going to bed for the night consistently

The night was overall OK, I did not wake up many times. When I woke up at 5:55 AM, I planned to go back to sleep right away for another hour but couldn't: I was hungry. I got up and ate a quick hot breakfast and took Geodon. Then I went back to bed and put on an audiobook but could not fall asleep. At 7AM, the alarm rang. I did not feel alert enough to start the day. I turned off the alarm, set another alarm for 8AM, continued listening to the audiobook and actually fell asleep. I did wake up and get up after the alarm rang. I did the dental hygiene and some morning stretches though not all and attended the first work meeting on ZOOM. I then did some work. I am not feeling super alert but also not sleepy enough to need a nap. I hope I will pull through today. It was so unfortunate that I had to have an early breakfast that disrupted the night.

I am thinking of increasing Topamax. Take 25 mg in the morning to reduce daytime hunger and 25 mg at night to be able to sleep through the night and not need to get up to eat.

Tonight I have personal training really late. I plan to quickly eat and go to bed right after it. If that does not work, I will need to work with a trainer on finding another, earlier time on a different day to do the training.

I woke up at 5:55AM. I thought I would go back to sleep but I could not: I was hungry. I got up and had a quick hot breakfast and went back to bed, listening to an audiobook, but I could not fall asleep. When the alarm rang at 7AM, I turned it off and set another alarm for 8AM. I was able to fall asleep. I got up at 8:15AM after the second alarm rang, did my dental routine, and attended a ZOOM work meeting at 8:30AM.

AT 9:40AM I decided to take a short nap to have a "super good day". I realized that I was not fully well slept and that the day ahead, with work and personal training in the evening, would be too much for me to handle.

I went to bed and put on Yoga Nidra narrative on YouTube. I fell asleep fast and then woke up but was too tired to actually get up. It was so weird, being awake but too tired to get up. That was going on for a long time. When I finally got up, it was already.... 12:24PM.

I do feel amazingly perky, but the nap took more than 2.5 hours.

Maybe that the early morning was messed up by hunger is to blame. Tonight, I will take a second Topamax pill. I will take 25 mg right before bedtime and hope that there will be more bedtime hunger.

For me, I've learned that trying to sleep on a set schedule doesn't work well. I go to bed once I feel like I will be able to go to sleep "soon." It turns out that my body/brain like the 1am bedtime the most consistently. I about drove myself crazy for years trying to do the whole sleep hygiene thing. It's just not for me. I hope you find a method that works well for you!

Many sleep hygiene things did not work for me. Turning off devices one hour before expected bedtime did not work. Going out into daylight first thing in the morning did nothing at all. So I totally get what you are saying.

It sounds like you are a true night owl and 1AM is the perfect bedtime for you. That is your natural chronotype.

For years I consistently couldn’t sleep until 3-4 in the morning no matter what I did. I never took naps. Never had electronics in the bedroom. Tried sun light, melatonin, benzodiazepines, you name it I tried it. Had been that way since I was a kid. I figured the only thing that would work to get a reasonable sleep hour would be to move time zones. I think I figured France time zone worked out. But finally after being given a high dose of ambian during one hospitalization I could sleep. So for years I was on 20 mg ambian ( twice the recommended dose for men) then I tried to get off of it with my current pdoc. He took me down slowly but no luck. But then he tried gabapentin so now I’m on 10 mg ambian and 500 mg gabapentin and can sleep at midnight.

That is a low dose of Gabapentin @Nammu. I am taking between 900 mg and 1500 mg, but I take it only secondarily for sleep and primarily for the amelioration of EPS. Gabapentin improves sleep architecture and deep sleep in insomniacs. I am glad it allowed you to reduce Ambien to recommended dosage levels. Ambien did nothing at all for me, but I did not try dosages above recommended. Lunesta, Sonata... same thing. This whole class of meds. Did nothing.

Sleep is not easy, is it?

The ambian helps me fall asleep and the gabapentin keeps me asleep. The only reason why I was on such I high dose is because I was inpatient and nothing was working. They were desperate. The night shift doesn’t like it when people are awake! ruins their plans.

