3-6 pm is a good time of day for me, and it has to be -that is when I teach guitar. I usually teach till 8, but by then I am getting tired. I take a nap every day after lunch for an hour, and that allows me to teach when I do.

I go to bed around 10 or 11 pm and frequently wake up around 3 or 4 am, but so does my sister and she blames it on menopause. So I don't know if my sleep disturbances are from PD or menopause. Since both PD and menopause cause sleep disturbances and I am of that age to be going through menopause, I am not surprised to be up in the middle of the night.

I have read that a persons low point is 3-00am. It is said that if you are close to death, and you make it past 3-00am, you will survive another day!!!! I wonder whether it is the same for animals?
I can't say I feel at my worst at 3-00am, these days I sleep past that time and get up at 6.00am. I think evenings are the time I feel my meds have given up.
Ron

http://www.sacredlotus.com/acupunctu...flow_times.cfm

There must be clues in TCM as to sleep/wake patterns in PD and any other condition. I wish I knew more....

Rick,

Do you drink any liquids after 7pm? That is a old rule. I also find if I am not relaxed before going to bed I have urinary retention so I am forced to get up every few hours to get rid of it. When I am relaxed I notice I can get rid of it all at once. When do you take your L-Tyrosine? I use it at night to help sleep without taking medications and it works for me.

Bonnie

Bonnie-
I don't drink much in the evenings. I blame the sinemet on alternate nights and the requip on the others.

I am taking the tyrosine three times a day at present. I am on Day 4. I want to find out if it will cut my requirement for meds by allowing me to produce more of my own. Last night I went to bed at 11:30 without going off for the first time in several months and I am anxious to see how I do tonight.

Hope springs eternal - Rick

How's everyone sleeping. I've noticed a new trend in my own patterns. Everyday at 3am, nearly on the dot, I wake up. Many times clear headed. My symptoms I would say are about midline. Three nights ago I started with 3mg of melatonin 30min before bed it knocks me out, but when 3 o'clock rolls around, I'm up again.

Getting up at 3 is not so bad, it's what happens to the rest of the day that's tough. Yesterday I said screw it and made a double espresso at 3:15am. Roll with the punches... and shake a lot

Circadian cycle:
http://structuralevolution.org/blog/...nese-clock.jpg

11-4am is when i feel most like me - unfortunately no-one else is up to see it!
daytime sleepiness is an issue, meds related. If it weren't so antisocial I would be as nocturnal as a bat! There was a good programme on bbc about body clocks. it reckoned that light can be used to get things more normal. circadian rhythms being disturbed is a principal reason that many v elderly people in care facilities are over-medicated. I no longer fight the wakefulness at night but use it instead, no partner means I can make that choice. I normalize some as days get longer and there is more light, but problem returns at height of summer. most recently I have been using quiet night hours for drawing, a return to making art after years of digital excess. often wonder if exposure to computer monitors etc exacerbates sleep issues and dysfunctional rhythms......... another form of stress??

lindy

bump bump bump

[QUOTE=reverett123;336212]This is important stuff. Sleep disturbance can drive you bonkers. In the extreme, say meth addiction, you end up having conversations with the wallpaper and similar hallucinations. .. QUOTE

Moderators, if this is not wanted, please delete:

And I went, and behold, I saw a white horse…”

The Beast watches and observes, looking for weaknesses, deciding when and where to attack; changing its strategy and tactics as it learns. It has explored our bodies and our minds; it has great power and we are very weak.

And after some time, it figured out the simplest thing: human beings get tired. We have to sleep. The Beast never sleeps. The Beast never rests.

All it has to do to win is wear us down.

And that is easy to do.

Sleep deprivation. The Beast came at me three months ago with a new tactic, a new symptom (that is, new to me. I found other Parkies on the internet who had been attacked in the same way, one of them at the exact same time as me). The new tactic is a game called “No position is tolerable”. It is very simple. Every position of my body is uncomfortable. And not like an uncomfortable sofa; more like being on a planet with crushing gravity. All positions are intolerable; sometimes after a few seconds, sometimes after a few minutes; not more than ten minutes at best. Cannot stay lying on my back; roll to the side and my hip bone feels like it is on hard cement with a very heavy weight on top - it feels likes my hip bone will snap, so I stand up but my upper body fills with cement and is too heavy for my lower body and so I start swaying out of balance in the middle, and then sit down on a chair but that is worse - just look at how your body has to contort itself to sit on a chair - or a toilet, or a car seat. Cannot tolerate it. So sit on the floor - no good - lie on stomach - that’s worse.

I am flopping around from position to position but there is no place in this world where I can rest for 10 minutes. And so, what could be more obvious: I cannot sleep.

The Beast started this new game and just has to sit and watch me get exhausted. That is all it has to do to conquer me, to destroy me. Just keep me awake, by making every position of my body impossible for me to endure. Such a simple plan - brilliant, really.

After three days and nights, hallucinations start. After 5 days, you are crazy, and it gets written down on your chart as “episodes of psychosis” or some such thing. Actually you are perfectly normal, ANYONE, a totally healthy person, not taking drugs, will start to hallucinate. That’s why sleep deprivation is used as torture. You would tell them anything just to be allowed to sleep.

How many Parkies have been given anti-psychotic drugs or institutionalized simply because they need to sleep but are judged to be insane?

“… testing lab rats with continuous sleep deprivation for about two weeks or more inevitably caused death of all the rats in experiments conducted in Allan Rechtschaffen’s sleep laboratory at the University of Chicago. The cause of death was not proven but was associated with whole body hypermetabolism.”...

…The brain's ability to problem solve is greatly impaired. Decision-making abilities are compromised, and the brain falls into rigid thought patterns that make it difficult to generate new problem-solving ideas. Insufficient rest can also cause people to have hallucinations, depression, slow reaction times, panic attacks, hypertension, slurred speech….

John Schlapobersky was tortured by the apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1960s.

Here's what he said about sleep deprivation:
"Making a program in which people are deprived of sleep is like treating them with medication that will make them psychotic. I was kept without sleep for a week. I can remember the details of the experience, although it took place 35 years ago. After two nights without sleep, the hallucinations start, and after three nights, people are having dreams while fairly awake, which is a form of psychosis.”
"By the week's end, people lose their orientation in place and time - the people you're speaking to become people from your past; a window might become a view of the sea seen in your younger days. To deprive someone of sleep is to tamper with their equilibrium and their sanity."

In Chapter 17, we printed up cards, the size of business cards, for Parkies to hand out depending on the circumstances. For example:
I have Parkinson’s.
WTF is your excuse?
Or
I have difficulty undressing myself.
Want to be a good citizen?

And now we need a new card to hand out:

I am not psycho.
I just need to have a nap.

http://parkinsonsdance.blogspot.com/...hapter-30.html