This is a long-standing issue for me. It’s been three years now since I started having sleep problems. I have tried lots of things, including getting professional help. What I have managed to do by now, is to eliminate the “emotional” part to this. For the most part, I don’t freak out anymore when I can’t fall asleep. I used to get very worried and at times I’d get to the edge of having a panic attack over this. Now this doesn’t happen anymore, and my sleep is much better. Sometimes though, I will just not be able to sleep. And the longer it goes on, the less my chances of falling asleep that night because every hour that passes by increases my anxiety.
It’s less of a sleep hygiene issue and more of an anxiety one.
However, my wrist isn’t better and now my left one has joined the party too. This is getting out of hand (pun unintended). Virtually every movement of my wrists is painful at this point.
Thankfully I don’t have to train today but I doubt the situation will be better by tomorrow. Honestly I don’t understand what’s going on. This feels like there’s some severe inflammation of some sort going on.
I was thinking about giving them a shot too, but at the same time I can’t really see how the could help. It’s not like they are going to take load off my joints or anything.
Well actually, that’s exactly what they can do. They provide casting to the joint, which gives support and allows the wrap to take on some of the burden of the load. It’s like simulating having thicker wrists: wider distribution.
Good enough. Read up on how to properly wrap the wrist. They way the have it in the photo is wrong: you’d want it higher up, actually providing a cast like effect. I think elitefts may have some articles on it, and there’s bound to be something on youtube.
I’m not entirely sure that those two are as siloed as one may think. Your issues are similar to mine, higher stress and anxiety lead to poorer sleep and visa versa, it’s a rough loop that seems infinite at times. I’ve been diagnosed with a few mental health disorders, some of which I take greater stock in than others but all of which are somewhat alleviated by sleep. I am currently unmedicated but some of the medications do really help with sleep (seroquel, gabapentin) but mostly just working on clearing my mind (i’ve started meditating) provides some relief.
Good move on the wraps, as pressing gets heavier they definitely help me quite a bit.
I have been on benzodiazepines for a year and 9 months by now. I don’t know that this was a wise move for me to take them for so long. Basically a psychiatrist gave be lorazepam and I started taking it. I saw some effect but eventually not much. For a year or so I would take a pill (2.5 mg) a night, and on some nights where it got rough, I would go to one and a half or two. In hindsight, I might have been a little irresponsible about its use. The doctor had initially told me that I’d take it for a couple of months actually, but I lost touch with her and just decided to keep taking it.
Over the past months I’ve brought the dosage down to half a pill a night, and just a few days ago I decided that I’d be taking a quarter until I can confidently try and go without it at all. This is long overdue.
The point being, though, that not even meds have had a noticeable effect on my sleep. Some night I can sleep like a baby, and some nights I go to bed with some anxiety, fearing I won’t be able to falle asleep, and like a self-fulfilling prophecy, I just can’t sleep.
What did that result in then? Because, and please bear in mind I’m not actively trying to criticise you it’s just hard to express this without sounding like a know-it-all, laying in bed, tossing and turning, and looking at the alarm clock is far removed from anything I’d consider a sensible strategy. I can sympathise, because my sleep has been lackluster a lot.
Wraps are good. I don’t use them much but they do remove pain. I’m spending more time on building stronger wrists.
And, if I understand you correctly, you felt cold after sleeping poorly? I can’t speak for n>1 but for me that usually goes hand in hand so you’re not alone at least.
With your previous digestive ails I’d be careful about large amounts of coffee. Get caffeine pills if you absolutely need caffeine but unless attendence is mandatory sometimes you’ll learn better just by not going and getting the rest that you need. It’ll be a judgement call every time, of course.
Edit: saw your post about medication. Is that all though?
The latter, I described the outcome in my previous post.
With the therapist, we worked on other things as well, not just sleep issues, but I gotta admit she wasn’t able to help much with that specific area. She was big on having me watch “self-relaxation” videos at night, but they didn’t work for me.
What has worked is acknowledging that I’m not going to die or anything if I don’t sleep 8 hours a night every night, and seeing that the next day I can mostly function well even without a good night’s sleep. I mostly worked on that by myself though.
My therapist would have me talk a lot and try to put into words thoughts I might have had but was unable to process, but like I said that had little effect on the sleep issue per se.