I guess I can try increasing Gabapentin to see if I stay asleep better. The FDA approved max is 3600 mg so I have room to grow. And my neurologist says that for his purposes he safely has his neuro patients on as high as 4500 mg.

Gaba does nada for me. I've been on Ambien 12.5mg for decades. It usually works, probably 80% of the time, but my body wakes me up numerous times in the "night." I can't recall the last time I slept more than 2 hours straight through. Meds definitely work differently for different people.

My therapist is BIG on sleep and sleep hygiene. We finally just stopped talking about it because we reached an impasse.

Some people just love getting on their soapboxes. I am glad the therapist at least was able to relent.

10:04 PM going to bed.

First off, had to get up several times to pee, and no wonder since I had a personal training session late during which I drank a liter of water.

In general, I just can't believe my registered dietitian encourages me to drink more water because I already go to the restroom so often. But I do get her point, though: I am not drinking the recommended amount of water on the days when I do not work out.

In the middle of the night, I started listening to Celtic myths. The tales were unusual, unlike anything I had read or heard before. I remember waking up suddenly to a very dramatic point in a story. I now realize that I just woke up then, but the impression I got was that I was awake more than I was asleep. When the alarm rang at 7AM, I was not rested and Oura showed that I had slept less than 6 hours and I need more than 7 hours on Oura to function. So I went back to bed and put on Yoga Nidra which usually puts me to sleep. I then woke up, on my own, at... 9:38AM. I felt wonderful and since then have been productive, but.... almost 12 hours in bed. It is completely abnormal and I do not think it is psychiatric because I clearly am not depressed and hypersomnia is a symptom of depression.

I have made an appointment to discuss all this with the internist next Friday. Will print out Oura data to show her.

Going to bed late. got carried away posting on MSF tbh .

10:53 PM

I am doing an experiment tonight.

I will have very gentle Chopin music playing softly on my computer in the second bedroom as one background.

I will have the white noise machine going for 30 minutes next to my CPAP on my bedside table as another background.

And I will listen to a familiar audiobook, a familiar story, so that I do not get startled in the middle of the night by some super dramatic apexes of Celtic myths (last night) or Poirot stories (has been known to happen).

So I will have three sources of audio, one in the foreground and two in the background, and we will see what happens.

I also ate a lot of Ethiopian meat before bedtime, took Topamax 25 mg and I am hoping not to wake up hungry in the middle of the night.

Good night!

I like the idea of playing Chopin. Sometimes if I'm having trouble sleeping, I'll put music on low and lay down and close my eyes and just try to focus on the music. I find this restful and about 75% of the time, I am able to fall asleep.

I liked waking up in the morning and hearing Chopin playing softly. The white noise, I think it does nothing.

The night was not uneventful. I woke up hungry again and had plain kefir with many rye crackers. I am hoping that Topamax will eventually kick in. And Mounjaro/Ozempic, they clearly have stopped working for me.

Still have to pour distilled water, take off my workout clothes, and put on an audiobook. It will be 10:30PM when I go to bed tonight.

Took my nighttime meds including Topamax and ate right before bedtime.

Did not take a nap today.

Had a tumultuous night. Woke up hungry, ate an apple with peanut butter and rye crackers, drank kefir. Closer to morning. the BiPAP mask start bothering me to no end, with my face itching and I had to take it off. And then all morning and early afternoon I was in bed, not sleeping but not able to get up, either. I probably had low blood pressure but I did not have a monitor nearby so I could not measure it.

Now I am catching up on work, wfh. Next week I will need to go to the office. I am dreading it.

10:47PM

alas, my eczema is back after a long period of remission. applied mometasone to my neck

Identified one of thr challenges to getting uninterrupted sleep by counting how many times I had to get up to pee. 7 times. Unbelievable. 7 times between going to bed at almost 11pm and getting up at 9am.

Took off the CPAP mask at night because it was bothering me. I think eczema is to blame.

Spent some time during the night laying awake

Did not wake up hungry.. Maybe this is because I took 50 mg Topamax at bedtime. I will repeat it tonight.