QuestionQUESTION: I have problems with sleeping.
These problems started with a series of psychological traumas in 1982,
when I was 31 years old.
Probably it is irrelevant what caused it, relevant is the fact that any
problems that affect me tend to reflect on my digestive system,
and, on the other hand, digestive problems affect my sleep.
I also should add that
I am now not psychologically traumatized, I mean that those problems
affected me psychologically during less than one year,
and then those questions remained completely solved in my mind.
So, the psychological part disappeared, but
the digestive consequential problems remained forever.
Before that, I always slept 8 hours a night, like an angel.
Exactly 8 hours a night, not less not more, and I was ready for a new day.
My problem, since 1982, is with contractions in my stomach.
I need to have my stomach full, otherwise I cannot fall asleep.
After falling asleep, I wake up every 1 or 2 hours, I go to pee,
I eat something (e.g. half an apple), otherwise I cannot fall asleep again, and so on.
This might seem strange, but the fact is that
I have managed well like this for 25 years.
But in these last months
(because of new stressful situations in my job, I am a university professor)
I have difficulty in sleeping more than 4 hours each night.
Typically now I fall asleep 1 or 2 hours after dinner, sleep 1 hour, pee+apple,
sleep 1 hour, pee+apple,sleep 1 hour, pee+apple,sleep 1 hour, pee+apple.
Then I expect to fall asleep again but I don't, I start to feel contractions
in my stomach, my mind wakes up, ideas start flowing in my mind,
and then I stand up and start my day, because I feel that
remaining in bed would be a waste of time, since I will not sleep again
until the next night. However, I spend my day as a zombie, half asleep.
What puzzles me is this: what is the cause for such contractions in my stomach
which prevent me from falling asleep again ?
How can I prevent such contractions to happen ?
Notice that I am not even sure that these contractions are in my stomach,
but this is what I think. I feel a kind of vibration, more or less at the same
rythm as my heart-beat. Such vibration can be felt also in my head.
(I guess it is like when one feels anxiety,
but I am not an anxious person, on the contrary,
I have lots of self-confidence in general, maybe even too much, some times).
Such vibrations seem to be in my stomach
because this is what I feel also before falling asleep,
at the begining of the night, while my digestion is working;
the difference being that these are more in the background,
in the sense that if I make a slight effort of concentration on my stomach
then I feel it is vibrating, as explained; but if I do not concentrate
on it then they fade away in the background and I fall asleep.
However, such stategy does not work after 4 hours of sleep,
I will feel then stronger contractions
(I guess thay are at a slightly faster rythm also)
and they impose themselves on my mind, I can't find a way of
making them fade away and disappear, to fall asleep.
This problem seems to be connected somehow with the mechanism of
anxiety (I mean: the phyisical mechanism through which one feels anxiety,
not the psychological mechanism that triggers anxiety reactions)
because in some rare days in which I am really
a little anxious before going to sleep,
for some very definite reason in my life,
then I feel the same more strongly, and it may happen sometimes
that I cannot sleep more that 2 or 3 hours in total.
It is as if I must be too tired to overcome what prevents me from
sleeping, but after 4 hours of sleep I am not so tired anymore,
and what prevents me from sleeping wins over.
(Or, whenever I feel anxiety, hence with a stronger mechanism preventing me
from sleeping, it wins after 2 or 3 hours of sleep only.)
ANother question is: why do I wake up so many times ?
One doctor once suggested it might have something to do with my prostate.
That my prostate wakes me up because I need to pee (but just a little bit).
I have problems with my prostate now, but not very pressing.
But the fact is that I keeping waking up so many times since 25 years ago,
while my prostate only started giving me problems 4 or 5 years ago.
ANSWER: I would worry about blood sugar problems since you continually pee and eat, and also, have the prostate evaluated by itself.....
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: You are right, in the sense that I had diabetes 3 years ago ( I mean that my blood sugar level was higher than 400 for some weeks ) but such problem was then corrected with better food and lots of physical exercise. Since then my level is always below 100 (hence normal). I exercise cycling 10 miles and swiming half-mile, daily, to avoid problems. I avoid sugar (including sweet fruits), meat and industrially processed food, and I only eat natural and whole foods, including yogurt, cheese, eggs and artic sea fish.
But my problems remain. I should say that I had no bigger problems in sleeping while I was diabetic. My sleeping problems are usually started by stressful situations, and when they start it is hard to make them disappear, usually they will tend to begin fading away along several weeks of tranquility.
ANSWER: if you have clearly connected the sleep with stress, then an as needed sleep med or anxiety med might be useful, the problem with those are that using them sporadically leads to using them regularly......
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: Thank you for your help. Notice that I do not need sleeping medication. I have no problems to fall asleep.
The problem is something that wakes me up after sleeping 4 hours. I tend often to think that this could be connected with the digestive system, since I wake up more or less when digestion ends. I have cheched in Wikipedia the article on Peristalsis, and I wonder whether my problem could have something to do with contractions in the pyloric valve or the small intestine. I mean that after food is gone through the small intestine, apparently these contractions should stop, but maybe in my case there is something wrong, they do not stop and I feel them, and this is what wakes me up, or at least what prevents me from falling asleep again. What I feel seems completely compatible with such an explanation. Are there records of other people feeling the same ? Is there any helpful medication ?
Answerstaying asleep is always a tough problem... getting to sleep with meds are easy, staying asleep much more difficult.... most of the time we go thru the med list and other over the counter drugs like caffeine and try to avoid, but as people age, they need less sleep and some people simply cannot sleep for 7-8 hours at a stretch. Sometimes sleep time change can help, meaning going to bed an hour later and sometimes that will help... good luck with it.
