Unusual exercise-induced insomnia

Dear Mekin,

I am very thankful to you. You confirm with precision what is going on with me. I discovered your narration after tapering off Trazodone, an antidepressant, which I used for nine months. It was prescribed to me to treat an anxiety crisis, triggered by sleep depravation. The crisis interrupted my routine exercise, which consisted of one hour of running or biking, every other day. For years, it was curious to me that I would sleep better the nights that I did not exercise. I attributed the bad nights to possible irritation of my throat and allergies. At some point my sleeping interruptions became serious sleep depravation, which formed a vicious cycle with anxiety.

I underwent numerous tests, top to bottom, including heart and sleep apnea. I have a mild case of apnea and currently I am fully adapted to using a CPAP machine. I practice much of what is recommended to increase chances of good sleep, such as no screens two hours prior to bed, light dinner 3 to 4 hours before bed, reduced room temperature, no lights, no noise, no caffeine, no alcohol, cool down period, a lot of diaphragmatic breathing, meditation, cognitive therapy, etc. Occasionally I have used a Benadryl allergy tablet, split in half (12.5 mg) to induce sleep in about half an hour. I bought a bottle of Valerian capsules, but have not tried this product yet. I do not want to get into any mind altering substances, such as Melatonin.

During my Trazodone treatment, exercise was reduced to walking and very light weight lifting. When I fully tapered off Trazodone, about two weeks ago, I started to jog part of my daily walks, trying to rebuild muscle and endurance. Since my nights started to deteriorate, I thought that I would possibly have to go back to the antidepressant. The day before reading your piece, I had also increased pushups, which made my shoulder muscles a bit sore. This apparently was the cause of waking up, as soon as I went to bed, with the sense of having my arms paralyzed and with a panicky mental state. This has happened at times during the last 9 month on Trazodone, but I was attributing it to the drug itself or as a symptom of withdrawal from it. The coincidences finally made me suspect that there could be a relationship between exercise and poor sleep. I googled “exercise and bad sleep.” Jumping from place to place, I arrived to your piece.

To find your publication was a revelation. Even if there is no solution to our problem, at least I do not have to guess the source of symptoms related to this matter. This knowledge certainly diminishes my chances of having to use antidepressants in the future. Thank you and all the people who have contributed! Our condition should have a name.

I have the same issue. Long time cardio athlete all the sudden this started happening. If I work out, even in the morning, I wake in the middle of the night from a deep sleep. When it happens I feel the adrenaline-like sensation (I even had my levels tested as a result, normal). I also get hot for an hour or so, upset / gassy stomach, itchy ears, and a bit of congestion. Then an 1-2 hours later I may get cold and eventually be able to fall back to sleep. I wake up feeling less than awesome with continued stomach issues.All sorts of blood work, urine tests, brain scan, upper endoscopy, lower endoscopy, so far very little to work of off. At times I do have a slight increase in a vasculitis marker in my blood. My history includes Lyme disease and Babesia (from a tick bite) that are no longer present in my blood work - and were treated with antibiotics. I have also had several surgeries over the past few years including the removal of my gallbladder, a sports hernia repair, and a torn shoulder muscle. I mention all that just to see if anyone else with these symptoms has any similar history that might provide clues.

SAME THING HERE! THINKING TO CONSULT THE DR AS WELL! BUT I CAN RELATE WITH THE CORTISOL/STRESS LEVELS

Does anyone have the symptoms that get triggered at night last for days or even weeks? Specifically, upset stomach/bloating, joint pain, fatigue, headband, congestion?

Hi Mekin!

I have similar problems, no chance of sleeping after exercise. Have recently stumbled upon histamine intolerance and tried a histamine free diet. Seems to me that the mast cells and histamine can be a problem here. I have improved my symptoms quite a lot with this diet but not totally and I have to be very strict with it. Have you tried it?

Kind regards, Wiggen

I had all of the symptoms described here as well. I've had a lot of success with a low FODMAP diet, particularly avoiding the Oligosaccharides. FODMAP is an irritable bowel syndrome diet but I never had the diarrhea or constipation associated with IBS. Another poster here mentioned success with eating oranges and grapes which happen to be low FODMAP.

Glad I found this thread. Almost impossible to find people with similar issues.

My story:

I’m 26 years old, been exercising all my life. Was a cross-country runner in high school and have been running since I could stand on two legs.

After lower back problems, surgery and advice from my surgeon to never run again, I eventually accepted defeat and switched to lifting and saw great results and felt really happy, working out 5 days a week, eating 3500 kcal a day, sleeping 8-9 hours a night, waking up well rested I always have.

In September 2020, I started having trouble sleeping on workout days. I would wake up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back asleep. I noticed I didn’t have these problems at all if I had had sex that same day. I researched all I could with lifting weights, orgasms and what those combined could result in sleep or not, and found nothing.

Oh well, I have a girlfriend and we have a healthy sex life, so on days I had worked out (usually at 7 am) in the morning, as long as I had sex some time that day (or reached orgasm on my own) I would sleep throughout the night.

