Does anyone else have this symptom? I know many people here have insomnia with extreme fatigue, but I have slight insomnia with absolutely no fatigue or tiredness.
It takes a long time to fall asleep, but I can stay asleep for 6 hours.
Does anyone have any clue what could be causing this? I’ve been researching for weeks, but I can’t find any possible causes aside from abnormal cortisol levels.
I don’t drink coffee or consume any other stimulants. I eat healthy (No junk food).
Im unable to feel anything dude…I first realized hw bad it was, when i got my window with Tianeptine…Man we are missing so many basic emotions
Try niacinimide before bed, or .25 (very low dose a fraction of a tablet) of cyproheptdine/periactin
No one mentions adenosine here I notice …that could be something to do with sufferers not feeling tired and unable to sleep etc.
in ‘normal’ people lol adenosine builds up during the day as we exercise and by the end of the day it’s what makes us feel tired and as we enter NREM sleep our brain starts processing the adenosine that’s built up .
There could be something with PFS where this process isn’t being carried out and that’s why people don’t feel tired .
Just a theory!
I struggled (and still do struggle to some degree) with sleep for a while.
Depending on how you’re coping now, I would suggest not adding more drugs to your system. If you can get 6 hours sleep, that’s not so bad.
I used to read before bed, dim the lights for an hour or two before, no screens, listen to a podcast or guided meditation if I was bored and to be honest they didn’t help much consistently, but at other times I felt they helped. So I would suggest trying those things, or any other good routines you are interested in that you may hear about here or elsewhere.
My sleep did get better, but I still have flare ups where I can tell I’m going to have a bad couple of days. I do get tired now, but didn’t.
It might be worth trying to get your sleep problems logged with your doctor now so that you can say you’re planning on trying various natural methods to help, but if nothing is improving or getting better then you’d like to try something to help. I assume and hope you’ve reported your problems with finasteride already.
If something is prescribed, I suggest you check here first before taking anything. I believe anti depressants are sometimes prescribed for sleep problems, which have brought people here.
How long did it take for the tired feeling to come back? I’m at the 10-month mark and it doesn’t seem to be getting better.
WorriedGuy, would “wired/tired” explain it well?
For me, when my cortisol is low is causes me to feel tired during the day (lots of yawning) however unable to fall asleep. I get a similar feeling from high estrogen, which I think causes cortisol to crash.
I think it’s inability for inhibitory and excitatory nervous system to balance. GABA is bodies major inhibitor neurotransmitter. Glutamate is bodies major excitatory neurotransmitter.
Allopregnanolone is a positive allosteric modulator of the GABA receptors. I have high Allopregnanolone in urine like my body is trying to get rid of it . 3a-diol is also a positive allosteric modulator of the GABA receptor. I’m peeing out high amounts of this in urine as well
Pregnenolone sulfate is a negative allosteric modulator of the GABA receptor which I’m
Low in saliva . GABA receptors needs positive and negative modulation. I don’t appear to have negative modulation of GABA receptors with too much positive modulation
Realbummer had high Allopregnanolone in urine like me and he had high Allopregnanolone in the CNS opposite of Melchangi study that showed low Allopregnanolone in the CNS of the PFS group
We need more people to get the testing I have had so that we can try to establish patterns
Difficult to say but I would say I had noticed gradual improvements by then, however my sleep was worse than you are describing, getting to where you are now was an improvement.
So I did some testing and I figured out what was causing my slight insomnia.
If I exercise vigorously at night, I get slight heart palpitations when I try to sleep and stay awake for hours.
If I do light exercises or none at all, I fall asleep really fast. Unfortunately, I can only sleep 6 hours straight.
I think there’s something wrong with my stress hormones, but I don’t know what. I may get a cortisol test.
Yeah, I think you nailed it.
I do get somewhat tired in the day, but that feeling vanishes by night.
Even a fully healthy person shouldn’t exercise after about 10pm or they will have difficulty falling asleep. Unless it is very light exercise like taking a walk or they are on a special schedule that works for them like the night shift.
