Fellow Insomniacs

Go to Dave's Health Food Store and request some Malatonin. This should help. What it does is work towards helping your body get back to regulating sleep habits. It will take a little time, if you are willing to give it a try. As long as you are willing to try sleeping for 6 to 8 hours it should be beneficial.
Many things we experience in life are more easily repaired through more natural modes than with created medicines. Most created medicines cause other problems which then require some other created medicine to counteract the side effects. This is why at age 60 and older so many of our aged are taking up to ten or more pills per day for various "illnesses."
I am not a doctor however, I know that oftentimes the most simplest things can be of the most benefit to us.
Another thing you could ask about while at Dave's Health Foods is WaterOz.
These products have been around for well over a dozen years and have benefited 10's of thousands of people with many illnesses, or symptoms, such as yours, with excellent results, or complete curing of problems they had previous to using them.
I hope this may be of use to you. Let us know how things work out for you.
Sincerely,
Cinhil

tapehoser said:

I typically run a minimum of 15 miles each week. Some weeks it's more like 17 or 18 miles. It's evens out to about 3.5 miles, 6x per week.

I exercise in the morning, because if I exercised at night, I'd be up until 3 AM.

Anyhoo, I just took that little pill about 5 minutes ago so I'll let you know how it went in the AM. Good nigh.............................

Click to expand...

Tape,

WOW -- I envy you. Most people, who run at all, always tell me that running 3.5 miles a day isn't running a lot. However, growing up with severe bronchitis and pneumonia (and add to that some of the stupid lung-unfriendly crap I did as a kid) has left my lungs trashed... I have to work to run *1* mile. So, to me, I think running 15+ miles per week is AMAZING!!! I once ran a 3.5K a couple of years back... it took me about 45min. I just ended up having to walk too much.

That being said (and some might disagree with me, which is fine, this is just my opinion... which, as you know by now, I'm FULL of opinions!), unless you are sprinting running doesn't put your body into an anabolic state. As I think you may already know, the chemical reactions that occur in your body while you run are totally different from those that occur when you lift heavily for a brief period of time.

The fact that after a heavy bought of lifting your body will initiate a deep state of repair that lasts for several days is what will help you sleep because your body will then NEED to sleep in order to recover and repair itself from the damage you've done. I also agree with Cinhill's remarks on drugs -- THOUGH I certainly can understand the frustration of being in your situation and the "need" to sometimes revert to drugs... I would, however, try natural remedies first if you haven't -- not only that, but drugs get expensive and you'll never NOT need them... with a natural remedy you often will be able to stop taking them once they help realign your system back to normal.

If you haven't considered lifting, I highly recommend it.
If you haven't lifted for quite some time, take AT LEAST a week and lift light so you don't overexert and injure yourself. Once you feel reasonably comfortable and back in-tune, start lifting heavy. By "heavy" I mean heavy enough to move it safe and slow without swinging the weight but doing low reps (about 4-8R) and leaving the gym feeling like you aren't sure if you'll make it to your car before throwing up or passing out.

BTW, I'm no muscle-head (far from it, actually a little pudgy)... I just know how much better I feel when I'm able to lift and have noticed how much better I sleep when I do... so I thought you might want to consider it.

Interesting, thanks!

I believe my sleep depravation stems from the 5 years of night shifts I did from 1996-2001. I worked 12 hour shifts from 7 PM to 7 AM, 3 days on, 4 days off, 4 days on, 3 days off.

Since then I have struggled with sleep. When I worked nights I would take melatonin on my 'off' days, just to try and get back into a quasi-normal pattern of sleep. But it never seemed to help much.

As for the weightlifting, I just chucked my old weight bench into one of those neighborhood dumpsters this past summer. It was taking up room in our newly finished basement and never got used. The fact that it was a little broken didn't help either. So....anybody got a used, small-ish weight bench they wanna get rid of? I'd be willing to pick up lifting again, just to get the muscle tone that running does NOT provide.

And now, on to my review of the Ambien.

WOW!!!

I fell asleep at 10:45 last night and don't think I budged until the alarm sounded at 7 AM. I generally wake up around 6 AM to go running, but I wanted a dang good night's rest last night, so the run got pushed aside. As I have read about Ambien and spoken with my doctor AND the pharmacist, they tell me that Ambien is NOT for long term use. It is a controlled substance and should be taken simply as a way to 'kickstart' the body's natural clock back into place. I figure I'll take it for 7 days and then stop for a week and see how it goes.

I sympathize with you on the night shift thin, Tapehoser, I worked many years doing the same & have struggles with this myself. Usually I stay up until I am tired enough to go to bed then I do so. Often I get only 4 to 5 hours of sleep. I also have a bad back from on the job injuries & car accidents and this makes sleep difficult too. Sometimes my body gets so tired I just crash, even then I only sleep about seven hours, and eight is a dream. I have been so used to this that it doesn't pose much trouble for me, even though I am a perpetual night owl. Take for instance last night, I crawled into bed at 2:30 and somewhere around 3am I finally fell asleep. I awoke at about 6:50am unable to sleep further because of my back. But I am wide awake--not even yawning.
So I guess we never know how we can or will be affected because of work schedules or injury as everyone is a bit different, sometimes it is just something we acclimate ourselves to and live with.
It sounds like the Ambien may be beneficial, so I wish you well with that.

I have the same problems with my back and trying to sleep much more than about 7 hours. Lately I have started trying to spend a few minutes each morning and night just laying stomach-down on top of an exercise ball and stretching my spine out followed by laying for a few minutes on my back on just the carpeted floor and doing some deep breathing (I also use "Miracle Balls") -- it seems to be helping quite a bit, hopefully I can find a long-term quasi-cure using this technique.

As for lifting... benches can be great fun, but of course there are other options some people like better for various reasons. A few that come to mind that you might be interested to look into: the "X-Vest" and "kettlebells". I've always wanted to get some kettlebells, haven't yet though. I do have an X-Vest and I think it's pretty good. It might be less challenging, though, for someone in good cardio-condition b/c it has been my impression that it taxes my cardio ability far sooner than it does my muscular strength. Lately I've read a few articles about combining the two which has me itching even more to get some kettlebells. Some other options for people who have really large yards are things like getting a HUGE oversized bulldozer/dumpster truck tire and practicing flipping it over, or getting buckets of sand or concrete and practice farmer walking them around the yard, etc.