Unusual exercise-induced insomnia

Perhaps is it the large amount of vitamins in the fruits which help ?

I have eaten lots of carbs since Christmas (chocolates, cakes..) and I am not glycogen depleted but that does not cure my insomnia.

I noticed spasms around the eyes. My doctor said it is related to stress and advised to take magnesium supplements.

Have you ever tried that ?

Yea every vitamin I took did not seem to make much difference and my vit tests are all okay. Its not a carb thing for me, I think its something to do with sugar and fruit being a better source, or a source my body can actually utilise and break down better. I just work out on a full stomach to be extra safe at the mo, but the symptoms are pretty much gone for the time being.

For whatever reason I can eat sugary rubbish or even rice and pasta and my glycogen stores remain depleted but if i eat certain fruits it replenishes them quickly, very strange, but this may just be a good patch - time will tell I suppose.

This is interesting because sometimes when I'm tired of trying to sleep I wake up and eat an apple, a lot of times it helps.

Because of this apple thing I was thinking that I needed some sugar to sleep better so I started to take some sweets before sleep and that definitely made things much worse.

Like Scott said maybe the problem is the type of sugar. I'll try this fruit thing and see how it goes.

Cheers guys

Yea thats the same thinking I had, and sweets and chocolate etc hinder me more than they help. Apples and apple juice specifically seem to be the best as you say. Maybe its because they are naturally antioxidants too i'm not sure. Good luck!

Hmm interesting theory, but that's not the case with me.

I eat 5-7 pieces of fruit everyday. Mostly at work, at 15:00. and finish some sandwiches at 16:00. Then i start my training around 17:30. I thought it was glycogen storage first also, because of the symptoms, but it can't be the case, because i more than enough. Also i eat apples everyday 😃 If it;s the case with glycogen storage, try some honey. The carbohydrate composition is 40% fructose and 30% glucose (the same as in fruit). The body utilizes the honey to replenish the glycogen storages from fructose in the liver and stabilizes blood sugar. The glucose is directly used by your muscles. It also has a really low glycemic index (same as oatmeal!). Insufficient glycogen storage in the liver can activate the HPA axis and causes the releases of adrenaline and cortisol to stabilize blood sugar (and break down muscles).

It's funny this came up. Something turned up on my facebook feed regarding efficacy of eating fruit for good gut health, but ONLY if eaten on empty stomach. Eating fruit after eating bread or other carbohydrate rich sources can cause problems by interacting in not good ways. I was and am still somewhat skeptical, because it was accompanied by claims that were pretty doubtful.

The thing with fruit and fructose is that it is simple sugar. If you are having problems maintaining stable blood sugar level, then it can contribute to BSL spikes which trigger insulin overshoot, which in turn triggers adrenaline from your kidneys to stimulate release of glycogen from your liver. In fact this can cause depression apart from damaging your organs - if this happens when your stomach is full it can lead to sensations that your brain interprets as sadness, frustration or depression, leading you to dwell on what might be causing you to feel depressed and then, hey presto, you're depressed before you know it.

But fruit has a ton of other things in them which are very good for you and the whole package is easily absorbed by the body. It may be that the fruit you are eating is spaced out through out the day so as not to cause BSL spikes, or you do not have sensitivity to sugar, or you are training enough for your body to need to be regenerating your glycogen stores.

What we know is, when you trigger the insomnia and other symptoms, your body has been unable to recover from the training or the pressure and it switches to "survival mode". In this mode, your body is doing everything it can to make sure you have what you need to survive, but also prevent you from doing anything you don't "need" to do. You go into a catabolic state (breaking down muscle, fat, anything not needed for immediate survival), and keeps you tired but on edge. Tired so you don't waste energy, and on edge in case the sabre tooth that wants to gnaw on your neck comes back for another go.

Exactly why it is that some of us get like that is a mystery, but it is usually associated with some sort of stress or trauma, particularly, but not necessarily when we were teenagers.

