Posted by ItsHowdyDudyTime on November 27, 2002, at 21:27:40
How many of you have ever thought that much of your severe depression problems was somehow, ultimately rooted in screwed up sleep cycles? I mean REAlLY screwed up sleep cycles. Im not talking about the usual insomnia everyone gets from time to time when stressed out or if they drank too much coffee that day. Im talking about something different here. An altogether different kind of insomnia most non mentally ill people have luckily never experienced.
When I was first hit by the "big one" years ago, one of the first symptoms I developed was severe insomnia. I found I couldnt easily fall asleep despite feeling exhausted and extremely tired at night. Id lay in bed and just couldnt fall asleep. I wasnt thinking about anything, wasnt worrying about anything. It was more like a physical deteroriation in my bodies sleep mechanism, complicated and misunderstood as that is. Id never experienced anything like it before in my life.
Then the early morning awakening problems hit, Id "jerk awake" repeatedly right before dawn...what a miserable, nasty feeling. Then try to fall back asleep, unsuccessfully til I broke down and took a sleeping pill like a Xanax or a benadryl. Which would knock me into a shallow, crappy quality sleep for a few more hours. Then Id awaken early, never able to sleep late anymore. Id sleep maybe a total of eight hours, but wake up and feel like I had only gotten an hour of shoddy sleep and was totally unrested and unrecovered.
I personally believe the real solution to severe depression is sleep. I believe that if I could once again sleep totally normally, get into a deep nice sleep again my depression would eventually go away. I once read that sleep is your body's "damage control" system and sleep is where your body recovers at. No good sleep and its impossible for your body and brain to fully recover. The result being that you live in a state of severe depression all the time.
Also, I was told by a psychiatrist that severe insomnia is one of the things that can cause psychosis, particularly psychotic depression.
What are your thoughts on this? Have any of you ever wondered if severe depression is somehow related to inability to fully recover due to the fact clinically depressed people have severely messed up sleep cycles, they dont cycle in and out of REM sleep normally, etc.
I have seriously wondered if the problem we describe as major depression is not so much a problem of needing to be activated or stimulated as is the common thinking, but more a problem of inability to recover properly like a healthy person does. Recovery is a very important and underrated thing.
Also, human growth hormone is released during deep sleep and this hormone is critical to recovery. Somes studies indicate that severe depressives have lower levels of human growth hormone.
Howdy Doody.
poster:ItsHowdyDudyTime
thread:129660
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021127/msgs/129660.html