Insomnia is ruining my life. Is there anything else I can do?

[z0mbiethread]

I’m 47 and absolutely knackered all the time. It’s effecting my relationships and making me depressed and anxious.
I’ve been on HRT for 6 months, and now on an oestrogen patch of 75 (for 6 weeks). I’ve cut out caffeine, I don’t drink alcohol, I go to bed and get up at the same time each day, I don’t eat after 6pm, I exercise regularly and am not overweight. I get outside in the morning daylight, I don’t go on my phone in the evening, I take multivitamins, vitamin d omega 3 and evening primrose, I’ve tried mindfulness. I tried CBD and Nytol 50 mg which made absolutely no difference.
I’m desperate for a good nights sleep. I can generally get to sleep, no problem but wake after a few hours. Is there anything I’ve not tried? Help!

I feel for you OP, I've had problems with late-onset insomnia for most of my life, even as a child. You sound like you have seriously good "slee hygene" so I would recommend melatonin, which is a hormone naturally produced in the brain but reduces the older we get. I would also recommend you ask your GP to rpescribe the slow-release high grade ones as a previous PP suggested, as these will be long acting and help you stay asleep longer, as you are suffering early waking.
I would stay away from anti-depressants, especially SSRIs as not only do they stop making you sleep after a few weeks, they just mildly sedate you all round the clock, cause weight-gain and they are notoriously difficult and even painful to withdraw from. You're exhausted from lack of sleep, not from clinical depression; your insomnia is the cause, not a symptom! I would be wary of prescription sleeping tablets as well, as they only knock you out for a short time. I think they have their place for someone desperate because of late-onset insomnia like I have but not for early waking and plus, they are addictive and they loose efficacy over time. You could also try magnesium and valerian too, they're natural and may help along with the melatonin. Magnesium is a good supplement to take anyway, especially for women. You need at least 375 mg/day.
When you wake early, have you tried getting up and going to another room, making some hot milk with a sprinkle of cinnamon, or eating a bowl of unsweetened cereal, which can be sedating, and reading a good novel for a while, until you feel sleepy again? That might help in the meantime until you see your GP. Best of luck OP and you really do have my sympathy because not being able to sleep is feckin' torture!

I suffer with insomnia on and off - normally stress induced so that my brain goes into overdrive.

What works for me is a week of good sleeping tablets to get back into the habit of sleeping again. But get them from the gp.

Tesco’s do a nighttime tea which I found amazing

Do the NHS not prescribe actual sleep aids? There are 5 or 6 prescription strength drugs available for insomnia in the US, and British people seem to be martyrs for using melatonin and lavendar spray. Sleep loss is a valid mental and physical health condition that should be treated no less effectively than any other.

@Confrontayshunme

Do the NHS not prescribe actual sleep aids? There are 5 or 6 prescription strength drugs available for insomnia in the US, and British people seem to be martyrs for using melatonin and lavendar spray. Sleep loss is a valid mental and physical health condition that should be treated no less effectively than any other.

They really, really don't want prescribe sleep aids here. Buying these things in shops gets you a good long chat with the pharmacist, and if you live in a small town they get to know you and limit your purchase. Even on line shops limit the amount you can buy. One shop only allows me to purchase phenergen once every 36 days. They say they're worried about addiction. My response is always "yes, sleep is rather moorish".

They do prescribe sleeping tablets. But it depends on the doctor and what you say as to the likelihood of actually getting them.

I sometimes get prescribed morphine for another condition. If I go in and say I'd like a bottle of morphine please, I usually get an instant no. I have to go through a rigmarole of saying I'm in pain, I've tried this, I'm allergic to that, this has worked ok for me in the past and let them come to the conclusion that they want to prescribe me morphine.

There is a bit of a culture that a certain amount of suffering and misery is not worth medicating.

Things that help me sleep :
Small room
Single bed
Cold room
Dark room
Silent room
Weighted blanked
Rescue remedy (regular daytime seems better than nightime)
* If I wake up during night, throw off covers and get cold, then cover up again *
Block any stressful thoughts and make yourself think of something or somewhere really pleasant :-)

If it’s menopause related try:-

Magnesium citrate
Magnesium body butter or there’s a cream with lavender and magnesium made by sweet bee
Lavender oil helps
Origins peace of mind sensory therapy
Camomile tea
Fresh air in bedroom

@Lovethesun100

Things that help me sleep : Small room Single bed Cold room Dark room Silent room Weighted blanked Rescue remedy (regular daytime seems better than nightime) * If I wake up during night, throw off covers and get cold, then cover up again * Block any stressful thoughts and make yourself think of something or somewhere really pleasant :-)

@Lovethesun100 - funny you should say about normal Bach rescue remedy being better than their nighttime one. I ran out of the nighttime one and used usual one and as you say much better.

@saturdayhelicopter

I stopped sleeping with my phone charging next to me and I went from 5-6 interrupted hours to 7-8 hours of proper sleep. Literally from the first night. Phone in a different room. I was so surprised and obviously am continuing.

Good luck, sleep deprivation is bloody awful.

Right that’s it getting rid of iPad and using proper alarm clock rather than phone one!

10mg of melatonin works well. Need to buy it from abroad though.