With regard to fruit, I eat very little fruit and almost no sugar. Likewise any simple carbohydrate. If I do, the first sign things aren't right is my bowls go haywire. I can break my non-carb diet for 3 days before a return of symptoms. And I think this is a person by person thing. I get the nutrients I would have gotten from fruit in other ways - my diet is truly Aplus. I'd also say, that if you are having the sensation that eating fruit in this way is helping you, then it most definitely is. If there was one thing impressed on me by the people helping me is that how much of how all this works is governed by the interdependence of our biology and our psychology. The only way our physiology knows about the outside world is through the prism of our psychology. Get the mind right so your body isn't fed the wrong signals.

Hi chaps, yes it does seem to be a glycogen issue for me for sure, so by being more aware of this I can now combat it before, during and after working out. I have no idea why fruit works so well for me, but it does and I will be getting honey too, I have seen it pop up in several things lately.

Another thing I noticed is that my CNS only seemed to recover properly when I worked it, by that I mean over the last year I have taken breaks from the gym and any moderate lifting that lasted upwards of a month. During this time my sleep was still off and the other symptoms did not really progress either. This I found very odd, but what I have found works for me is to lightly build it back up starting with shorter lighter sessions and progressing. However I do know most of you are doing this too, the other issue I had and still have is a considerable loss of vision in my left eye which has not got better unfortunately.

The thing that helped me the most was to keep a rough journal, I had some spells where I felt fine for a few days and it was just case of figuring out why that was. I should also mention that I have always eaten fruit in decent amounts its just timing it around my lifting and refueling properly between consecutive days. It may sound strange but if I don't get a pump when I lift or even feel like i'm getting a sweat on/blood flowing when running I know my body does not have the fuel required to produce the lactic acid and therefor stresses the CNS more. If I feel that I will stop during my warm up. This could be utter rubbish scientifically - its just what I have noticed but I do feel my body has an issue producing glycogen in general.

Best of luck and my fav natural pills for insomnia were called melissa dream, they obviously don't cure it but they really helped me. Another thing I used briefly was Rhodiola Rosea which helped deal with stressful periods a bit better too. Obviously these just treat the symptoms but when you are in that position staring at the ceiling for hours anything helps.

Funny you should mention trauma too actually as a friend told me to go and see a therapist, she was convinced it was a mental stress coupled with physical. The thing about that for me is I have very little mental stress and could not think of any traumatic experiences, but i do believe that would have the same result.

In my case this is obvious it is a psychological trauma in my job coupled with physical stress induced by training which triggered the insomnia.

Scott, your self-management is very impressive - what you described is what the CF people recommended for me; Graded Exercise Therapy. What's really impressive is that you seem to have the mental strength and discipline (not to mention self-awareness) to NOT train if you can tell your body isn't right. I could do with some of that.

The CF bods did say that it would take the same kind of determination and mental strength that lead one to over-train in order to recover from it. That's right, but I'd say even more so. How do you do it? You prep yourself to go training, you turn up, dress for it, carve out the time, how can you not want to make the most of it? And because I train in a club (karate), and with no other obvious signs of hinderance, and the desire to lead by example, how do you pull out of things because you know your body won't react well?

I pretty much can't do it. And it hinders my progress and ability to manage this. What helps is to recover well from sessions, be really relaxed when I'm in them and reduce the amount of sessions I do, and replace them with light personal work outs whereby I can manage my HR which seems to be the most important element in not kicking off symptoms.

And WRT stress - the CF people do say that there is no real distinction your body makes between types of stress, and it's cumulative. They say it is often triggered by a trauma, illness or injury but it requires other "primers" such as a specific virus or childhood trauma (very often), and other stressors such as a stressful job, family life whatever. I've always been drawn to contact sports and quite physically challenging things, although I probably have a below average talent for them and for coping with physical stress generally. Mind and body not really in alignment sadly.

Hi Rohan, thanks for the kind words, it was not easy, I was used to going full on for years but after a bit of research I found that I got more progress when applying proper structure and learning to listen to my body (which I still find hard).

