IN MY DREAMS! (My Experience of Insomnia)

Member Name: jayjolynn

Product:	My Experience of Insomnia
Date:	28/11/06 (236 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Lots

MY STORY

I have suffered from insomnia for years, but when, under a lot of pressure at work, it got 10 times worse. I wasn’t eating properly, no proper exercise, as I never had time, and of course no proper rest or even relaxation. All this accumulated, and I started feeling constantly brain dead, and it has taken me a long time to get back to ‘normality! I still do suffer insomnia, but at least now I work my own hours at home, therefore not so stressed at having to get up for work. So any really BAD nights now, I can cope better with, and try and just take it easy the following day!

WHAT IS THE CAUSE?

I don’t think anyone in years gone by must have suffered as bad as we do, as a nation today. If you think about it, before electricity was invented, they went to bed as nightfall came, and rose at dawn. Simple! It was the body saying ok this must be night time, lack of natural light, lack of anything to distract you from bed i.e. television, computers etc. Then when dawn arose the natural light told their bodies that it was wakening time, giving the body a time schedule and a good sleep pattern! Sounds so simple yes?

We do not have that natural schedule now, as with electricity and technology, we do not need to be governed by natural light, but think we suffer for having moved on with all this new technology, well regarding insomnia anyway!

There is a time and place for great work ethics, but it is not something than can be kept up for 24 hours a day, for years on end. Technology, over commitment, job pressures, have made us a nation of insomniacs.
The pressures of women having to work and juggle parenthood along with this, doesn’t help, and generally, we are in a society that is a very stressful way of living!
There are many reasons for insomnia but I will concetrate on my cause......stress!

MY PLAN

When working full time, and when I say full time, sometimes working 60 hours a week and under a lot of stress, I used to go home, try and relax (even then through work related phone calls), watch some television, then go to bed early as I was up at 5am every morning! Every night without fail, I would be tossing and turning and the more I tried to sleep, the worse it got!
So you then try your best to blank your mind out so that your brain is not going over all the things that had happened that day. So, I am lying there, consciously trying to blank out all the days events, and PING!! I am back to the thinking mode again!!! Grrr…….…so up I get! I try and write down a few things that are bothering me.

Then when I thought I was truly ready for bed, I would cuddle up in that lovely warm duvet, but no, no sleep was coming! Ok, I will get up and take some hot chocolate or water, whatever I think will relax me (not coffee, as this is a stimulant), and walk around a bit, sometimes walking round the block (I wonder what my neighbours would be thinking, me wandering the streets at the dead of night?) NO answers on a postcard please!

Ok, go back to bed 15 minutes later, keep mind blank……nope, not working, so you start tossing and turning, and start getting aggravated, especially when your husband is now starting to huff and puff at you, so you feel more stressed as you’re keeping him awake also!

I would get up again, have a hot chocolate and return when I really, really thought I was very tired! Then, when I still couldn’t sleep, I would get up again, and go back to bed when I thought I was really, really, really, tired…..and so it went on, until I would eventually fall asleep an hour or so before my alarm going off at 5 am! I jest you not, and sometimes that was going on for nights on end! Oh, I looked and felt like ‘death’, and my workmates will verify this!

I promised myself (even at weekends) to get up at the same time every day, even though I felt exhausted and it was so tempting on a Sunday morning to feel the luxury of ‘catching up’ on sleep! Well, one, I don’t think you really can catch up on sleep, and two, if you lie in bed longer, nestled in these feathers and pillows, your body is getting confused and not sending the right signals to your brain to get back into a good sleep pattern.

As evening fell though, on the weekends, I didn’t have the energy to go out, and just put on my CD’s and enjoyed a few red wines! WOW! I found I slept better when I had somewhat over indulged with the wine one night, so I thought well, what if I have a couple of (glasses, not bottles!) every night? Within a month, I realised I was needing more to send me to sleep, so scrapped that idea! I can see how people can get addicted to drink now, and it is very true that you actually need more of it, to do the same job as it initially was used for! Plus it may get you to sleep quicker, but it can make you waken earlier!

I tried the old method of reading a book in bed, and found I stayed up even longer, trying to read ‘just another chapter’ before going to sleep! Sometimes I would end up reading the whole book, in one go! So, that method, tried and tested by millions, did not do me any good whatsoever!

I tried a white noise machine, which was recommended by a friend.
You know, this did help a lot in de-stressing me and I found I was a lot less agitated in bed, but it never did the trick for me, except perhaps relax me more.
This machine creates a sound like a fan and creates a constant smooth sound of air blowing out, but not literally blowing the air out! It was soothing, and I found I could lie in bed without getting aggravated and tossing and turning so much, but still wasn’t enough to send me to ‘zzzzz’ land! Good idea for people who have a mild sleep problem, but not enough for the chronic sufferer!