I do think I sometimes sleep too much, so from 11pm onwards until 8.55am. I do wake a couple of times in the night but when I was at work commuting and getting up earlier and home later I did sleep better!

@Mouldyfeet

10mg of melatonin works well. Need to buy it from abroad though.

@Mouldyfeet - I got melatonin from abroad took it and found it helped me get off to sleep but then if I woke I found it impossible to get back to sleep and I also felt drugged. So not for me.

I also agree with others that I go through phases of good and bad sleep. I can have 2-3 months of good sleep and then the equal amount of time of bad sleep. I’m not good with excess light and noise either.

Amitriptyline has done wonders for me, as a lifelong insomniac. I was prescribed it for acute postnatal anxiety (with associated sleeplessness) after I had DS2, and 6 years on they still haven't rescinded the prescription. It doesn't seem to be habit forming. I don't take it every night- sometimes I'll take it a couple of times a week, sometimes every other night.

Ask your GP if there is a sleep clinic you can be referred to. I went to one at my local hospital. It was 10 sessions over 6 weeks. It really helped and although it took time eventually I started sleeping again touch wood.

Another vote for phernegan , available now as sominex ( + cold bedroom , blackout blinds , white noise machine and hot water bottle )

Definitely magnesium, cold room etc but also..
I have the same- wake very early and can’t get back to sleep because of my busy brain. The best method I have found is this: imagine you have a large pile of pebbles next to your hand. You have to move the pebbles from one pile to a new pile. Actually move your fingers, with your eyes closed, and picture the pebbles, their colours, smoothness, weight. You can’t stop moving the pebbles, your job is to move every pebble from the big pile to the new pile. You mustn’t sleep until you have done it.
I think it helps to focus your mind on a boring task, and moving your fingers takes your brain’s focus from inside your head to a physical act.
I hope I have explained it properly! Anyway it’s my best tip

@TammyOne

Definitely magnesium, cold room etc but also.. I have the same- wake very early and can’t get back to sleep because of my busy brain. The best method I have found is this: imagine you have a large pile of pebbles next to your hand. You have to move the pebbles from one pile to a new pile. Actually move your fingers, with your eyes closed, and picture the pebbles, their colours, smoothness, weight. You can’t stop moving the pebbles, your job is to move every pebble from the big pile to the new pile. You mustn’t sleep until you have done it. I think it helps to focus your mind on a boring task, and moving your fingers takes your brain’s focus from inside your head to a physical act. I hope I have explained it properly! Anyway it’s my best tip

@TammyOne bit like counting sheep only counting pebbles!

I used to do lists of names starting with letters of the alphabet which sometimes would work or sometimes not. And sometimes I’d tell a story but get so engrossed in it it’d keep me awake so now I just have a boring story…! Or task!

Oh I generally tend to sleep in the nude now as I get hot with pyjamas etc on. I do have a short short sleeved nightdress which is sometimes ok if it’s colder.

@LadyinRead

Ask your GP if there is a sleep clinic you can be referred to. I went to one at my local hospital. It was 10 sessions over 6 weeks. It really helped and although it took time eventually I started sleeping again touch wood.

What do they do in the sleep clinic? I've been offered a referral before but I didn't think it would help.

I used to do lists of names starting with letters of the alphabet which sometimes would work or sometimes not. And sometimes I’d tell a story but get so engrossed in it it’d keep me awake so now I just have a boring story…! Or task!

I often use a moderately interesting but fairly soporific podcast or audiobook to get me to sleep.

If I can't do that I tend to do a variation of the task described above: I build a scene composed of loads and loads of things made of that letter.

So if I decide on G I might imagine a: garden, with a greenhouse and grapes in the greenhouse, and gooseberries growing outside the greenhouse and a goat eating the gooseberries, and a goose quacking near the goat, and a gate to outside the garden where there's a golf course, which has a green, and a golfer. Etc etc

Decent magnesium supplement in the morning like Fullnesium, advanced night time nutrients from The Restored, plus a sleep meditation - works a treat

Do you snore? I used to get up at least once an hour in the night to pee (and sometimes wouldn't sleep between trips to the loo) and when I mentioned this to my GP she sent me for a sleep test. Turns out I have sleep apnoea. Now I have a CPAP machine, I only wake once or twice a night. (I am post-menopausal, no HRT.)

[quote legalalien]I've considered myself a terrible sleeper most of my adult life - waking in the early morning with lots of active thoughts. Have tried loads of things -best of which was having a notebook by the bed to write things down before going back to sleep, other things - great at getting me to sleep but didn't solve the waking problem.
Then about a year ago I read an article about the history of biphasic sleep. It was like a penny had dropped. And now I don't worry about waking, I just think of myself as having a "first sleep" and "second sleep" with some time in between - and it's stopped me worrying about insomnia, and am getting more sleep overall.

This article is one of several on the subject
www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieval-habit-of-biphasic-sleep[/quote]

I agree on this and the biphasic sleep theory.

Trouble is, I'm not sure middle age people then had an alarm wake up at 6:30am... if I could now stay awake for an hour and then just naturally sleep on to 8am or 9 it would be okay being awake at 4am, but not great if you need to get up at modern early wake up times...