I looked at strength programs and noticed they all had lighter days worked in and very few days in which you trained to your maximum capacity. The exception to this is when you are a beginner which is why you can start out going balls to the wall and still see progress, but as you improve this becomes far more challenging. I think that that's a good way to look at it, less is more in other words.

I know martial artists struggle with this even more due to the fact that stopping is seen as a weakness or 'giving up.' I have noticed a lot of UFC fighters discuss overtraining, how they had to step back to combat it and how difficult it was, but that it did pay off. I am lucky enough to be able to work out from home most of the time so its a bit simpler to stop if I don't feel right but in the last few weeks I have not stopped during any sessions (I have taken things a bit lighter in a couple though). After you slowly build back up knowing what your limits are (4/5 days a week is good for me) you can plan it pretty efficiently. Its just taking your time at the start that is the hardest thing. Stopping only helps you in the long run too.

How many days a week do you practice? and for how long? Bodyweight also plays an important roll here too, bigger guys can not train as long and near max effort as smaller guys since more muscle means more output. What I would do is strip it right back to a session a week and work up from there, maybe do some light stuff elsewhere as you mentioned. I would also take a lots of juice to stay hydrated as I have been bad for ignoring that over the years too! I would also mention to the guys you train with that you are experiencing issues and need to strip back the workload for a while to recover, they will understand, everyone I told did.

I feel like when this all kicked off for me it was a slightly more stressful time and that certainly added to the issue, but you can rebuild. It just means focusing on diet and the stressors I guess. I hated it when docs told me to manage stress (mainly because I was not mentally stressed after the initial onset) but how are you supposed to do that? Quit your job? I really think diet and graded exertion is the solution here but if you push even slightly to hard, too long or too fast they become a culprit. Once you build back up though you can do just as much.

Good luck!

I will also add that at the start my H/R could not go over 110bpm, if it did I would have 2/3 sleepless nights what fixed this was the hydration/glycogen/diet improvements and warming up properly.

So if you cannot get your HR over a certain quite low amount it means you have parasympathetic overtraining which is the most common sort, and typical of long distance or endurance athletes. So say the CF chaps.

Everything you write, I recognise. I am lucky too - I have a pretty damn cushy set up - I don't even have to commute. I work from home and while it requires a lot of cognitive effort, gee, I can manage my time and training really well. My life is damn good but for this stupid issue.

I don't think I train too much! Actually I think relative to many others I am bit of a light weight. I certainly don't think I train enough to warrant triggering symptoms, but I think what kicked it off was a period when I was relatively stressed, I was training very hard, and I had not long retired from an extremely strenuous contact sport, and it culminated in a grading attempt at the end of a very strenuous training camp that had me paralysed with cramp that was extremely traumatic. Things were going to s**t well before that, but the wheels came off well and truly afterwards. So I know that's what tipped me over the edge.

What impresses me is that you seem to have figured this out so well on your own. It's a level of self awareness I really could do with emulating. Today was a pretty rough day and I'm worried the impact its going to have. Two gradings, and I had to spar the senior grading student whose epically fit and half my age to finish everything off. Including my own training earlier in the day. Oh well. I shall hoof into the valerian root tablets and cross my fingers. If I start shouting at everyone in a couple of days you'll know it hasn't work out so well. 😦

Thats the thing, you may not be working out very much now but if you are already in a hole it doesn't matter - you are still digging. A week off and then starting again real light and building back up is what I know the pros would recommend. Its like driving with a flat tire if not, or maybe 4 flat tires!

The heart rate thing was strange as I do very little endurance work myself, mostly strength stuff. Even when I run it's only short and intense but I did notice that it was still a trigger.

I get cramp too and I notice that they only happen when my body is overworked (eg after a workout) or when I am dehydrated/low on glycogen or hungry. I treat them almost like a warning sign. The thing is, if you take the time to work back up you should be able to do all the things you want but as I said, the main thing for me was noticing the symptoms. Listening to any cravings (sugar, salt, water) and going from there.