This worked well until December 2020, when I started having insomnia despite sex. This quickly led to having insomnia on days I didn’t work out. I was up for days at a time. Usually wide awake for 2-3 days straight, falling asleep out of pure exhaustion for 3-4 hours, and being awake for another 2-3 days. Pure hell.

I went to a doctor, did blood tests of all kinds, “perfectly healthy” I was told.

Because of my sleep deprivation, I started developing other symptoms. Incredibly painful headaches, finger tremors, bladder problems (difficulty peeing), cold feet and hands, tinnitus, exploding head syndrome (loud explosions like sounds in my head), hypnic jerks, forgetfulness, and more.

I was absolutely certain, that I had early on set Parkinson’s disease. I went back to the same doctor, did a full neurological test, and nothing, all looked good.

At this time, I was desperately taking large amounts of magnesium, and other natural minerals and vitamins, anything to get some sleep. I stopped taking everything and stopped going to the gym. After a few days, I noticed my sleep gradually improving. And as my sleep improved, the symptoms slowly went away. Alright, so maybe not Parkinson’s then, considering those symptoms rarely come and go.

I went a couple of weeks without training and slept about 5-6 hours a night, not my usual 8-9 hours of wonderful, oh so wonderful, sleep, but close enough, I guess. One single night without sleep, takes me about one week to recover from. Sleep deprivation causes the symptoms I mentioned but especially hypnic jerks, which causes my entire body to fling up in the air whenever I’m about to fall asleep, instantly waking me up.

Recently, I figured I would go back to the gym. It was 9 am in the morning, I ate a large breakfast, took a 200 mg caffein pill, and went to the gym. Workout went well, no records, but well. I got home and took it easy until 22 pm, ate 4000 kcal throughout the day, did some breathing exercises, and felt tired. Went to bed, and nothing. Fell asleep at 8 am out of exhaustion and woke up at 10 pm, so 2 hours.

I’ve desperately sent in my problems to my local neurological office with specialists and all, but they told me my problems are not severe enough to get a visit.

So here I am, today, writing this, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve been thinking about not working out at all for a month or so, even though not going to the gym and exercising makes me go crazy, but for my health sakes I’ll take a break, or at least try.

All I hear when I explain my problems to others is “stop working out late in the day, and all your problems will be resolved” which is the reply that bothers me the most because all my workouts take place anywhere between 7 am to 13 pm, never later than that.

Almost all people here have the very same or similiar problem. Anyone has a cure?

I hear you, I have been dealing with for this the past 2 years and my journey of trials and errors sound very similar to yours...(even the CPAP!) Taking advise from DR s and a variety sleep specialists, I believe made me worse and I feel prolonged my recovery. I think it has more to do with ones metabolism or nutritional state... you can't think or relax yourself out of a deficiency or catabolic state.

I am not 100% but I feel I am heading in the right direction and getting close. I break it down to the basics

(my latest theory anyway) in terms of the signals am I sending to my central nervous system- For example if I have been pushing myself with more endurance types of cardio activities, coupled with what I have been eating or lack there of (early days I was extremely low carb paleo and unknowingly low calorie type of dieting). In a primal survival sense this in turn would send the signal that I was prey putting me into a fight or flight type response, more adrenaline, more cortisol essentially in a catabolic state, keeping me in a prolonged state of alert, whilst lack of nutrients slowing my metabolism to adapt.

At that time although I didn't realise until I used a calorie counter app that I was regularly under eating for my BMI, prior to that I found my low carb diet had caused nutritional deficiencies , low calcium, magnesium etc. This coupled with over excercising without adequate rest and recovery put me in a type of burnout state, which directly effected my ability to sleep.

Initially my sleep suffered, I felt more agitated and started storing more fat, I began exercising more, dieting more and this made it alot worse.

My remedy which has shown vast improvements thus far consists of sending signals more attuned to that of a well fed predator, as apposed to prey.

Priority is rest and nutrition, eat more frequent balanced meals, avoid fasting, low carb, or draining endurance excercises, focus on more anabolic promoting excercises, lifting, compound movements, barbell complexes etc to counter the catabolic state you may be in. You may have to stop excercising for a period of time, to allow your body time to heal and recover.

Hey

I also seem to have some of these issues. I bench press 320lbs for reps normally but I noticed I start having insomnia once I train heavy or adrenaline induced.

The weird thing once I do a cardio routine like constant push ups and pull ups and lunges and jump ropes etc. I don't have issues falling asleep. Only when I train heavier do I have issues. It will take me atleast 12-14hrs after my workout to be able to fall asleep then. Feeling very hot, sweating etc.

I also tested my iron. My blood iron is high but my ferritine is on the lower end. My testosterone is also lower at 500ng/dl ish tops and 440 in the afternoon at only 24yrs old. The weird thing is even though my testosterone is low and I sleep bad and train with low volume my strength is still increasing. And I'm not a weak or small guy by any means.

But I start noticing more and more problems and need to change more to make it less taxing. I dont want to decrease to a point of 0 training which I think also solves absolutely nothing given some people still had issues after 1 year of 0 training.

Does anyone know what I should do to go back to where I was and to not make my current problems worse. In the past I could train hard and heavy from 6 till 10 and fall asleep at 1.