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Re: INSOMNIA

Posted by Phillip Marx on December 23, 1999, at 15:29:53

In reply to Re: INSOMNIA, posted by Phillip Marx on December 23, 1999, at 11:03:16

> > Are any of you diagnosed as severe (bizarre) insomniacs?
>
> What would "bizarre" insomnia constitute? I have primary insomnia, circadian rhythma disorder - irregular sleep-wake pattern type, and REM sleep behavior disorder. (The latter is under control.)
>
Insomnia (NOS) [not otherwise specified] per DSM-IV. Many sleep disorders are really bio-mechanical sleep disruptions from snoring and the like, not my problem. On video tape sedated (the only way to get me to sleep) I don’t budge for the whole time except to wave to the camera that I’m still not asleep. I guess I should try that again on the latest medications, I can sure wake up with sore muscles as if too long in uncomfortable positions. I have not had detectable circadian sensations for most of this time, though I have since a little over a year ago felt the afternoon yawns that won’t turn into sleep even if I lay down in a warm room with photo-black shades drawn, only rarely though, I’ll concede occasionally, so hope flickers. Bright light therapy with actual sun-tan lamps do nothing except irritate me that I had placed the timer switches so far away to discourage tampering since it turns out that none of the medications clear renally no matter how much light fries my skin. The paralysis stage of sedations wearing off had been mis-treated as negligible in my not-so-clever preliminary calculations, I couldn’t get to the timers until it was too late. I should have set a duration, not just a start time with over-evangelized anecdotal evidence. Sunburn irritates, not the medicine, not a psychologically significant mood swing, not aberrant mood, I SHOULD have known better, automatic regret conversion to repentance completed. I don’t know what sunburn does to the Vitamin D skin synthesis circadian triggers, I suspect the body would rather avoid more and encourage regeneration. Medications’ manufacturers recommend short-term interim use only (30-60 days max. typical, as does the huge sleep disorders book at the Hoag Hospital Medical Library), assuming normal function will return due to natural healing processes. My medicine rotations were only rotated after tolerance (immunity=loss of sufficient function) built up. Having been a multi-sport athlete (I joke to myself that I has been a has-been), I have quick recoveries (and addictions to the efficient use of quick recoveries, ACA, workaholic, overachiever, be over-prepared against all possible outcomes, preventing all possible negative outcomes, etc. factorial!) and so didn’t have to give up a medicine until the sleep=sedation dropped below 2-3 hours per day. No real instances of remission have occurred. There have been a couple of instances where I got an unplanned hour of sedation, but my retro-sight concludes that these were instances of delayed digestion from stresses that should have given me ulcers not of the heliobacter kind that occurred as I tried to maintain an unreasonable achievement level in spite of mental functions diminished by medications and sleep deprivations. The medications slowed my metabolism and the increased stress increased my digestion due to acidity increase so far that I gained almost 50 pounds. When they finally got me to sleep, I lost 80 pounds in just three months, too much of it muscle though from wasting as I just quit fighting to stay at work, stayed in bed, as I just gave in to the medicine and quit work. AeroSpace schedules are inflexible, no program schedule management software grants gracious extensions for medicinally degraded performance, efficient budgets don’t allow duplication of personnel, before this happened I lost three people working for me and tried to maintain the same level of output as when I was fully staffed. In order to maintain output at half-performance, I had elected to double performance time to maintain productive parity, which might have contributed to the failure of every early doctor’s prognosis that I would recover in mere weeks. My primary care physician claimed I didn’t really try to get better until after I gave up my most favorite job ever.

> Exactly which medicines have you tried besides lithium, Halcion, and Serzone?

“Exactly” would require time-consuming regeneration. However, these are just some of the empties that made it into an old shopping bag for someday making a dull-thud wind-chime mobile. They aren’t in order and I know there are a lot missing from that bag since it never really was a high priority, just a self-humoring attempt to have SOMETHING good come out of all this.

