Disruptive sleep

Sleep...it's probably one of the things that I have yet to truly recover from. Since my mid-teens when I learned of the productivity (at least this was how I saw it in my mind) of sleep deprivation, it is something that has afflicted me. Within the last several years, I had gotten better at getting a few more hours of sleep than I used to live off of, however, it's somehow taken a different course the last three or so weeks.

There is no doubt that I am a nightowl for the most part--like going to bed at 12am or later. However, at the same time, I've always had the ability to get up early as well. Sometimes, this was related to dogs getting me up (they have the best alarm clocks!) or I would just wake up. Baxter used to wake me up by 6:30am everyday no matter what. But now that he is gone, there has been no one else to take his place. Basically, they just let me sleep in or Tovah will ring the bells to go out. It is nice no doubt, but the last several weeks, I feel like I've been getting up later and later like 8am or last weekend, it was 9am!

For the most part, I have never been an insomniac. Whenever my head hit the pillow, I was out and just went into nice, blissful sleep. Quite frankly, I enjoyed that. Though the eating disorder did result in me becoming a light sleeper, still, head hit pillow, I was asleep.

As I said the last three weeks or so, my sleep has been incredibly off. In the past, this has only been when I was in restrictive mode. My eating is sufficient on most days, so should not warrant this type of distress.

Now when I go to bed (often it's me saying, okay, I should really go to bed now), I do not seem to go to sleep right away. Likely, it is only a few minutes, but it feels like an eternity. What really gets me is that my sleep has been very distraught. Typically, I do not move a lot in my sleep, and I am now tossing and turning and waking up very frequently. This has resulted in me being more tired in the afternoon/early evening than usual and literally sacking out. I realize this is not the best for sleep later, but seriously, I just crash!

Part of me wonders on a deeper subconscious level how much my lack of work situation is causing this, or whether this is the start of a slow descent into depression (I tend to either go into one extreme of sleep a lot or zero sleep) or possibly both. When you get to this point, it is so much harder to keep any motivation--not that I'm there yet, but some days certainly feel like it.

Anyone else feeling anything similar or have thoughts?
Sleep posts here, here, and here.

Give yourself a chance

Several weeks ago, C., my therapist, said to me, "You never give yourself a chance." At the time, this statement was in context to a discussion on my sleeping habits which has been an issue for a long time. We tend to disagree slightly on how and why my sleeping habits are the way they are. C. looks at it as more of a self-care issue, whereas I see it as "I don't need as much sleep" as other people (this study looks at a genetic basis for those who need less sleep than other people) and as a pure habit, like biting my fingernails. (this is despite the evidence which suggests that I probably am sleep deprived) She tells me that whenever I decide to change that behavior, she'll be there with open arms (sleep is one of her specialties)

It's not really that I haven't tried changing my sleeping habits, it's rather that I've tried it, but then come to the conclusion that it doesn't work. This would make complete sense if I actually gave myself the chance to really determine if it would work through a lengthy duration rather than say oh a few days or week. The other scenario is that I've tried it, it works for awhile, and then slowly I fall back into my old ways. I find this type of pattern also intercedes into other areas of my life. Take for example medications. I admit to being incredibly impatient. Like many people, if I take something, I want to see the effects work NOW, not wait and twiddle around, tweaking the dosages ad nauseum. If I actually decide to take a medication, I have been known to take myself off of them. Yes, that was not wise all the time, but I either a) felt it was worthless and made no difference or b) I was actually feeling better (now of course, this couldn't be the medication was my thinking) Failed logic yes.

Besides medications and sleep, there are other issues that come to mind: gaining weight/weight maintenance, recovery, taking risks in life, etc. I think a lot of people may feel similar, so I won't go into elaborate details but the same kind of pattern exists. We have fears and are afraid to deviate from the familiar. We get used to feeling/behaving one way even if we know there is something better beyond the horizon. I know for me, another major issue is fear of disappointment, especially at certain times about recovery (Carrie wrote an excellent post about the meaning of recovery) It's one reason why there are still times when I feel jaded about life and try to keep anything that I really do want in life (relationships, dating, etc) low key with no expectations.