Hey guys! So taking the advice from Scott I tried a few things during my surfing session yesterday that are worth mentioning.

• I tried to make it very short, so it went one for about one hour.
• Water as very cold.
• Did not control my HR since it is very hard to do in surfing (if you don't want to get pounded by waves you have to paddle as fast as you can).
• Took longer then usual resting breaks between waves/sets.
• Had no sweets nor sugar during the whole day/night.
• LOTS of fruits, natural orange juice and honey throughout the day. I even did some honey "shots" when I started to feel too tired.
• Tried to have a very "chilled out" mind set after the session. This was not easy and I actually failed a lot of times specially when I'm using the smartphone.

So doing all this I slept very nicely. Two weeks ago I did a similar (but tougher) session and got 2 whole nights of insomnia. So I guess the fruit thing worked for me!

Another thing worth mentioning is that I tried some sweets before bed for 2 nights and had horrible sleep, even without any exercise. It was not crazy insomnia but very bad sleep quality overall.

I'll try more surfing sessions and let you guys know. If this works I might even go back to the gym! Thanks a lot for the comment guys!

Good to hear you're making progress. I've tested a few thing also on my part.

Did a week of full blown training (after building up intensity gradually) with lots of exercises which exacerbated symptoms in the past.

Did a back workout yesterday. About 1.5hours with allot of compound movements (mainly deadlift) . I also threw in some pee workout to test my luck, which always resulted in full blown insomnia for days lol. Almost back on my original plateau 😃 BP10055. DL 15055

I was soooo tired at night, iI couldn't even remember that my head hit the pillow, lol. So somehow, exercise works for sleep again?!

It's also recognizable that allot people here went under some type of stress or trauma. I've had exactly the same. I had really bad mono when i was 16. I was so tired iI could only lay awake in bed all day for weeks. My neck was swollen like two times it's original size! My lymph glands where making serious overtime. Since that time I've been prone to insomnia and over-exertion. It has taken me considerable time to finish my education or work at all. I was diagnosed with CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome). Doctors advice was quit school and/or work and live on welfare, lol.

I've been thinking about past trauma and my response to 'over exercise' now. I had a horrible reaction to an antibiotic (Levaquin) 12 years ago that resulted in extreme anxiety, insomnia and tendonitis everywhere so I could not exercise with weights for years. 4 months into my new weight program as I approached 2/3 of my body weight in weights, I started to have the symptoms of over exercise. Now I'm wondering if I'm triggering something that has already been triggered in my parasympathetic nervous system. I'm doing better now as I backed off on weights and repetitions, have more time in between sets, and never work out with weights on consecutive days; however, my deadlift day always leaves me with some degree of insomnia. So, I've been taking Ativan, which I don't like to take, on deadlift nights. My acupuncturist (does seem to help when I happen to have acupuncture on my deadlift day) suggested a specific Hemp CBD spray that targets the parasympathetic system and I think it helped last night; no Ativan and I slept in 2-4 hours intervals which is fairly normal for me anyways. Have any of you tried CBD oil?

Good morning Leona.

I tried CBD oil when my problem first started and it did not really worked. However at the time I didn't even know the problem was exercise related. Maybe now together with some extra cares suggested here in the forum it can provide better results, I think it is worth a shot!

Cheers,

any updates from anyone ?

So glad to find that I'm not the only person dealing with this issue!

Background is that I used to be a pretty strong amateur athlete (running and triathlon), but was prone to easily getting overtrained. Once I hit my 40's I got stuck with some cardiac damage from a viral infection (LBBB) that took about 25% of my exercise capacity off the top, and I was no longer able to race. Around the same time, I noticed that I started having night sweats on days of high intensity/duration workouts, or if my workouts were too frequent. I'm one of those who would happily hit every run or ride at 110% until my body gave up. As I aged, the frequency of the night sweats increased, and the threshold to trigger them became lower. I managed to keep myself somewhat happy by carefully scheduling runs to every other day, and trying to move workouts to the mornings. I've always been a solid 8 hour a night sleeper - even with the night sweats, although I felt less rested after a night where I had them because the later part of the night I felt like I was sleeping more restlessly.