5-HTP, Halcion – Triazolam, Neurontin – gabapentin, Melatonin (GI & sublingual), Valerian root and all the possible health-food relevant herbals, Pineal plus (pineal extracts), Tegretal – Carbamazepine, Anafranil – clomipramine HCL, Lamictal, Eskalith CD 450mg 5x p.o.d. Lithium, Lithobid 300mg 3x p.o.d. Lithium, Ativan – lorazepam, Loxitane – loxapine, Imipramine HCL, Ambien, Serzone, Depakote, Amoxil, Amoxicillin trihydrate- ooops, sleeps deficits run down immune systems too, Klonopin, Chloral Hydrate, Doral, Motrin – carpal tunnel, Desyrel, Restoril – temazapam, Trazadone hydrochloride, Sulindac – clinoril, Luvox – fluvoxamine maleate, Clonidine, Prozac, Serax – Oxapam, Surmontil, Celexa – citalopram HBr, Alprazolam.

 > I haven't been to sleep for over five years without medication.
>
> At all? Even after being sleep-deprived for a long time?

 The first instance I saw the doctor about 5-6 days without any sleep. I had been at work for the 80 hours straight that I had gotten too accustomed to and went home successful and couldn’t get to sleep for 2-3 more days even though there was zero remaining cause for stress. Eventually it occurred to me that doctors can get people to sleep. He gave me I think chloral hydrate, nothing happened at maximum doses. I went back two days later and got imipramine hydrochloride, nothing happened. I went back two days later and I can’t remember what he prescribed me, but it didn’t work either. Two more days and I drove in without feeling the slightest bit sedated and gave him all of the stuff back and ordered him to quit giving me placebos. He went whiter than the dentist did who had to send me down the hall to an oral surgeon to finish extracting my wisdom teeth. I think the conference just ended up recommending I just try them longer since Nature would take it’s natural course eventually (at the time I didn’t know that death was the natural next course and neither did he since he later confessed to me that he had never had any sleep disorder training but was scheduled for some), though, in answer to my question about whether these medications had interactions, he said no, presuming I meant taken on different days. He was pretty unhappy when he found out later that I had taken them all at once later, at full strength. All the local hospitals had said that they wouldn’t put me to sleep for a day, just to help me last, and that it wasn’t just an uncovered insurance expense issue. I got 18 hours sleep from it though, and a thorough tongue lashing later from him. During the next year, since I refused for that long to go see a psychiatrist who could legally prescribe me stronger stuff that had to be monitored by MDs so trained, I exhausted my endurance freak bank getting immune to all the short half-life medications he could prescribe. With that history the psychiatrists SLAM-dunked me on lithium.
 >
> > They tried lithium for about three years and gave up since it only gave me lithium withdrawals and zero improvement, even after an instance of severe dehydration from running a half marathon which exacerbated toxicity way past the toxic threshold maintenance they attempted to guarantee with time-released lithium and frequent blood tests.

 I was better enough to exercise to extremes, but couldn’t synchronize sedation recovery periods with too short 24 hour realities of work-life since the medications build up to virtual mental paralysis.
 >
> What did the lithium withdrawals consist of? Lithium isn't suppose to cause withdrawal symptoms so I'm curious.

