Resource Sleep retraining (Harvard Blog)

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Sleep retraining (Harvard Blog) - Find a partner and do this over a weekend.

Everywhere I look there are "sleep hygeine" articles that basically blame the patient for their problems. Can't sleep because you're stressed, don't exercise enough, bla bla... Well I have done all the sleep hygeine. I have had three (this month will be my fourth) polysomnographs. I have borderline sleep apnea, I have severely fragmented sleep. And it's been going on for about 12 years. If yoga worked, I'd be cured by now. Turns out there is an intensive treatment for insomnia but...

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[Not dead yet!]

I did this last weekend. It's more bother than expected. However, we devised a way to do it without partnering. If you set a timer for 15 min, with a pleasant alarm sound, maybe your phone, then you can simply set the alarm, try to sleep for 15 min and then you're on your own about deciding if you were asleep or not.

After 15 min, you can get up and walk around for 15 min.

In the beginning it felt really restrictive and I had a hard time calming down enough to try to sleep. Then the aches and pains started, things I'd never felt before. It was very instructive to be not exhausted when I was trying to sleep. I got to observe so much more.

I think it would be good to keep a diary of how you feel in each session and bring that to a sleep clinic. I think my symptoms are showing an excess of adrenaline. Or just hypersensitivity to adrenaline.

But how does one test that or verify it? Is it enough to show that I have panic attacks from dental work injections?

I think that because I finally got off a beta blocker int he past year and I think adrenaline has a strong effect on me now.

Treatment is tricky. Anti-adrenaline things would cause more weight gain, and I don't need that. Assuming that's even the problem.