Posted by woo on November 15, 2003, at 12:41:24
In reply to Re: Insomnia and depression, posted by MSM on February 25, 2001, at 14:40:52
I am sorry to hear you are suffering from insomnia. That is so frustrating. What I do find that helps me is 1000mg GABA, 1000 mg Taurine (both of these are amino acids) and a cup of chamomile tea. I find that I can get about 4hrs of sleep with that and it feels like good sleep. I feel more refreshed after taking these.I still wake up at 3:00am every morning and can't get back to sleep but the little bit of sleep I did get is more refreshing. You might want to try banana's (which help with melatonin production) or melatonin supplements. A good B-complex vitamin helps calm the CNS system and so does calcium so you might want to try these at night as well. Eating plenty of protein increases l-tryptophan levels and that increases serotonin and can help induce sleep. I don't eat any sugar or starchy white breads as a general rule and it helps me to cope with the lack of sleep and gives me more energy. From what I have read you may want to be careful with SSRI's because serotonin might make you sleep some but they usually only promote "shallow" sleep and what you need is to get into the deep sleep mode which is healing to our bodies. Ambien and other sleep aids are in question for possible memory loss so I would use with caution. You might like to try reading the book called THE MOOD CURE by Julia Ross, M.A. It is written by a nutritional therapist who helps people with the stresses of detox through nutritional manipulation. It has been an invaluable source of information for me with depression and for improving the quality of my life. As always, talk to a physician before using anything listed here to make sure it doesn't interfer with pre-exisiting conditions or other medications. Good luck and hang in there because this too will pass.
poster:woo
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20031111/msgs/280007.html