There are a number of over-the-counter treatments that might help for occasional insomniacs.
Sedative antihistamines – eg diphenhydramine (Nytol) and promethazine (Phenergan) which are effective but stay in the body for a long time and can cause a hangover effect in the morning.
So, these did not help, as I felt I was going from tiredness due to insomnia, to dopiness due to these treatments! So whatever way you look at it, you really can’t win!

My consistent sleep problem which was most likely started because of stress at work, had resulted in poor decision making, irritability, and general feeling exhausted all the time, and my job suffered(which is ironic, since work probably caused it)I wasn’t thinking straight, I was too tired for any social outings that came up!

It really affected my whole life! It’s like your mind and body just cannot shut down at bed time! I was starting to feel that now I was worrying about the actual insomnia too much, so it’s a vicious circle when you suffer from this, as you initially can’t sleep because of stress, then you end up with more stress worrying about the insomnia! Then you smoke more, drink more, but in effect you are just contributing more and more to insomnia!

You stop thinking rationally and will try anything just to get a good nights sleep! The body and mind are telling you, you are exhausted, but in reality, you have to get on with life during these sleepless nights, then you find your life is taking a nose dive, as your work, family life and health suffer.

DESPERATION!

In desperation I eventually went to my GP, and guess what? No surprises here! He wrote me the inevitable prescription! I told him, I wasn’t keen to use sleeping pills, as I was frightened I would perhaps get addicted, and did he have any other advice!? ‘Don’t you worry, these are just to see you through a bad patch’, and he sent me on my way, and I came away feeling very alone with this awful ailment that was really taking its toll on me, but the answer is ‘take some pills’!! No advice, no sympathy, just ready to hand out this piece of paper with his illegible scrawl on it.

A lot of Doctors feel that prescription only medicines that cause sleep, known as hypnotics, should be used for as short a period as possible, and certainly no longer than two weeks, for the fear of becoming addicted, yet my GP just asked me to come back in 4 weeks to see how I was getting on!
A good, more sympathetic GP will perhaps look for any underlying cause of your insomnia i.e. depression, any events in your life that has triggered this off etc..?

Anyway, I was so desperate one night, I took a couple and I must admit it let me sleep, and it felt so good having a nights sleep, but when I arrived at work the next morning, I was greeted with ‘what are you on? You look doped up to the eyeballs….go and sort yourself out before you sit down……you been given something last night???’!! Well, that put paid to that then! Although I got a sleep, it made me feeling awful the following day’

FACTS

Insomnia is a terrible thing to fight with, and it can become dangerous.
Facts are that if someone only has about 5-6 hours sleep, will be twice as likely to have a car accident, than people who get 8 or more hours. Driver fatigue causes thousands of accidents on our roads today. It is especially worrying with shift workers, who cannot adjust to different working hours.
Even in the workplace, well, manual work, mainly, it can prove fatal if you are working machinery etc while suffering from sleep depravation, so this condition should be taken seriously!
It can slow down every way you think, and could jeopardize every thing. You have impaired judgement, and in studies everywhere, it has been proven so many times over.

In our modern society, the majority of people who work for a living, average less than 7 hours of sleep. Recent studies indicate that to have your brain up to scratch, you need minimum 8 hours, so I have to assume there are a lot of people out there that are suffering some sort of sleep depravation.
There's also a link with physical illness. People with insomnia have an increased risk cancer, heart disease or stroke.

Another study carried out in 2002, reported that people who slept seven hours a night enjoyed the longest lifespan. Those who slept 8 hours or more or 6 hours or less had higher mortality rates. People with insomnia did not have elevated mortality rates People who took sleeping pills, however, did have lower survival rates.


MY SAVIOUR

I left my Job! Simple as that!
After trying all the desperate measures above, enough was enough, and I packed in my job! I also changed a lot of my eating habits too, and had regular meals, exercised more and I generally just started looking after myself.

I had been too obsessed with my job in the past, but probably quite enjoyed the pressure, stress and attitude of ‘keep your nose to the grindstone’ at the time, but something had to give, and it took a long time for me to pluck up the courage to throw it all in, but now?
I still suffer from insomnia, but not to the same degree, and I feel a lot better for having thrown off the ‘modern day’ stresses that promote it!

I have to admit that you can’t just change overnight, and it took some months to get my life back on track, but after trying all the so called remedies, I found the answer to my chronic insomnia, is to change my life around!
I am lucky as I was in a position that I could give up these everyday stresses, some people are not so lucky, and are not in a position to throw in the towel for financial reasons or whatever!

SUMMARY

Insomnia can be described as either transient, intermittent or chronic. Transient lasts only a few nights to a few weeks. Intermittent insomnia occurs occasionally but not every night.

Chronic insomnia occurs most nights and lasts three or more weeks, and in my case, appears it could be a permanent thing in my life, but can be controlled with how I live my life!

This is an awful condition, and can take over your life, and in today’s lifestyle it is a widely growing problem that perhaps should be addressed as it can affect everyone!

Sleep well!

Summary: Get a Life!