Sleeping Medication

I am diagnosed with insomnia and mild sleep apnea (which is being treated with a cpap). I have bad anxiety which causes me to take upwards of 5 hours to fall asleep.

I turn all my electronics off. All my lights off. I use white noise. I even bought a mattress topper to be more comfortable...nothing works.

I've tried gravol, benedryl, melatonin, amitriptlyn, Trazodone, etc. Seems like the only thing that works is a very low does of seroquel. I also try to stay as active as I can to help tire me out at night. No luck.

My question is...if you have insomnia, did it get better as you lost weight?

if not, what do you take now?

I will be asking my surgeon if seroquel is ok to take after surgery.

I am SO glad you asked this question. I've had insomnia for 10 years, used a cpap for 17. The insomnia gets in the way so often and feels so out of control. I also want to know if it gets better with weight loss. Here's some stuff I do know: drugs of any kind aren't a long term Solution. I sleep best when I walk a minimum of one hour a day, and follow through a kind of "pre-bedtime ritual" that includes ordinary stuff like tooth brushing, shower, but also meditation. And staying out of bed till I'm yawning like crazy.

The best known treatment for insomnia is cognitive behavioural therapy, and results are long-lasting. I found an excellent highly-rated online CBT program for insomnia called SHUTi. It takes a couple minutes a day, but it's what you do at bedtime that makes the difference.

let me know how you get on.

Pauline

Thank you for the advice. I will look into the ShutI website! It looks interesting. I have been struggling with insomnia since the age of 7. I am desperate at this point

No kidding. Three bad nights and I'm desperate too. Why do you think they use sleep deprivation as a tool 0f torture. Ever have a baby? I was so sleep deprived that when I did sleep I dreamed about sleeping.

so I just read an interesting article from Psychology Today, written by a psychiatrist who uses ketogenic diets to treat anxiety, adhd, autism and epilepsy. As well as brain injuries. What she's saying is our North American high carb diet interferes with neurological function, acreating overstimulation in the brain. My guess is that you and I just might sleep like a babies a few months after our surgery, because we're going to be on ketogenic diets from the time we start optifast. It's not the weight loss per se, but the ketones instead of carbs.

No, I don't have kids. I'm currently in my last year of college to become a practical nurse. I cannot imagine having insomnia ontop of having a baby.

That is pretty interesting. I know when I was at my lowest adult weight of 140 I didn't have as much trouble sleeping. It only got bad when I packed on 150 pounds in 5 years. sigh

I had insomnia for several years. I don't have anxiety but it started after my eldest DD died. I made the mistake of using ambien for a while and found that the quality of the sleep was not like naturally inititiated sleep and then I grew tolerant of it.

I guess I probably did my own CBT in establishing a long list of rules around going to bed/sleep, but they work for me. Here are most of them:

1. Get up at the same time in the morning ALWAYS even on weekends or if I went to bed late the night before - plan on no more than 8 hours of sleep from the usual bedtime when setting the morning time
2. Don't drink anything caffeinated after noon
3. Have a get ready to go to bed routine which starts about an hour before I go upstairs: for me this is watching mindless TV
4. No food within an hour of going to bed (churning stomach does not aid sleep)
5. NO discussions around much of anything with others during that last hour before bed (NO PHONE CALLS)
6. Bedroom as dark as possible and cool (at least 5-10 degrees less than daytime)
7. Covers as heavy as they can be without making me sweat
8. Earplugs (I used silicone ones which block out pretty much everything)
9. Read (fairly mindless fiction****il my eyes can't stay open, then put the book aside

Seroquel is OK to take post-op.

Is your anxiety only related to sleep, or is it more like a generalized anxiety disorder that affects other parts of your life as well? Maybe being on a med to treat the underlying anxiety, Seroquel or no, would be beneficial. If it's caused by your brain chemistry, it's unlikely that weight loss alone would fix it.

I've got some general anxiety as part of my bipolar, and it definitely affects my sleep when it's bad. Keeping stable on my meds helps a LOT.

In order to get sleepy, I need to shut my brain down. For some reason, being on the computer keeps me wired, so I must shut down my laptop by 10pm or earlier if I'm going to go to bed before midnight. I take off my glasses, build my nest on the sofa and chillax to television for an hour or two, or read a book (usually the final 30 min). If I don't do this, my mind is swimming in thought. Even just playing online solitaire has me doing puzzles in my twilight period. It's maddening.

In the middle of the night, I often get up to use the restroom or this time of year, add fire to the wood stove so we aren't freezing come morning. If I wake up too much, I do an exercise to bore my brain activity so I drift off to sleep. I imagine a white board and start counting by writing "One" on the board, wipe it clean, then write "Two", "Three"...., you get it. I rarely get to 10 before falling asleep. If a thought interrupts the process, I pu**** out and start again.

What do you think of your anxiety keeping you awake?
Swimming thoughts and unresolved situations can keep my brain active, too. Sometimes just writing things down somewhere so it's out of my head is a great help, be it a to-do list, notes to someone (that may not ever get sent to them) or a plan for the day.

I have horrible anxiety at times. Well a lot of times. The hamster wheel in my will not stop sometimes when I go to bed.

I do take a sleep meds. But if my head is still going they do not help.

One thing I do now is I try to stop thinking. Funny I know. There are somethings I can not change till morning so there is no use worrying about it. It does help me. So I tell myself that I can't do anything about this now so let it go.

I also take a nice hot shower before bed also. I sometimes plan for a snack before bed. Some people think I am crazy. But it seems to help.

I hope they can find something to help you.

I take ambien every night, and have for many years. It still works very very well. I've had severe insomnia since childhood. I also have been bipolar since I was a teen and have an anxiety disorder.

I didn't find that the weight loss from my sleeve or the ketogenesis after my revision to RNY helped my sleep any.

Strict sleep hygiene does help me, including developing a bedtime routine, sticking to a set bedtime and wake time 7 days a week, and keeping my room cool, clean, restful, and reserved for bed-related activities all help.

Best of luck.