Tuesday 2 October 2012

I think I'll sleep on it.

I've a long history of poor sleep: it's common with Asperger's so this goes back well before my ME, but the interaction has come up for thought and action once more, in the last few days.

Trazadone and Mirtazapine have both been effective for me, in terms of knocking me out, but it's not uncommon for those on the autistic spectrum to have atypical reactions to medication, and both of those at my prescribed doses left me essentially non-functional for at least the next day, if not more.  Thoroughly doped.

A 1/4 of my Trazadone Rx turned out to be the titration, but I never did find a small enough Mirtazapine does to lose the unwanted effects.
I still use the Trazadone if I've had several poor nights, which applied over this weekend, to prompt this post.

It demonstrates that poor sleep is certainly not the key cause of CFS: "tired from lack of sleep" is way too simplistic.  Good sleep does not appear to reduce or eliminate any of the CFS symptoms, with the exception of "brainfog" (Or, lack of sleep alertness failure, which being similar in many respects would overlap nicely): same fatigue levels and poor stamina, same muscle aches and pains, etc.
What decent sleep does shift, however, is my ability to cope with my CFS.  The same level of symptoms don't "get to me" anything like as much.   More tolerance, less irritability.

That's worth having.
I shall think about and monitor sleep a bit more, now I've made myself aware, again, of what I've rather been missing out on.

A half-serious bit of me still thinks that two or three years of induced coma is what's needed.

"Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care, the death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast."



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