[bonwittiest]

Hello, fellow Forum members,

I have had a lot of stress in my life in recent months. Never a great sleeper, I’ve experienced six years of waking up in early morning and having difficulty getting back to sleep I also have adrenal fatigue that isn’t a problem on days when I’ve managed to sleep well. However, with rising, stress in recent weeks, sleep has grown much worse. In general, I have often found naps, especially if I finish them no later than about 3 p.m. to be helpful, and not just for the immediate boost they give. I think these naps, which are recommended by at least some adrenal fatigue experts, have mildly helped sleep that night because they keep my cortisol levels in check.Cortisol (elevated, that is) is a notorious sleep-wrecker. I will ask my doctor about this today, but I’m concerned that using a sleep window, which obviously means foregoing naps, might backfire by spiking cortisol and causing a very night that night. Has anyone had experience with this?

Thanks,
bonwittiest

[Martin Reed]

Your concerns are completely understandable! One thing that might be worth asking yourself is how well you sleep at night when you take naps during the day. If you sleep well at night after a nap, then you know that naps aren’t a problem. If you aren’t sleeping well at night, it might be a good idea to avoid those daytime naps.

Naps, in general, can feel great at the time but they reduce sleep drive and this can make sleep at night more difficult. So, you are effectively “kicking the can down the road” every time you nap during the day. If you feel you absolutely must nap, it’s a good idea to take the nap as early in the day as possible and to limit the nap to around 20 minutes.

The exception here is if you need to take a safety nap, since safety trumps everything. So, if you are going to be driving or doing anything that requires you to be awake but you think you might fall asleep, a safety nap is always appropriate.

Here’s a short video you might find helpful: Why you should avoid daytime naps if you have chronic insomnia.

When it comes to implementing sleep restriction, it’s important to consider that sleep drive always wins in the end — we cannot stay awake indefinitely! So, if you allot an appropriate amount of time for sleep and only allow yourself to sleep during that time, that is when you will sleep.

When you observe an appropriate and consistent sleep window, you will recognize a stronger sense of sleepiness at night and spend less time awake during the night. This will usually lead to less sleep-related worry and anxiety, and this leads to better sleep, which leads to less sleep-related worry and anxiety.

I hope this helps.

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The content of this post is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It is not medical advice and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, disorder, or medical condition. It should never replace any advice given to you by your physician or any other licensed healthcare provider. Insomnia Coach LLC offers coaching services only and does not provide therapy, counseling, medical advice, or medical treatment. All content is provided “as is” and without warranties, either express or implied.

[Jess84]

I have lots of adrenaline in my body from living a tense lifestyle for many years and have developed insomnia recently and am having a problem with falling asleep its as if I can never
get to the that deep sleep stage I spend the entire night in stage 1 sleep waking extremely fatigued which you’d think that would be perfect for building sleep drive except that with
adrenaline it doesn’t work out like that.

Adrenaline masks sleepiness so its a matter of burning this adrenaline off by not creating more of it and a good way of doing that is by exactly what you’ve said taking a afternoon nap this helps by burning some of the adrenaline off and when you go to bed at night there will be less of it in your bloodstream this only works on people like me and yourself that have large amounts of stress hormones circulating in the blood where as a normal person just suffering from insomnia would not want to partake in any napping because it would work against them building sleep drive so there has to be a different protocol for people whose insomnia is caused by stress hormones because that changes everything.

The most difficult thing for me is figuring out what time to do the nap which you gave a good
tip about no later than 3 PM which I will now implement this, the other problem is observing an appropriate sleep window because when you’re stuck in stage 1 sleep the entire night its
very hard to determine how sleep you’re actually getting because it just feels like you’re getting none so I find that to be a struggle.

[Author]

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