I had this as well for a while. My circadian rhythms got flipped so I’d feel most tired at noon and most energetic after midnight. But don’t put all the blame on the condition, there are a lot of contributing causes. It may be adrenal fatigue causing an increased sensitivity to caffeine or all the blue light from screens suppressing your melatonin which is the hormone that makes you feel tired. Get plenty of sunshine without sunglasses during the day and stay off the internet after about 9 or 10. You should feel tired by 11 to midnight but it may take weeks to reprogram your body. It may also be vitamin and mineral deficiencies made worse by the condition that are causing this. Taking an all-in-one mineral supplement helped fix my sleep problems. And if you’re having trouble with sleep cycles be sure not to consume large doses of vitamin D after about 2pm.
What I would give for 6 hours sleep …
This week - I had 3 days in a row of 1-2 hours sleep . I’d do anything to make this end , it’s like being in a nightmare .
What supplements have you tried? For me the most important one for sleep is NAC. I didn’t react to it at first when I was in worse shape so I had to start with the more expensive form Glutathione Reduced. If you are in the early stages of your crash recovery then you may not be able to sleep well until you rebuild your brain chemistry with other amino acids and small amounts of certain minerals but I think increasing glutathione is the most important aid for sleep and recovery. I’d also buy Magnesium Threonate, and Magnesium Taurate and Theanine to take 1 hour before bed. To promote dreams you can try Tyrosine and Chlorella. I’m not sure about Tryptophan and Gaba, I never reacted well or noticed any benefits from them.
Exercise especially going hard increases cortisol correct ? So this is no surprise. Especially when lots of people in PFS are clearly sensitive to anything excitatory like myself currently
6 hrs straight is good. I’m pretty much at your sleep level right now except I can’t get 6 hrs straight. I can get 4 hrs straight plus another two after a short wake up which is what I got last night
I was going to give this guy very similar advice
But you nailed it. For me similar lines of thinking is what is getting me out of my relapse insomnia.
I would add that I wouldn’t waste my time with ingesting GABA supplements. They likely don’t cross the blood brain barrier (BBB) and can likely only have no or very minor impact without crossing the BBB
Glycine 3500 MG’s per night and magnesium carbonate 3000 MG’s per night 1-2 hrs prior to sleep is key for me
Anything that has GABA and serotonin agonizing abilities helps me as well but not GABA supplements and agonizing GABA receptors even though helps me personally may be messing up even more my already messed up GABA receptors so caution is probable a good idea with agonizing GABA receptors but is probable and was necessary for my recent relapse insomnia
If it’s really bad and you get 0-3 hrs of sleep every night I would try to get a prescription of Xanax and use them VERY sparingly to see if they can help get you out of the insomnia . Then switch over to supplements for the long run
My recent relapse insomnia started on 11/25/2020. When it was at its worse I went 9 nights in a row with getting practically 0 slept. This was followed by 1-3 hrs of sporadic slept if I was lucky. When it was at its worst Xanax was the only thing that could get me sleep. Xanax is a synthetic positive allosteric modulator of the GABA receptors like natural Allopregnanolone and 3a-diol
I went through this before 7 years ago during my second Saw p crash. I did not have this knowledge back then. If it was not for my interventions this time I would still probable be in very severe insomnia 2 months out. Instead only 2 months post crash I got 4 plus 2 hrs sleep last night. Night before last I got 7 hrs sleep only awakening three times in between those 7 hrs. I’m doing much better very fast. Unfortunately supplements and drug experimentation that always has the chance of making you worse is the only way with severe cases. Now I need to gain back my lost muscle from this relapse insomnia mishap and figure out why this relapse insomnia happened. And I will be doing this with more supplements and experimenting. This is the life of PFS
I have been a severe case for ten years
Taking a spoon full of honey prior to bed will help. Part of the reason you can get insomnia is low blood sugar, which causes (along with low cortisol) adrenaline spikes.
I’ve noticed taking S Acetyl L Glutathione before bed also helps, I believe you get some GABA-A hits with it
I’ll keep those recommendations in mind and add them to my arsenal if I don’t continue to make upward progress with my insomnia relapse on what I’m currently taking.
It’s strange, because I used to work out hard pre-fin and never had sleeping problems. I guess I have to work-out in the morning now.
Unfortunately, I can’t take vitamins. They seem to aggravate my condition.
I don’t get tired on a night and it takes me hours to fall asleep, I’ve always been this way though and it’s more to do with my ADHD than PFS. Usually, I get really hyper at night and lie in bed awake for hours, mind racing, till I finally pass out.
I’m not sure if PFS made this symptom any worse or not, but I have had a particularly bad episode of insomnia last summer and am having one rn as well.