Sleep problem: Vivid dreams & waking up exhausted

Dr has suggested i add risperidone or olanzapine to my mirtazapine to help anxiety/depresion.  I am wondering what the difference will be with one or other, have you any helpful  omments on these?

Hi Ann

Risperidone makes completely thoughtless.Initially risperidone helped some sleep but later when mixed with olanzapine made me anxious and not to sleep.risperidone makes whole day uneasy.

Olanzapine makes sleep whole night.Day time feeling very normal.

Tried risperidone, very fuzzy all day, very thirsty. Brain feels dead and cant think straight. Cant take these i think.  

Olanzapine inhave yet to try but not sure i want to take it

The fundamental problem with this thread is that people are assuming the only solution to this problem is by way of medication and 'anti's'.

How many people here drink alcohol and lead high stress lifestyles? 

No alcohol, retired early, no stress. Still symptoms, whats going on?

Asked my doc about olanzepine and he wasn't so keen on trying it with me... Basically said negative side effects outweigh benefits in most cases he's seen-- e.g. weight Again, daytime drowsiness, fuzziness, memory problems (the last three of which are my main concerns in the first place due to the dreaming).

Just my 2 cents.

Have you ever taken anti-biotics? Do you ever take paracetemol/anti-imflammatory's or anti-histamines?

Very helpful and my thoughts entirely. Also like you dont need weight gain or memory problems.

imjust wish i was off all this stuff and functional again. 

Noy had antiobiotics for years and dont use anti histamines. Not allowed ibuprofen as on warfarin.  Need an occasional paracetamol for headache.

Do you know why you get headaches?

No idea, either the anxiety or meds i expect.  At least dont need them more than once a month

Have you considered Adrenal Fatigue and Intestinal Permeability as the cause?

It sounds like most of the people either have in the past or currently live high-stress lifestlyes.

It would be nice if it were as easy as deciding not to live that way. But if you think about It, certain careers demand that sort of thing. Now, here, I can easily picture someone saying "If you truly care about your health, you'll do what needs to be done." But right now, I'm still too stubborn to accept the fact that 'there will just be some things that I cannot do because of this condition.' I'm near tears thinking about it...

Personally, I stopped drinking a year ago. Unfortunately, that was my temporary "fix" for the problem (explained in detail in an earlier post of mine). Now that I don't drink, the problem is back, but obviously I know (and knew then) that this was certainly not an actual solution to the problem... It just helped at the time.

I want so badly to find a natural remedy to all of this.

I watch what I eat (low sodium, low carbs.. nothing too demanding, like no strict 'diet' or anything, but those are things that I know make me feel like crap if I have a lot of them in my diet).

I've been taking small doses of melatonin 4-5 hours before bed to try to regulate my circadian rhythm.

I've tried the harmonic sleep sound recordings (the ones that play a certain tone to manipulate your brain waves into different stages of sleep).

I try to exercise whenever I can, but it exhausts me so. I can hardly exercise for an hour without showering and immediately wanting to take a nap despite waking up only a short time ago. I truly believe a consistent exercise routine would do so much for me... But it's troubling that the best possible solution to the problem is unattainable due to the severity of the problem itself!

Right now, I take bupropion and sertraline for depression and anxiety, but even that bothers me. I don't want to have to rely on these for the rest of my life, but whenever I stop them (intentionally or accidentally), things.. get bad.

I am convinced that the problem itself lies in a deep-seated anxiety for most. Like you said in another post, It may not even be the dreaming that's the problem, but rather just poor quality sleep in general which causes the fatigue (and causes the problems with the dreams as a sort of side effect).

That being said, how is it that increasing my doses of Wellbutrin and Zoloft do nothing to help my "sleep conditon"?

But I'm talking in circles now, so I guess I'll call this a stopping point for now. Lol

Yes, i wonder if adrenal problem could be at the heart of this as i feel spikes of adrenalin and cortisol levels feel high on waking.  Mentioned it tomgp who just poo pooed it and said carry on with anti deps.  Nobody is feallymlistening to me.  Would i be able to see an endocrinologist privately about this domyoumthink

i feel like the drs just want you on anti deps and go away.  Anything further is a nuisance to them.  When the anti deps dont work we are lft with all these problems which are not addressed.  I feel like i need a complete overhaul to see what is wrong with me.  Anxiety, yes, but how to deal with it?? 

I can resonate with this totally. As we know sleep is a fundamental part of living a 'healthy' fulfilling life, once that foundation crumbles we are set into a desperate cycle of feeling tired/sleepy, depressed and anxious, and most the time not getting things done that we want to. Many people think I'm lazy, but I'm not, I have dreams ('scuse the pun) and aspirations like many others, but this poor sleep only allows me to worry as to whether I'll get good sleep tonight or the next, it becomes an obsession to try and achieve this. I haven't had one good night for years.

I wonder how much money this thread has collectively spent on supplements and medicines to try and treat this problem. No one has improved by the sounds of it, I honestly think this requires a fresh approach. I strongly strongly believe that pharamceuticals and supplements are just the rose-tinted glasses to believing treating this problem is as simple as taking a pill in the morning and before bed. Because who wouldn't want life to be that simple? I think once that becomes acknowledged then we have some significant progress.

