all. This was very true for me. I got sleepy at 7:30 to
8:00 and that's when I went to bed. She said not to get up if you
wake and watch TV. The light from it is in the range that depletes
melatonin. She told me to stay in bed and rest my body because this
is helpful, too. She said not to sleep in late if that is when you
sleep finally. But, here I have read other advice saying sleep
whenever you can because your adrenals won't recover without it. She
was concerned that odd hour sleeping would further disrupt my cycle.
I found this not to be an issue for me.

The best advice I have found to accomplish some sleep is on this
page: http://home.earthlink.net/~astrology/curing_insomnia.htm I
found many items on it so helpful. It is good advice all around.
Taking a piece of cheese to bed with me really helped because when
the cortisol rises, blood sugar drops and this woke me. I also found
that the herbs were much better sleep aids than the drugs and had far
fewer side effects.

My doctor advised taking adaptogens and adrenal aids such as gensing,
buplureum, ashwganda, licorish root, adrenal glandulars. There are
several more but I can't remember them all. Gensing comes up most
often as a good one. Music also lowers cortisol and there are studies
that demonstrate this. My doctor suggested I get a white noise
machine or play soothing CDs in earphones during the night. Both
these things have the added benifit of blocking out outside noise
which the adrenal fatigued are super sensitive to. Or, you can use
earplugs.

I found it helpful to take my minerals at dinner and to take an
adrenal glandular (for some reason this relaxed my muscles), a
licorish root tablet, and eat some jello or mix knox in water and
swallow it before bed. Jello and knox contain glycine an amino acid
that calms the brain. The Amino Acid GABA, that you can buy from Life
Extension, WWW.lef.org will help, but it always left me down in the
dumps the next day. 5-htp helps many people but it had little affect
on my insomnia. It also raises GABA in the brain.

Don't exercise within about 3-4 hours before bedtime. This tends to
raise cortisol for several hours and make you feel for awake. If you
have too low of cortisol at bedtime (it goes up and down all over the
place) then exercise will help.

Don't eat a big dinner any nearer than 2 hours before bedtime.

Take a hot bath 2 hours before bedtime. This has a relaxing effect.
It did for me.

Try anti-inflamatories. With adrenal fatigue inflamatory agents build
up in the body and can also bother sleep with increased discomfort
and pain.

Don't watch TV or have bright lights a couple of hours before
bedtime. Try reading a non exciting book with lower lights.

I often woke miserably hungry from the blood sugar drop after 20
minutes of dozing. Sometimes the cheese didn't cut it so I found that
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of salt in a glass of water did the trick. With
adrenal fatigue, you dump salt. You know this by how much you have to
get up in the night to go. People with adrenal fatigue actually need
sodium. A good book on what happens with adrenal fatigue and how to
make long term changes to get well is "Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st
Century Stress Syndrome"
http://www.smart-publications.com/books/adrenal-fatigue.html It has
really good advice about life changes and what adrenal fatigue does
to you physiologically. Another good book is "America Exhauseted"

Get more protein and improve the nutrition in your diet. You can't
make hormones or function properly without adequate amino acids.

Avoid sugar, highly digestible carbos, and caffiene till you get
well. This causes a rise in adrenalin and adds a burden to the whole
body and the adrenals.

If you have allergies to things avoid them. Alergins raise cortisol.
Stress raises cortisol.

Re: For Happygal - Info Regarding Sleep

Re: For Happygal - Info Regarding Sleep

Re: For Happygal - Info Regarding Sleep (Archive in sleep.)

Re: For Happygal - Info Regarding Sleep