So I pose the question, how many of us really give ourselves a chance? And if you don't, what are your fears? What would giving yourself a chance entail?

Note--* I'm not against medications when you really need them, I just have a difficult time when it comes to me. You can read more about my medication dilemmas here and here
*Sometimes, I find this incredibly ironic, because I have super skills with being patient in other areas of my life, like dog training, people, learning something interesting, etc.

The parallels of ED and sleep thinking

I know I wrote about sleep in my last post, but I have a few other thoughts. For me, my relationship with sleep is similarly parallel to the ED. Here is an example of ED/sleep dialogue which has dominated my thinking at various times:

ED
I really don't need that much food. I can get by on X calories just fine.

Eating too much food will just cause me to get fat.

I don't need to eat.

SLEEP
I really don't need that much sleep. 4-5 hours is sufficient.

Sleeping too much will make me fat and unproductive.

I don't need sleep.

Obviously, all of these statements are illogical, black and white thinking. Although I am able to see that now, sleep is still one of the hardest issues for me. Part of it is due to years of intentionally depriving myself of sleep. Another part is habitual. Yes, I dare it, but the Internet probably keeps me up too much. I've heard that your brain has to really focus on those pixels which just keeps you awake (unless you do indeed crash at the computer--a tell tale sign, you're not getting enough sleep)

Much like the ED, my thoughts and behaviors about sleep sway back and forth between knowing the health implications and having too much of a laissez-faire attitude. It's like never exactly allowing myself to reach a full potential, but instead just enough to tiptoe by...until the next major blow.

Sorry for the downer kind of post. I don't think my head is in such a good spot lately. :-(

To sleep perchance to dream-sleep and eating disorders

Lately, I've been thinking about sleep and the impact an eating disorder can have on it. Prior to my trip, we had a lot of bad weather here with rain and thunderstorms just about everyday. Some of these storms occurred in the early morning which would suddenly wake me. Then, I was up, the dogs were up, and neither of us could get back to sleep.

What just occurred to me was how my sleeping habits have changed since the introduction of an ED. Before ED, I was always a very sound sleeper. I could sleep through anything--thunder, lightning, rain, loud noises, etc. The house could have been robbed, and I would never have noticed. However, after ED began, I became a very light sleeper, waking up from subtle noises. In some ways this was good. If the dogs made a whimper or movement, I could wake up and let them out. At other times, this backfired, especially when all I wanted to do was sleep.

I also noticed that I've conditioned myself to wake up at about the same time every morning despite what time my head actually hits the pillow. This isn't an unusual phenomenon. Many people condition their bodies similarly unknowingly. This was made especially evident while I was in Pensacola, practically waking up at my usual time.

This made me think about the general question of how sleep effects eating disorder individuals. Does an ED affect the number of hours of sleep your body needs? Does it change a person's sleeping habits? What role does starvation have on sleep? Does weight restoration and recovery impact sleep quantitatively or qualitatively?

There's no doubt that sleep deprivation affects hormones and metabolism. Recent research has shown sleep deprivation as one reason for the increase of obesity worldwide. This article gives a thorough look at sleep deprivation, hormones, and metabolism.

But most of us have already heard about this, the rest of the research on sleep and eating disorders is scant. However, in sleep-wake studies, both those with anorexia and bulimia reported significant sleep disturbances on self reported questionnaires. A few other studies show that weight restoration helps those with anorexia in both slow wave, deeper, nocturnal sleep as well as qualitative sleep. (Studies here and here) In an interesting older study of the relationship of weight gain and sleep in 10 anorexic individuals, it confirmed how sleep changes during the weight restoration process through the use of EEGs..

It is my hope that there will be future studies on eating disorders and the role of sleep. I think it is a neglected area of research with important factors involved.

Has your ED affected your sleep/sleeping habits? Do you notice a difference in sleeping habits between periods of your eating disorder, i.e. at your worst period versus in recovery?