 The lithium fooled me for a while into saying that I felt better, because I did after addiction to it started. This fooled the doctor too, my fault. When it would wear off I would start to feel terrible unless I took more unless it had worn completely off, which felt much better, subjectively, but took awhile to experience and consolidate experiences, objectively. The time-release maintenance of barely sub-toxic-level serum levels (maximum legal? therapeutic? dose) delayed this conclusion. If I felt good enough to forget to take it, and sedation prevented me from getting back to it, then I would feel better than if I had taken it, much better, which I knew subconsciously long before I consciously knew it and tested such hypothesis rigorously. I stopped cold-turkey several times AMA. Now I know why addicts persist in chemical addictions, it’s not always the high they want, it’s the withdrawal drop they want to avoid at all costs. The attempt to reduce an atypical mania robbed me of my thyroid energies which made me feel poisoned, I only had flicker energy. I eat powdered milk for a treat, so I am sure that with all the exercising I did, much lithium has been deposited along with the calcium due to the peizo-effect of that exercise on the electro-chemical attractions in the synovial fluids. I may never be rid of it short of unlikely osteoporosis. Lithium, sodium and potassium are all in group 1A on the periodic table of chemical elements. Those atoms and naturally occurring molecules have related molecular dynamics, they are grouped in the same column for that reason. I suspect that there is a distortion of the sodium-potassium cellular membrane action potential pump permeability curve to serum levels of lithium exceeding natural (I should maybe research what the known litium toxic mechanisms are). Any distortions of that curve related to either mitochondrial nutrition or waste disposal efficiencies would affect overall energy levels, times all the cells and their susceptibilities, specific or general, so affected and may be why it is useful as a “mania” control. I don’t think I am chemically driven, but am perceived needs (emergencies=adrenaline) driven, though for those perceived needs I mentally drove my chemistry (chicken/egg? or egg/chicken?). I am an ACA tee-totaller and don’t use any form of alcohol as Nature’s natural mania control mechanism. The brain is a content based processor and memory system. The microscopic parts you are using when drinking is the part you kill, which, in low doses, levels areas with disproportionately high metabolic rates, since they then request more blood flow which “sterilizes” addressed neurons by the increased alcohol thresholds displacing glucose and all, thus St. Paul’s exhortation “but use a LITTLE wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.” from (overactive stress?) nervousness, 1Tim5:23 KJV [“but wine a little use on account of thy stomach and frequent thy infirmities” more literally from the Greek, St. Paul had Dr. St. Luke of high repute for an advisor]. Excess alcohol use destroys more by causing function decay instead of function leveling. Thus, for example, people who use alcohol to get sex, they otherwise wouldn’t especially, end up beating their mates since dead brain sex appreciation circuits don’t work anymore which must be really frustrating to the circuits that are still working. People who fight drunk end up very passive. People challenged by police or relatives when drunk end up with their conscience and guilt circuits destroyed beyond therapeutic remedy if the alcohol is still strong enough when those mental circuits are vigorously over-activated. Since Lithium is known to affect and even damage thyroids in about 30% of patients, I correlate my thyroid TSH drops to it. I have a huge backlog of un-abandoned priorities (saved because they said for so long that normalcy was imminent) that I jump to them whenever my thyroid energy levels let me. This responsibilities guilt-recovery actually looks chemically manic, but I feel it is more activity rebound even after mentally subtracting denial tendencies. My temperature used to run almost exactly one degree low for much of this time, though I learned that thyroid extract (not even real pure levothyroxine) normalizes it as does, believe it or not, colloidal minerals, which probably removes or neutralizes serum lithium. Can’t find my ear thermometer right now to see if it’s still true.
 >
> > I found that exercising all the muscles just enough to trigger glycogen (et. al.) retention forced the blood brain barrier permeability to open up to sedatives (et.al.) enough better to benefit sleep even though exercise normally delays sleep. Muscles actually develop really well when subjected to immediate sleep for regeneration. The lithium also lowered my thyroid numbers to 20% my norms. UCI’s world famous Sleep Disorders Center failed to find relief without using long half-life medicines that kept me from ever waking up thoroughly since I had become immune to all the short half-life varieties, probably should have rotated and used higher doses early on.
>
>
> > There should be lots of people like me. Does this ring any bells?
> > Atypical Bipolar Disorder Insomnia (NOS)??
>
> I've been diagnosed with bipolar NOS (it turned out to be a mixed episode from serotonin syndrome due to Effexor). Do you know what it refers to in your case? You do come across as quite manic. Which antimanic drugs have you tried?

I am familiar with bipolar-like and mania-like (NOS not otherwise specified means: “like” but no known or consensus-approved specifiable type). What looks like bipolar mania on me is persisting systemic rebound attempts and results from non-mania destruction of pineal gland function and/or some other iteration interrupting process in my sleep chemistry. The symptoms really are bipolar-like=atypical bipolar=bipolar NOS, all of which I have suffered treatment for. After three frustrating years I discovered Dr. Jensen who had me functioning in a mere week, though I had lost my ability to concentrate (atrophy from neglect due to surrender to sedation and declining hopes of recovery resulting in severe loss of motivation, all surprisingly unemotional since what could be done, had been done to the point of total guilt-freedom) and had to rehabilitiate myself. That medicine suddenly stopped working a few months later and I almost died again. The only thing I deliberately stayed alive for was getting my Will done since I still had significant assets. In something like ten days after retrying all the old stuff, we experimented into what is working so well now. I’m fine and functional if I get sleep, I just can’t get sleep without intervention, and I’m no longer willing to go for days trying to see if it will finally kick in anymore either. I’ve almost died twice from it and am now relatively shock-recovered enough to sustain a more objective academic interest, but, though my Will is done, I see no reason to hasten its necessity (ha, hasten it’s execution) by experimenting with sleep deprivation factor brinkmanship further. Besides, Revocable Living Trusts are much better than wills, and my RLT is taking a long time to perfect.