I might not have worded that the clearest way, but the issue is that when I can’t sleep I get really hot, and end up sleeping in my underwear because, no matter how cold the room is (think window wide open in December), my hot waves won’t go away.
The issue is that, as you can imagine, waking up 90% naked in the morning with 2 °C means you’re going to be quite cold. Yesterday, I woke up so cold that I had to put on half my wardrobe, and the coldness still didn’t go away for several hours. That’s what I was saying.
We have online classes and in my mind, there is no excuse for not getting up, walking 3 meters to the living room, and attending class. Not to mention it makes me feel like I’m missing pretty much the best part of my day (I can rewatch the recordings later, but it’s not substitute for participating live, IMO).
If you can, I’d recommend not having an alarm clock.
I’ve found, and have had friends report back success that also have stress/anxiety issues, restful sleep comes easier in the absence of an alarm clock. Personally, if I have something scheduled early I find it harder to stay asleep. Similarly, I’ll be more restless if I know the alarm will wake me. If there’s still a time I must meet, it’s simply more convenient to go to bed earlier. Incidentally, this tends to reinforce good sleep hygiene and winding down practices.
If you absolutely, positively, need an alarm, I’ve had great success with a wake-up light. My body seems less apprehensive about that sort of an alarm, and I’ll wake up from the light.
I don’t have any experience with benzos. I do have experience with melatonin and glycine. Here are my observations,
Melatonin
1-3 mg is best for me
5 mg is overkill in my opinion
makes “tolerance” set in far more quickly, but does not help me fall asleep quicker/deeper
I prefer 1 mg
Will eventually lose efficacy, so worth “rotating”, or “deloading”
Glycine
3-5 g works best for me
10 g can work, and knock me out cold. Can also make me excited, and cost me sleep.
Magnesium
I like 500mg of bisglycinate
I’ll take it even if I’m having glycine, despite that being somewhat of a double whammy
simply too lazy/cheap to acquire additional varities
Weighted blankets work
Note that they do tend to make me run rather warm compared to any other sort of cover, winter duvet included
Tea!
Chamomille
Passionflower
Blends containing valerian- and or licorice-root
Might not be the herbs themselves, but just having a staple routine around winding down
Mellow yoga sessions
Downdog yoga sessions (Restorative/Yin) where I focus intently on my breath and turning of the lights in the apartment help me get to a yawny and tired state
Recommend brushing teeth first so it’s possible to go to bed immediately thereafter
Some people like sound while sleeping
I’m such a person, I’ll have Netflix running all night long with something I’ve seen before
Yes, this is in direct opposition to sleep hygiene rules but it works for me
Lowest possible screen-brightness and night-mode
Sometimes even an eye mask or place the screen (phone) under the bed or something, obscuring the light but leaving the speakers unblocked
If I can’t sleep I
Go somewhere else in the apartment and give up trying to fall asleep, I’ll have another go at it later. Or I’ll try and sleep elsewhere (couch).
Yeah, having sleep problems suck, and a lot of the above mentions take a lot of time and/or money but that’s just the hand we’ve been dealt. Personally, I try to look at these things as something positive as much as I can.
For instance, I view the yoga as something that’ll help me keep mobile and supple, and save me time warming-up and delay the time until my next injury as well as a form of active recovery that coincidentally also aids my sleep. If I only viewed it as a chore for falling asleep I’d presumably come to hate it.
Not sure how cold it gets in Italy in December compared to here but I worry about your central heating if an open window will allow it to get that cold indoors. My apartment won’t get much colder than 10 degrees inside, and I don’t have a window, I have a balcony door.
Tried all of them, to no avail. I could give them another try when I finally come off of benzo completely.
This is interesting and I have actually been considering giving them a try.
I tried this as well. Mostly two years ago. It did work at times, but generally speaking I can’t say it had a consistent effect on my ability to fall asleep.
Second this. I also found myself going out for a walk (at 3am or something) on a couple of occasions where the anxiety was getting the best of me.
The heat is fine. I just used to turn it off in my room at night, knowing I’d get hot anyway. Not too much use for it when you’re going to keep the window wide open all night.
@T3hPwnisher just got these bad boys delivered. Today is back day so I likely won’t observe much of an effect, but I’ll let you know how they feel on Thursday when I have my push day.
