Disturbed sleep during NLP

[jwbucha]

Just to add to the experiences shared here, I also find that sleep is disturbed on NLP. Waking myself up with snoring at least once is more common than sleeping through the night. I tried 600mg ibuprofen, 500mg acetaminophen, and 25mg doxylamine. My god, that is a deep sleep.

Is a sleep apnea mask just an inevitable next step as you age? I can’t help but think that my grandpa never used one. But then again, he probably slept like shit too.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Just to add to the experiences shared here, I also find that sleep is disturbed on NLP. Waking myself up with snoring at least once is more common than sleeping through the night. I tried 600mg ibuprofen, 500mg acetaminophen, and 25mg doxylamine. My god, that is a deep sleep.

Is a sleep apnea mask just an inevitable next step as you age? I can’t help but think that my grandpa never used one. But then again, he probably slept like shit too.

I am 67 and I don't use a breathing machine. I have explained my nightly routine of clean out the nose, oxymetazoline, and fluconazole. It works very well.

[Chiaki Nitya]

I tried the pain med thing last night, the only thing I could find with acetaminophen in it was some "menstrual relief" pills my GF had, but I took 'em and had a pretty good sleep! I'm gonna get some just straight up ibuprofin and acitaminophen and try it tonight.

[neilc1]

Is your mouth dry when you wake up?

I am curious of the dry mouth thing,
I wake up cotton mouth dry,
weak chin when sleeping ?

[Daniel Babbitt]

You could also try mouth tape. Game changer. Somnifix.

[Mark Rippetoe]

You could also try mouth tape. Game changer. Somnifix.

But that won't work if your nose is not open.

[UTG2812]

what time are you staying up to?
If I crash before 10, I am up half the night from 2 am on,
If I'm awake it to 10, sometimes I make it to 6, or 5,

Between 10 and 12. But like I said if I take a week off from training my sleep will normalize.

Do you look at your phone when you wake up in the middle of the night?

And/or Turn on a light?

I find it notable that you wake up hot. Do you then cool the room down? Have you adjusted the temperature down or your bedding setup for your original sleep time?

I will usually just lie around for half an hour or so before checking the time on my phone. Don't turn on the lights, I usually just lay around till 7/8 and get up.

What time do you do your workouts ????

I tried different times from morning to early evening, does not make a difference.

Is your mouth dry when you wake up?

No.

But I have in the past (even before starting the NLP) always snored a little. I have tracked this with a phone app from time to time. It's usually just 1 or 2 mild snoring breaths before it goes back to normal breathing. Total snoring time per night was between 0-20min according to the app.

If I do, I am snoring through the nose, not the mouth. However, nasal spray and strips don't help, I assume the snoring is happening in the back of my throat and is usually worsened if my head is elevated in a way that puts my chin closer to my chest.

I haven't tracked my sleep in a while, I will do it and get back to you.

Is there a way how the training will affect snoring acutely?
Obviously getting heavier does so chronically, but if this was the case, my sleep wouldn't return after 5-7 days of not training.

[DaveJF]

I recently started to take taurine, 2g each morning and at supper time, just to try it out to help with leg cramps and general health. After around a week I noticed deeper sleep and prior I would have 1 to 2 nights per week where I'd wake up around 3am and stay up. So far nights like that and the leg cramps have gone away. Not currently training hard but had sleep problems similar to the OP when I was, and I think taurine would've helped then as well.

4g can be a pretty hefty dose to start with (for the stomach), so if you try it start at maybe 1g in the evening. It's cheap and safe.

[Maybach]

It is almost certainly a hormonal byproduct of training: the repair and growth processes that go on during sleep when recovering from sufficient stress to produce an adaptive response can cause sundry abnormalities. Cortisol and growth hormone in particular. Moving the training further from sleep will allow clearance of the cortisol from the training, but your body utilizes cortisol as part of the regulation of the inflammation produced during (or utilized by? The endocrine system is a riddle but you see what I am driving at) the actual repair and growth processes. I know that sometimes after an especially difficult training week, my wife says I'm a furnace throughout the night. Growth hormone and cortisol cause a spike in glucose from the liver, as well as insulin resistance, which can cause a high or low which can both cause you to wake up. This gets thornier when paired with the natural circadian cycle of cortisol. This is probably why you're waking up at 3 am: this is around when the "dawn effect" kicks in and begins increasing cortisol for your eventual awakening. If you are operating at higher levels, and the hormonal axis involved in muscle repair is going at full tilt, this can produce a premature awakening.

The NSAIDs before bed help to regulate this somewhat. Ibuprofen works until Vioxx gets back on the market.

The chief thing I've adjusted when facing a similar issue is nutrition. Protein and fat regulate both inflammatory response, repair processes, and blood glucose. The bodybuilder casein/peanut butter shake works well for this. So does a glass of warm milk. It can help "smooth" the insulin secretion over the night so you don't get changes, but by the same token also disturb that balance. Try consuming fats and proteins close to bedtime if you aren't already. If you are, try stopping. See if that changes anything.

You can also try examining your fat and carbohydrate intake. If you are consuming insufficient carbohydrates, you will face an excess of cortisol and the aforementioned blood glucose fluctuations will be exacerbated. If you are consuming an excess of fats, this can have a pro-inflammatory/hyperalgesic effect. And the inverse situation can produce corresponding imbalances. Try tweaking that by degrees and see if that helps

[CommanderFun]

It is almost certainly a hormonal byproduct of training: the repair and growth processes that go on during sleep when recovering from sufficient stress to produce an adaptive response can cause sundry abnormalities. Cortisol and growth hormone in particular. Moving the training further from sleep will allow clearance of the cortisol from the training, but your body utilizes cortisol as part of the regulation of the inflammation produced during (or utilized by? The endocrine system is a riddle but you see what I am driving at) the actual repair and growth processes. I know that sometimes after an especially difficult training week, my wife says I'm a furnace throughout the night. Growth hormone and cortisol cause a spike in glucose from the liver, as well as insulin resistance, which can cause a high or low which can both cause you to wake up. This gets thornier when paired with the natural circadian cycle of cortisol. This is probably why you're waking up at 3 am: this is around when the "dawn effect" kicks in and begins increasing cortisol for your eventual awakening. If you are operating at higher levels, and the hormonal axis involved in muscle repair is going at full tilt, this can produce a premature awakening.

The NSAIDs before bed help to regulate this somewhat. Ibuprofen works until Vioxx gets back on the market.

The chief thing I've adjusted when facing a similar issue is nutrition. Protein and fat regulate both inflammatory response, repair processes, and blood glucose. The bodybuilder casein/peanut butter shake works well for this. So does a glass of warm milk. It can help "smooth" the insulin secretion over the night so you don't get changes, but by the same token also disturb that balance. Try consuming fats and proteins close to bedtime if you aren't already. If you are, try stopping. See if that changes anything.

You can also try examining your fat and carbohydrate intake. If you are consuming insufficient carbohydrates, you will face an excess of cortisol and the aforementioned blood glucose fluctuations will be exacerbated. If you are consuming an excess of fats, this can have a pro-inflammatory/hyperalgesic effect. And the inverse situation can produce corresponding imbalances. Try tweaking that by degrees and see if that helps

Yeah, I've been reading about stuff like this, I think I'm just piling on too much training volume. I wanted to experiment with more "hypertrophy" type assistance work to compare with how I did on simpler programming, and honestly the simpler stuff I was doing in December worked a lot better.