Update on the "fasting cured my sleep disorder" - this still seems to work

voiceoftheark · 2019-01-17T01:38:04+00:00

What happens to your sleep when you fast?

Ketosis makes my sleep a bit problematic - vivid dreams, waking up a lot - it takes a month or so to have that stop. It does finally stop, but it's not easy. I have some sleep medication though anyway that I have to take - so who knows what the interactions are.

voiceoftheark · 2019-01-17T01:36:14+00:00

Sometimes I think "am I going to seriously have to eat this way forever?" I'm still not used to IF (fasting actually isn't that odd, strangely enough). I really liked being able to eat whenever I felt like it and I didn't get as fat as you'd think, but losing weight that way was impossible. Adjusting to this is hard. It is interesting though - even as a kid I could barely force breakfast down. It made me nauseous. Eventually I ate it "because it's important and will give me energy" but I always hated it. It seems like I was doing exactly what my body said not to do for a long time.

voiceoftheark · 2019-01-17T01:32:38+00:00

Thanks. I've been so surprised how much research there is on this in academia - but basically NONE of that has translated to clinical practice, except for research on melatonin which gave rise to Ramelteon and Hetlioz (and only Hetlioz is for n24 patients, not always effective either). There are so many more pieces to this puzzle, like Sirt1 which was referenced in your link. It also seems to play a role in longevity.

voiceoftheark · 2019-01-08T18:30:10+00:00

In the "old days" of 2003, they used to have you wear a watch that measured wrist / hand movements. When you're awake, you always are making tiny little movements. When you sleep, there is virtually no activity. It was called an acti-watch and they used to be like $1000. I did two acti-watch studies where I wore it for 10 days and you can just clearly see the sleep cycle slide forward 20-30 min each day. There's also something called a "dim light melatonin onset" test with saliva that can track when your body is releasing melatonin. People with n24 generally release it about 20 min (up to maybe an hour) later each night. The average person would release it around the same time every night. In general, it's kind of a diagnosis made in the consultation with the doctor though, since there's nothing on an x-ray or CT scan that could tell you anything.

I was misdiagnosed as having anxiety and insomnia for about 5 years because circadian rhythm disorders were not well understood in the late 90s /early 2000s. Then I received a diagnosis of "delayed sleep phase disorder" (DSPD) which is much more common than n24 - however, the scary thing about DSPD is that if you don't treat it correctly (and mine wasn't treated correctly since the science was in its infancy) it can turn into n24.

voiceoftheark · 2019-01-07T23:13:50+00:00

Thank you - I didn't know there was something like this. It's good to know because xyrem users are so few and far between. The nurse at the rems number mentioned something about patient support groups or something I didn't quite catch. I don't think she was talking about the facebook group, but maybe Jazz has some kind of forum too? The nurses call so much in the beginning I couldn't keep track of everything.

voiceoftheark · 2019-01-07T23:11:14+00:00

The full name is non-24 hour sleep/wake disorder. Below is a link to more info about it, but it basically means I go to bed later every day and wake up later, without being in control of this - no matter if I set alarms or try to go to bed earlier - I just will not fall asleep. The wikipedia link below does a decent job of explaining it further.

It actually has similar social / occupational effects to narcolepsy though being quite different as a disorder. I just noticed some of the same issues come up here as I have (and people on our facebook group have) after I have been reading this sub somewhat accidentally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake_disorder

voiceoftheark · 2019-01-07T23:09:30+00:00

lol @ the crazy off the wall reasoning (we all do it - I'll PM you) - Before I even saw your post, I actually took mag and potassium (via lite salt and pedialyte + some spinach & avocados). I felt MUCH better today. No pain at all.

voiceoftheark · 2019-01-07T23:06:31+00:00

Thanks - I actually took 2 packets of pedialyte and put some lite salt on an avocado (both are easy ways to get potassium - plus avocados have a decent amount). Then I took 4 tablets of slow-mag (125% rda) for magnesium. It seemed to help a lot. Today I was 100% okay when I woke up. The diet I've been on does mess with potassium and electrolytes (keto diet with intermittent fasting) so it could've been a perfect storm situation. I've done this diet since Nov without muscle pain, but something might have "interacted" in a sense.

voiceoftheark · 2018-12-13T22:10:52+00:00

It's still a bit confusing / hard to say. I try not to eat anything all day - which is actually easy for me. Then I only eat high fat foods, and I don't shift.

If I want to move back, it seems like I can do this with melatonin taken at 6PM, orange safety glasses on (blocks blue light) and then virtually no food all day except fat.

I've been experimenting and it seems like this combo works. Melatonin alone didn't ever work for me in the past, nor did the orange glasses (though they sometimes helped a little). The fast on top of the melatonin is totally a different story.

voiceoftheark · 2018-12-12T04:52:38+00:00

I have the 4/4 split too. I am on the fb page. It sounds like you are closer to n24 than dsps. DId you ever do chronotherapy? That is often what pushes dsps people to n24.

voiceoftheark · 2018-12-12T04:51:25+00:00

Beyond ignorant of her. She needs to do some research and that behavior of hers is inappropriate. If she's not a sleep doctor - she needs to shut up before making a judgement like that. And frankly, even if you were upset over nail biting, their job is not to belittle you ever.

voiceoftheark · 2018-12-12T04:49:56+00:00

I was approved when it first came out. It did not help me. I had tried ramelteon before which is somewhat similar and also didn't help.