Do you have racing thoughts? Not necessarily negative, but just constant?

 

Ann, it's because Allopathic doctors don't recognise Adrenal Fatigue as a valid medical condition, even though the World Health Organisation do.. When we get unnecessarily stressed then we tend to overstimulate the adrenals and this weakens them after a long period of time, this basically derails the whole endocrine system, and things start to go pear-shaped, hormal problems as we know causes sleep disruption. It certainly ties in with the anxiety as the connection that we all have on this thread.

How on earth do we get this diagnosed?  Or even tested for.  People are dying from suicide when they arent getting the right treatment. It seems all wrong. Drs dont take it seriously enough. If you get adrenal fatigue what would be the best way to combat it?

There are tests you can do, but it wouldn't be something you could get on the NHS as like I said it's not considered an official medical complaint, unfortunately. There are links I can send you to help out so you can do a bit of reading, but Patient.info don't allow links, so drop me a message.

Yeah, I see what track your're on... Unfortunately for us though, it seems like "adrenal fatigue" is just another one of those terms that often means a whole heck of a lot to the patient but usually not a whole lot to the physician in terms of what may be going on biologically (like "CFS" and "ME".

As for seeing an endocrinologist-- can't hurt! If that's where you think your problems likely lie, it's definitely worth consulting someone who specializes in that area.

Re: "I wonder how much money..."-- RIGHT??! I bet it's insane.

Regarding racing thoughts-- without a doubt. Every time I try to mentally prepare myself to have a productive day, I think of something I have to do, but then either... 

a) that task reminds me of other semi-related things I need to do (and I start thinking about those things),

AND/OR b) I will just start going through all my to-do lists in my head just to make sure I'm not forgetting anything. 

And by the time I'm finished thinking about all the 'tasks' (which in my head, this process seems to be a pre-requisite to actually taking action/doing anything), I can't remember what it is I wanted to do first. As ridiculous as it sounds, I get overwhelmed.

But the worst part of it is, they are (almost always) all very simple, very easy, day-to-day things that shouldn't (and don't) cause others as much anxiety as they do me (it would seem). 

On bad days, when my "brain fog" is at its worst, I will start thinking about something (e.g. a task I have to accomplish that day, let's say, schedule a doctor's appointment) and I'll tell myself, "add this to your phone's 'Task' list," because I'll be driving and/or my phone will be out of reach. But if I start thinking about ANYTHING else-- and I mean anything, related to the task or not--, my thought process gets derailed and it will take me anywhere from a full minute all the way up until later in the day to remember what I was thinking of and what it was that I had to do about it...

Using the doctor's appointment example:

"Okay, you have to make an appointment. It's a specialist so you might not be able to get in for a few weeks, months, etc... Look at your work schedule, see if there have been any patterns in your schedule in recent weeks so you can figure out a day/time where you might not necessarily have to request off (because requesting off work would be one more thing to add to the Task list)."

I pull out my phone to look at my schedule. Then I pull up Google Maps to look up the phone number for the doctor's office. I look at the hours; they close in half an hour. 

Then I remember I was supposed to drop off my necklace at the jeweler's so they could fix it. What are their hours? Open 'til 6. 

Okay, add find necklace to Task list. Then add drop necklace off at jeweler's to Task list...

Now, what was I doing when I first pulled out my phone? 

Usually, I just sit, lost in a trance for 1-2 minutes (no exaggeration-- 60-120 seconds) trying to figure out what it is I was thinking about (in this case, calling the doctor's office to make an appointment). Then, if I'm doing something else, such as driving, I miss a turn, forget where I'm going, or do something else that causes me to lose even more time out of the precious amount of hours in the day that I have in which I am awake. 

Like I said, this is only on my really bad days, but even when it's something as simple as this, I find myself completely unable to SUCCESSFULLY BACK-TRACK THROUGH MY THOUGHTS in order to get back to make doctor's appointment-- something I could do in milliseconds when these issues created by my lack of quality sleep did not pervade every moment of my waking life. 

I can easily hear the average person responding, "Well, yeah, we can all kind be air-heads sometimes."

Yes, I agree. But if it were just "sometimes," then I wouldn't find it so troubling. 

To be honest, before this problem/set of problems started affecting my life, I could be a bit of a ditz at times. THAT'S NOT WHAT THIS IS. It's an inability to maintain awareness of the world around me because of my mind's severe delay/failure to retrieve short-term memories. 

So, to answer your question, YES. I feel like my brain NEVER stops (as we've discussed in relation to our dreaming). 

Like you said, the thoughts themselves aren't necessarily all negative, but the fact that I know my memory isn't what it used to be makes me feel like I HAVE TO KEEP THINKING ABOUT EVERYTHING ALL DAY LONG lest I forget something important. 

Do you or does anyone operate similarly? 

(I know many on here have said they suffer from anxiety, but I also know there are many different kinds of anxiety... So, just curious as to how many people identify with these exact thought processes, problems, etc.)