About 15 months ago, I developed a severe inner ear infection from a long-lasting viral infection that had been lingering in my sinuses. The damage to my inner ears resulted in balance issues like vertigo, and also pretty severe high frequency tinnitus. Right when the tinnitus started, all heck broke loose - severe night sweats even without exercise, tremors, insomnia, non-stop anxiety, crazy high blood pressure, and massively elevated resting heart rate, essentially the works. I think the tinnitus directly triggered my sympathetic nervous system (which was already overly sensitive to stress) into overdrive.

Things slowly quieted down over the span of most of a year, although the tinnitus remains, and my SNS seems to be much more sensitive/responsive that it was prior to the infection and tinnitus. For example, I had major surgery last fall, and my blood pressure again went very high post-surgery for several months, along with resting heart rate elevation, etc. I healed extremely quickly though. My insomnia has remained - I fall asleep totally fine every night, and hit deep sleep quickly, but wake up 3-5 hours after falling asleep. If I've not been working out for while, I may be able to drift off again after a short while and total up maybe 7 hours. If I've been exercising that day (usually at 6am) that's pretty much it for the night.

Since the surgery I've been exclusively working out by riding (mostly on a trainer using Zwift). My fitness increased a lot (given the cap imposed by my cardiac condition), my training load was increasing (although I still had sleep maintenance insomnia) and I was posting efforts on Strava that had me in the top percentile age-group wise for sprint efforts, and top 5-20% for climbs. One thing I did work out was that on long and hard rides greater than an hour, I would hit a point where all of a sudden I would get a panicky/anxious feeling, and would have to quit. I figured out my workout nutrition, and that resolved. I wonder if the point at which my body would release adrenaline in order to trigger glycogen release from the liver was the root cause. I was feeling pretty strong, and seemed to be doing ok on 5-6 hours sleep a night - until a couple of weeks ago when it all crashed down. Any exercise at all would have me up the whole night, and on any bike effort I felt weak, and drained. Essentially I must have hit the over-training threshold, and worsened the insomnia.

Currently I've dialed way back on the bike workouts, and am trying to get my sleep working again. Work stress doesn't help...

Things I've tried:

melatonin -have tried both regular tablet/capsule and time-release. When taking melatonin I wake up 10 times a night, and don't sleep deeply for any part of the night.

Mirtazipine - low dose will make me sleepy, but I still wake up early AM. Feel terrible - like a zombie the entire next day.

Ativan - gives a sleep like a blackout, but still wake up 3-4am. Never want to use a benzo for anything more than very sparingly.

theanine - doesn't do much. Messes with my sleep if I take it in the evening.

CBD - increases my tinnitus badly. Definitely not helpful in my case!

Not sure where to go from here. I want to ride and work out hard, but I also want to get rid of the sleep-maintenance insomnia! I've dealt with it for 15 months now, and need to get back to a regular sleep pattern!

Good on you TWK - thanks for posting this.

Yeah you sound very similar to a lot of us here and people I have come across with something similar. It baffles me that medical professionals don't know very much about this. the right ones do.

The word is from the people who helped me is you need a primer and a trauma. If you have had a childhood trauma for some reason (they don't know why) but you are much more prone.

I was tracking really well towards the end of last year, but right at the end I had some knocks that set me right back. I mean right back....I have fibromyalgia now and adhesive capsulitis in my shoulder which is often associated with it. And yeah, getting the night sweats occasionally, heavy heart pounding, insomnia, fatigue, "wired" feeling. Tired but wired and really painful muscles.

For me it's about trying not to allow HR to go too high while training. So strength work is good. It's just a matter of working through it, not over-doing things, keeping a good balance going. It's slowly starting to settle down, but I'll have to get some cortisone for the shoulder.

