Sleep Cycles - Fibromyalgia Message Board

PapaRoux · 06-20-2004, 06:23 AM

Does anyone know when the deepest sleep period is if a person goes to be at 9PM and wakes up at 5:30AM?

I awake at night, and although I have sleep meds I feel like I'm waking up at the wrong time at night to get a thorough sleep.

Any suggestions?

Ajijaak · 06-20-2004, 11:55 AM

It's all highly individual, so what your deepest point is may be very different from someone else's. However, I've had doctors tell me that a general rule of thumb is that (at least for healthy people) the deepest point of the sleep cycle tends to be toward the end (i.e., the last few hours before you get up).

Unfortunately, those of us with fibro rarely, if ever, hit Stage 4 (REM), which is the stage when your body repairs itself and gets the rest it needs to keep itself going the next day. The reason for this is that as your body feels pain or other types of discomfort, it tenses, and that jerks it out of REM (if it ever has a chance to get there in the first place). Until nine days ago, I had not had real REM sleep in nearly 20 years. It's also the stage when your brain uses dreams to process the events of the day, sort them out, and put them into some sort of order in your brain's memory and other banks. If, as with me, you're not getting to REM, you may have very vivid and inexplicably disturbing dreams that sti*** with you all day and trouble you for no apparent reason; I think this is because the "sorting" process gets continually interrupted and your brain spends its "awake" time trying to put everything where it belongs. Now that I'm hitting REM again, I still have very vivid dreams, and quite often, they're still not what I would call pleasant, but they have a very different quality to them, the seem to find their place in my brain,` and they don't bug me for days on end.

Ajijaak

PapaRoux · 06-20-2004, 12:03 PM

Hi Ajiaak---

I was kinda thinking that might be the deepest part of sleep. That's the one that is interupted for me. The other night I got no sleep at all, so I was dragging all day yesterday.

I had two sleep studies done and they came up with sleep apnea (mild-borderline) and insomnia.

I keep loading up with magnesium at night before going to bed and if you haven't tried it---it might be a good one for you, but everybody's probably different in reactions.

I've gotta, like everyone else, rejuvenate during sleep---
and about dreams, like you mentioned---I sometimes have them before I wake up and at times they are disturbing and make the day miserable for me, as if the pain wasn't enough. And--sometimes I have dreams that I can't remember except for the fact that I had them. Sometimes I remember nothing.

Ajiaak--thanks again---your very helpful and I very much appreciate your answering.

Ed

Ajijaak · 06-20-2004, 01:18 PM

Anytime, Ed - just glad I can help!

I struggled alone for so long, both before my DX and immediately after - that I want to help wherever I can, becuse I know how miserable and demoralizing it is when no one understands. That was also the period that drove me to study everything I could get my hands on, since at the time, my docs weren't particularly interested in helping. Like you and virtually everyone else I've seen here so far, I had to take charge of it myself, so info-sharing's a must.

I'm going to take your advice re the magnesium and see if it helps. Aren't the dreams one of the buggiest things? I still haven't found a way to deal with them that prevents that awful feeling of them intruding into my waking hours. Bleaaahhh.

A

mollymadison · 06-20-2004, 04:14 PM

Hi -
I have also posted before about the Magnesium. I read somewhere on this board that it helps with the pain too! I take 1 333mg of calc/mag in the am and one in the pm along with a multi vitamin for women. Try the mag it may work!