My mum found her arthritis improved when she gave up apples.

Yes, but wouldn't using Windows cause a whole host of other problems... :D.

Okay, now that the obvious joke has been taken care of... I wonder why that diet change helped?

I also have a difficult time getting to sleep, despite being physically tired. Brain keeps churning.

My wife suggested, and seems to help quite a bit, various herbal/homeopathic supplements.

In preparation for hitting the sack, I'll ingest a supplement called GABA, and one called 5-HTP. About 20 minutes later, I'm feeling much more relaxed.

Then, when climbing into bed, I put a couple Melatonin 2.5mg sublingual homeopathic supplements under my tongue.

This combo has been helping quite a bit for the last couple years.

I don't tend to have trouble getting to sleep initially but if I'm woken any time after 4am my brain calls it a night and starts working on any unfinished programming I might be working on.

How are GABA or 5-HTP herbal/homeopathic? The first is a neurotransmitter and the second is an amino acid (this particular one is a precursor to another neurotransmitter). I'm assuming that you spoke to a physician before putting yourself on this regimen?

Herbal/homeopathic in that you find them at places that purvey herbal/homeopathic stuff, and my herbal/homeopathic leaning, wooee-wooee friends/colleagues call them such. No idea of the strict definitions.

And yep, my primary care practitioner was consulted, and recommended some of the wide variety of junk I find myself ingesting daily. Your comment is very appropriate, and others should take heed.

Glad to hear you talked to your doctor.

[sermon to the masses]Herbal medicine definitely has a place alongside modern medicine, but it concerns me that many people do not regard herbal medicines as drugs and thus do not accord them the necessary respect or caution. Anything that you put in your body that has the capacity to alter your mental or physical state should be regarded as a drug (even foods - an overdose on salt can be just as deadly as an overdose on morphine). Herbal medicines can even have unwanted interactions with pharmaceuticals, so it's wise to tell your physician and pharmacist if you are taking any herbal medicines.[/sermon to the masses]

I just wanted to second that. I've taken a variety of herbal medications for different things, and it is always important to research them thoroughly before using them. Never just believe the label! Make sure that a qualified medical professional has studied the medication and can give a detailed explanation of it's effects and side affects. Anything short of that is just foolhardy...

Probably the most famous of adverse reactions is St. John's Wart with other MAO inhibitors.

Here's an interesting link:

Medicine - Herb/Food Interactions

My insomnia's been killing me lately. Last night I think it was about 5 am when I finally got to sleep and I had to get up at 7 am to get my daughter ready for school. I feel like a short tempered zombie.

I have immense trouble with this as well -- the can't get to sleep pattern, not the wake up at 4 pattern. I'm quite sure I really come from a planet with a 27-hour day. Ideally I would like to go to bed at 2, sleep eight hours and wake up at 7.

Valerian and St. John's never did a thing for me, melantonin makes me feel like *****, what I tend to do is take sleeping pills (the tranquilliser kind, not the barbiturates) in VERY small doses, breaking the pill into quarters -- because for me there's obviously a placebo effect. I've taken something, so I can sleep, so I do. If someone switched those pills for vitamin pills behind my back, I'm sure that would work, but unfortunately I can't do that to myself.

BTW, many people find that two hours of sleep make them feel considerably worse than none at all, so next time you find it's 5 a.m., get up.

Wow...speaking of zombies, here's another one of my threads back from the dead! My posts are like bell bottom pants! (or 'boot-cut' as they have been so usefully renamed).

This topic though is still, uh, topical for me. The sad thing is that, since it's summer, my insomnia usually just leads to me sleeping during the day as I often will have very little to keep me awake. For example, my wife was out of town for three weeks on tour recently, and in that time period my schedule switched completely from night to day. I was going to sleep at 10am and waking up around 6pm....

Usually what ends up happening is I get fed up with it, take a sleeping pill, and that puts me right again. Then I'll start exercising, which will keep my schedule in place until, invariably, I stop remembering to exercise. So my schedules gets off again...wash, rinse, repeat, that's me :).

Yeah, I certainly considered that (getting up). I just hoped the 2 hours might make me slightly less dangerous behind the wheel.

As a person (as is my brother) who goes to sleep in about 15 seconds when I go to bed (and no, I'm not narcoleptic either), I've never understood what it is that keeps tired people awake. My wife suffers from occasional insomnia, so I'm aware that it's quite a problem for its sufferers, but she is unable to express what it is that keeps her awake.

I'm convinced (and I don't mean to belittle anyone) that it's an inability to "partition". By that I mean an inability to force yourself to ignore everything except what you're doing (in this case thinking about how your whole body is relaxing and you're drifting off) to the exclusion of all other concerns. My wife can't do that. Is that the case with other insomniacs here, and if it is, can it be learned?

I've known people like that, who could go to sleep hanging off a wire hanger in the closet. If I ever found Aladdin's lamp, to be likewise would be my first wish. The beautiful women would have to take a number. Priorities!

I'm not convinced you've got that right. In my case it's more an overconcern about whether I will sleep or not. Given that my eyes can't cope with a computer on too little sleep, the longer it takes the more I fret about not getting enough sleep, and the fretting keeps me awake, and so on round the mulberry bush. It can end up as a full-bore anxiety attack. The less reason I have to get up in the morning, on the other hand, the better I sleep and so the more I can.

So for me, thinking about how I'm falling deliciously asleep would mean that I'm not. After all, you cannot actually experience the moment at which you fall asleep, can you? And if you try, you keep yourself awake.

Or on a pile of wet sail bags on my off shift in a race.

When I think about my own experience some more, I realize that I don't think about going to sleep either -- I relax and direct my thinking to something without stress or emotion. I think my wife worries about not getting enough sleep and/or not waking on time.

Exercise definitely helps in more than one way. I ride my bike back and forth to work everyday (for a total of 1 hour round trip) and I notice that my sleeping is sounded and I have less stress. However, you shouldn't exercise near nighty night time otherwise it will have the opposite effect.

The other thing is that if you are sensitive to light or sound, use a ciesta mask and ear plugs. In addition to exercise, the ciesta mask keeps me asleep even when the sun is waking up.

Some insomnia is caused by stress and so even when you are tired you sometimes can't get asleep. It's kind of like a feedback loop. You are stress, so you can't sleep; you can't sleep, so you get tired; you are tired, so you feel even more stress. This was the source of my insomnia sometime ago and when I realized it, I reduced my stressed and now all is find. In addition, I did all of this without medication or drugs of any kind.

Stress is definitely a factor for me. I will find myself going over things in my head instead of switching off. I have never actually resolved an issue in this state as it tends to be kind of circular thinking with out an exit. And as the hours pass the sleeplessness becomes another source of stress. I tend to calculate as I go "Right if I go to sleep now I can still get in five hours.. four hours.. three.. two and a half... aw crap."

Yes! Yes! Yes! That's how it is.

My advice then it to learn to relax by doing something that helps to relieve stress (It's probably not work). You can take a yoga class or just go for a walk. Take a camping trip or something that brings you back into focus with yourself. I view stress as a sign that the mind and body are out of sync. Find something to laugh about everyday as this helps to reduce stress. You might want to consider discussing this with someone.

That count down is something else and is really disastrous when you thing about it. When this occurred to me, it gave me a sense of being haunted by the past, present, and future events of life. Whatever the source of this stress, you must eliminate it!