One thing that has helped is Valerian root - it's a natural remedy and while it doesn't always stop you from waking up, what sleep you do get is refreshing. I find that sometimes even when you skeep the night through, you wake up the next morning and your bombed the whole day, as if you hadn't slept a wink. Valerian can help with that.

And believe it or not alcohol. I have a much lower tolerance for alcohol now and I often don't feel like it. But I have been finding that after heavy workouts it can be pretty therapeutic. I had a very heavy session the other day and thought - ok I'm going to smashed for the next couple of days, and I had a good couple of glasses of wine and felt fantastic. My muscles loosened up, my headache went away, and I felt great. The following day I felt ok too. Stiff, but that's pretty normal. I have a theory that vaso-dilating effect helped my system recover.

It goes without saying that too much will ultimately have the reverse effect. But I have to say, it was damn pleasing to find that something I really enjoy (I like nice wine) actually helped for once.

Hi Slalom dude,

I've replied to TWK below for an update. How are you tracking chap?

Keeping my HR down and resting more between sets has helped a lot. I've found that 500mg GABA to help as well, while melatonin did not help

Has anyone had problems with taking L-theanine?

I started taking it once daily starting a couple of weeks ago. 125mg, usually mid-morning. I no longer drink coffee, so I just usually have it with a mug of Rooibos tea. It seemed to provide a slight dampening for daytime work-related stress. I found if I took a second capsule later in the afternoon, I'd usually feel shaky and jittery in the evening. My resting heart rate was also a little higher than normal on the 125mg dose, more so on double dosing days. My sleep didn't really improve, although some days I was getting 6 straight hours, and other days, very broken sleep.

A few days ago, I'd taken a second capsule in the afternoon, and felt terrible in the evening. I slept not too badly that night, from 10pm-4am, but felt head-achey and off all the next day. I decided to try not taking L-theanine starting that day, and the next couple of days were terrible - much louder tinnitus, really poor sleep (falling asleep fine then waking 3 hours later, pouring sweat and unable to sleep the rest of the night). It seems like I'm having withdrawal from stopping the L-theanine, even though it's not generally reported to have withdrawal symptoms. I'm really hoping that things quiet back down over the next few days.

Anybody with experience with L-theanine care to comment?

Hi Scott,

I've read your post and all the comments on it and was wondering if you have any updates. Do you still use the fruit/sugar method and find it useful? Have you found anything else that helps? I suffer from the same problem and am at a total loss. I have suffered from insomnia for decades but have only recently developed the worsened insmonia in response to exercise. For me, any amount of exercise, even walking, triggers terrible insmonia. I have seen many doctors, sleep, endocrinologist, etc. It has gotten progressively worse for me and is taking a huge toll on my life. Any updates you can give me are appreciated.

Scott,

It's very funny that you mentioned fruit as I've noticed the exact same thing. I have the exercise induced insomnia frequently where after any exercise, regardless of the type, beyond a very light amount triggers the symptoms many others here have described (insomnia, anxiety, night sweats, feel like body is radiating heat, etc.). It's very intense and unpleasant, and I haven't been able to get any help from the several doctors and specialists I've seen about it.

I started noticing a connection to what I was eating after workouts that stood out. Usually the more calories I consumed, particularly simple carbs, the better I felt and less likely I was to have the issue at night. Then, I noticed for some reason that fruit seemed to work the best and address the issue most directly.

I'm wondering if any meaningful exercise depletes liver and muscle glycogen stores which then causes a stress response in the body (due to lower available glucose for the body to use) that is more pronounced in certain types of people (i.e., people generally more prone to anxiety and insomnia). Any simple carbs consumed in meaningful amounts would replete the glycogen stores in the muscles, but it's possible that fruit specifically repletes liver glycogen (as opposed to muscle glycogen) due to its fructose content, which is metabolized by the body differently than other forms of sugar/carbs.

I'm not a medical expert but this is my current state of thinking based on reading about it. Curious if others have a view or can build on (or correct) this.

It's a very strange and frustrating problem that doesn't seem to be understood by the medical community. Not sleeping or not exercising are certainly not acceptable outcomes!

-B