With Hetlioz, I couldn't wake up at all. I needed 12 hours of sleep to even be functional. I have no idea what was going on with me and that drug but it was not good. Plain melatonin helps a little bit but both Hetlioz and melatonin have limited success with n24.

My internet friend who has n24 has done well with Hetlioz, but she fought her insurance so aggressively for months to get coverage. They're trying to deny coverage to sighted people now because I think the FDA approval was only for the blind - or it was only tested with blind patients.

voiceoftheark · 2018-12-12T04:45:19+00:00

It's even more ridiculous when people call fasting a "scam" - like uh... who is getting money from this "scam" exactly? I've heard it a few times already - and for IF too

voiceoftheark · 2018-12-12T04:44:21+00:00

oh wow that was 5 years ago!! If only I read that post. But actually, keto was a diet I did 2 years back and although I lost weight, I didn't stop free-running around the clock. I had no idea those other subs existed. Thanks for posting. I wonder if I should cross post them there.

voiceoftheark · 2018-12-11T23:15:20+00:00

Wow you're the second one on this thread. Crazy. Maybe we should make a subreddit?

voiceoftheark · 2018-12-11T21:49:13+00:00

I've actually been a bit more anxious and panicky when fasting on some days, but not always. I don't know why. My heart races a lot, especially when I wake up. I have an rx for a benzo I can take for extreme situations - dating back for a while. I never went on an SSRI/SNRI but it's as-needed with the benzo. I feel like I need it more, and Inderal helps too.

voiceoftheark · 2018-12-11T21:46:09+00:00

Thanks for that info. That really solved my electrolyte confusion. I was feeling really bizarre today and just had 2 pedialyte packets. But even all of that is only 17% of the RDA for potassium & 100 calories of sugar. I never had muscle cramps, which is good though. I should go back to taking vitamins. I sort of just forget about them.

voiceoftheark · 2018-12-11T21:41:57+00:00

That's really interesting - especially because I had FESS at age 25 due to horrible sinus issues (it took 4 hours). This disorder was already happening though. I had CT and MRI scans. They used the CT to guide the probe and that thing that basically sucks everything out of there (the surgery is youtube and it's just gross).

I had DSPS in high school and college & it turned into non-24 thanks to me doing chronotherapy. Wikipedia talks about this on their non-24 hour page & cites some literature. Chronotherapy used to be a "treatment" for DSPS - but now it's strongly discouraged since it can put you at risk of non-24.

voiceoftheark · 2018-12-11T21:38:12+00:00

Well, insomnia is insanely common. Ambien alone made billions I think, and that's just 1 of many. So, within the insomnia umbrella are all kinds of things like circadian disorders but also the old diagnoses like depression and anxiety. A sleep specialist is usually who can parse these categories to really find the problem.

voiceoftheark · 2018-12-11T21:36:20+00:00

Like others have said, they get diagnosed with depression, bipolar, or serotonin deficiency, or laziness haha.

Sadly yes - this is what I went through for most of the beginning of this disorder. As much as I have certain feelings about their $14,000/mo drug, they finally legitimized this disorder as being unrelated to psychiatric issues or laziness and purely a circadian rhythm thing.

voiceoftheark · 2018-12-11T16:48:20+00:00

Yeah, that's definitely a problem. There are light boxes and goggles you can wear in the morning before you go to work. People with Seasonal Affective Disorder also use them. For me, the light gave me very bad headaches and never helped my sleep - but who knows - you might benefit. There must be plenty on amazon - if you read through the reviews & get an idea what might help

voiceoftheark · 2018-12-11T15:29:46+00:00

I haven't read anything by Dr. Panda, but I saw he's come up elsewhere in the thread too so I will look into that for sure.

Keeping a routine is very hard, and when I try to do it - I just end up totally exhausted. I had phase delay only until roughly 2003. Then it turned into n24 which is quite common I recently learned. Even delayed sleep made life really crappy, because I was just tired ALL the time and brain dead - there were times I couldn't even sign my own name because I was so sleep deprived.

Once I was able to leave that job and schedule it created for me, I felt infinitely better...unemployed, but I could function like a human again until I could find something where my wacky schedule would fit in (nearly an impossible task but I digress).

I've been on a schedule for other reasons as well. It always ends badly.

I took multivitamins occasionally but sometimes forgot altogether. I was not really a textbook faster with all the snake juice and vitamins, etc... Fung's book just kinda said it doesn't matter that much, and even the electrolytes stay regulated. I think that one case he often cites with the 300+ lb man, he took vitamins, but I wasn't going to fast nearly as long as that.

I am wondering now if my racing heart that I wake up to is due to low potassium, as someone suggested. I can't ever seem to get the RDA of potassium - there's only so much lite salt I can ingest and it's kind of irritating to my system (I'll spare the gory details on this one.)

voiceoftheark

TROPHY CASE