I'm planning to take a lot of THC tonight right before I go to bed(after a certain amount I stop and/or don't remember having dreams). Bad stomach means I can't just drink away the nightmares like a civilized human being, but that's just how it goes sometimes.
I might finally let my doctor up my sleeping medication if this continues. She's been trying to get me to up my dose by 25 percent for around a year now, but I've been shluffing her off because I don't want to deepen my dependency and increase my withdrawal symptoms if I eventually decide to taper off. That, and my body will eventually stop responding to the higher dose just like it has with my current dose.
However, I am really sick of waking up to find myself beating the shit out of my bedframe. Upping my dose will stop that for another year or two. But then I'll have to up the dose again, and I don't want to end up a drugged-out zombie, I'm enough of a zombie as it is.
Sorry for the tangent. If there's a thread specifically related to issues sleeping/insomnia, point me in the right direction.
Not sure of any thread, but magnesium deficiency is both widespread these days, and a cause of sleeping problems, so you may want to try that. You see, magnesium is a cofactor for one of the enzymes needed to produce serotonin, which is in turn needed to produce melatonin, so magnesium deficiency can cause depression and/or insomnia. Other common nutritional problems with this biochemical pathway can include:
- Low zinc. Zinc is needed to convert vitamin B6 to its active form, P5P. P5P is another cofactor needed to produce serotonin. Like low magnesium, it is also very common these days, especially in people who have excess gut yeast (which is also very common due to modern low fiber, high carb diets, as well as due to modern abuse of antibiotics). This is a category that includes autistic people, as autistic people have high gut candida and clostridia levels.
- Low vitamin B6, leading to low P5P (see above). Vitamin B6 also helps the body absorb zinc in the first place; B6, zinc, and tryptophan all work together. Vitamin B6 is depleted by detoxifying acetaldehyde, which you get from drinking alcohol and/or having gut yeast problems (so again, it is a big problem for autistic people).
- Low tryptophan. Trytophan is the raw material to be turned into serotonin and melatonin. It's also the raw material to make picolinic acid, which helps absorb zinc.
- Low niacin (vitamin B3). The body can make niacin from tryptophan, but it's inefficient and wastes a lot of it; thus, low niacin can cause low tryptophan. It's better to get niacin from the diet (or supplements) instead.
- Low tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4). This can be caused by low levels of folate, a B vitamin. This problem is more common in autistic people. BH4 is a cofactor in several important reactions, including the production of serotonin (and thus melatonin) from tryptophan, norepinephrine (and thus epinephrine) from dopamine, and nitric oxide from arginine. I would suspect this only if you have both insomnia and ADD/ADHD. As a supplement, it needs to be refrigerated, so it can only be found in very fresh foods, and very few of those (human breast milk and royal jelly are the only two I know of) but it can be boosted with a rather expensive but known effective supplement.
The other major sleeping problem I have experience in dealing with is sleep apnea. There are a number of symptoms of this including snoring, but one includes waking up with a sore throat. Everybody knows that the risk of sleep apnea increases with increased weight, but allergies are also a major factor, and these can have some surprising sources. A while ago, I had a problem with mold spores being emitted from the kitchen and bathroom drains. You can't see them, but they can definitely interfere with your quality of sleep. What helped was to pour some bleach down the drains every few days, and keep them capped off when not in use.
Bedding can also become contaminated with mold spores without showing any symptoms, either in terms of sight or smell. Once this happens, it can make you sick even when it has just been laundered. Bleach or mold killing solutions then become necessary. Even the clothes that you sleep in can likewise have problems. If you find that you sleep better when naked, your clothes may have mold and/or chemical contaminants. I developed a chemical sensitivity to the chemicals in dryer sheets. Even the traces left behind in a dryer that other people had previously used dryer sheets in would make me sick. We had to get a new dryer, never ever use dryer sheets in it, and dry everything for 3-4 hours each time. Very heavy blankets or clothing may simply dry too slowly to be kept totally mold-free, and will have to be thrown away.
Food allergies can cause sleep apnea too. As your body digests the food while you sleep, the food allergies cause nasal congestion, which interferes with your breathing and wakes you up. The remedy here is to finish eating several hours before going to bed. The nutritional supplement quercetin can help, because it inhibits histamine release (it also helps the body utilize zinc). Not only does histamine trigger congestion, which interferes with sleep, but histamine in the central nervous system is also a neurotransmitter that causes wakefulness, libido, and irritability. Some people, especially autistic people, have a condition called histamine intolerance, where histamine from foods can make it all the way into the brain, where it can cause or contribute to insomnia, anger problems, and excess/deviant sexuality. (Cows like MovieBob and Pat Tomlinson are
walking waddling,
talking oinking examples of the effects of uncontrolled histamine intolerance.) Foods containing histamine include anything fermented (like alcohol or vinegar), anything aged (like cheese), anything that goes bad quickly (like seafood), and anything that's kept around long enough (like leftovers and condiments, especially catsup). While trying to figure out the cause of your sleeping problems, it can help to keep a journal of what you ate and when.
Good luck! I've had all too much experience dealing with these problems, please send me a PM if you want to ask any questions.