Look at http://www.vh.org/Providers/Lectures/EmergencyMed/Psychiatry/MedEmergSerotonin.html
Also use www.google.com to search for web-free info, both point and counter-point.

There is a lot of literature developing describing and consolidating research of the chemistry and inter-dependencies for serotonin and all the other neurotransmitters, electrolytes and other organic metabolites, start simple. Simplified Reader’s digest versions are available from better health food stores and magazines such as Prevention. Next level down, maybe sooner than later to be treated as surprisingly up, are the traditional legacy herbals now getting more than anecdotal respect as their antique documentation gets verified and translated into modern terms. The literature is still relatively immature but much better and more current than ever, because what didn’t work as advertised was mostly weeded out centuries ago. Next level up are the human neuro-psychology texts trying to link the chemistry to the cognition and behavioral systems, formerly treated as independent by psychologists, from chemistry way too long. Next level up are the research studies documented in medline and medical research periodicals. Next level up is the research contemplated in the various research RFPs. Trying to do a spectacular job at such a proposal was my final camel back straw. www.egi.com has the most reasonable way to immediately visualize brain stimulus responses in pseudo-color 3-D. Irvine Sensors Corporation has the only integrated circuit technology simply adaptable to make the system umbilical-free and virtually weight-free. If I ever get back to it I would like to follow up an assumption that each and every neuro-transmitter chemical reaction has a signature waveshape that can be characterized and quantized for quantity, quality and intensity, maybe using something as simple as a massive array of analog SAWs (surface acoustic wave correlator devices) since almost every chemical reaction involves at least valence band activity. Today’s most exotic systems are net-sum variance voltage detection systems that will someday be thought of as quite crude.

I “want” to rebound with activity after so much involuntary inactivity, to me it’s natural joy, not un-natural mania, anti-shame and anti-embarrassment for deferred maintenance, my house used to be one of the best looking on the block, now only the front of the house shows maintenance. Actually, there should be a comma between atypical bipolar and insomnia(NOS). They weren’t linked initially by my physicians, pardon my sloppy proofing.

Phillip Marx
PhilMarx@net999.com


> Working on reply: pm
>
>
> > > Are any of you diagnosed as severe (bizarre) insomniacs?
> >
> > What would "bizarre" insomnia constitute? I have primary insomnia, circadian rhythma disorder - irregular sleep-wake pattern type, and REM sleep behavior disorder. (The latter is under control.)
> >
> > > I haven't been to sleep for over five years without medication.
> >
> > At all? Even after being sleep-deprived for a long time?
> >
> > > They tried lithium for about three years and gave up since it only gave me lithium withdrawals and zero improvement, even after an instance of severe dehydration from running a half marathon which exacerbated toxicity way past the toxic threshold maintenance they attempted to guarantee with time-released lithium and frequent blood tests.
> >
> > What did the lithium withdrawals consist of? Lithium isn't suppose to cause withdrawal symptoms so I'm curious.
> >
> > > I found that exercising all the muscles just enough to trigger glycogen (et. al.) retention forced the blood brain barrier permeability to open up to sedatives (et.al.) enough better to benefit sleep even though exercise normally delays sleep. Muscles actually develop really well when subjected to immediate sleep for regeneration. The lithium also lowered my thyroid numbers to 20% my norms. UCI’s world famous Sleep Disorders Center failed to find relief without using long half-life medicines that kept me from ever waking up thoroughly since I had become immune to all the short half-life varieties, probably should have rotated and used higher doses early on.
> >
> > Exactly which medicines have you tried besides lithium, Halcion, and Serzone?
> >
> > > There should be lots of people like me. Does this ring any bells?
> > > Atypical Bipolar Disorder Insomnia (NOS)??
> >
> > I've been diagnosed with bipolar NOS (it turned out to be a mixed episode from serotonin syndrome due to Effexor). Do you know what it refers to in your case? You do come across as quite manic. Which antimanic drugs have you tried?


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Psycho-Babble Medication | Framed

poster:Phillip Marx thread:16735
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991212/msgs/17389.html