Disturbed sleep during NLP

[Mark Rippetoe]

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.

Yeah.

[UTG2812]

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?

It's not like I am sweating, I just feel hot. I adjust the temperature as I go to sleep.

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

Yes, that seems to be exactly what's going on!
Moving training further away from sleep isn't helping and also the issue persists for several day. The worst day might even be the second night after squat and deadlift.

Regarding NSAIDs:
I read a study that both Ibuprofen and acetaminophen will decrease cortisol in general and one that ASA will decrease cortisol awakening response (blunting that could help to fall asleep again) specifically. The question is if that reduction will be significant enough to stop me from waking up. So far it hasn't really.

Regarding nutrition:
Many years ago I did a Keto diet for a couple of months. This would also lead to me waking up at 6am everyday. On weekdays that was actually my getting up time, but it sucked on the weekends.
A teaspoon of honey in the evening would solve that.

So far I haven't noticed an impact of different dinners on my sleep, but I will keep an eye on it.

Also now when I wake up at 3am I will get hungry 10-30min after waking.
I will start with some carbs (honey, banana) right before bed and when waking up and go from there.

Is your mouth dry when you wake up?

So I tracked my sleep and had 15 minutes of mild snoring. No gasping for air or anything.

[Dunk]

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.

Hi Rip, did you mean Fluticasone instead of Fluconazole? If you didn't could you please explain how and why you take it for clearing the nose? I used Oxymetazoline for the first time last night and can't believe how much of a difference it made. I've never really been able to breathe through my nose despite having a big ol hooter, but this was the first time I can remember breathing through it without slowly suffocating. I was so excited about it that this morning I also tried nasal irrigation with a makeshift squeezy bottle thing made out of an old squash bottle. Can't say it helped much but then it was my first time trying and it didn't feel like it got much of the mucus out but I can feel the flow past it. I will experiment with this. Thanks Rip!

[Mark Rippetoe]

Fuck. Yes, I meant fluticasone. Flonase. It shrinks the inflammation over a couple of days, and then use it every other night. And there are several devices available to irrigate the nasal passages, like Lavage.

[UTG2812]

I have started to go to bed earlier like 8/9 pm and then I will actually wake up at 3 am also, but that at least allows me to get 6-7 hours of good sleep. So it seems like my circadian rhythm gets disturbed by the workouts.
Anyways with this schedule, I have been able to consistently get the workouts in without feeling overly burnt out.

Playing with nutrition did not change anything.

Taking 5-10mg of Melatonin makes me sleep deeper I think. At least I will wake up more refreshed.

I also bought a Bluetooth O2 monitor, and I am always in the 96-98% range, so my slight snoring doesn't seem to cause sleep apnea.

[jwbucha]

I have started to go to bed earlier like 8/9 pm and then I will actually wake up at 3 am also, but that at least allows me to get 6-7 hours of good sleep. So it seems like my circadian rhythm gets disturbed by the workouts.
Anyways with this schedule, I have been able to consistently get the workouts in without feeling overly burnt out.

Playing with nutrition did not change anything.

Taking 5-10mg of Melatonin makes me sleep deeper I think. At least I will wake up more refreshed.

I also bought a Bluetooth O2 monitor, and I am always in the 96-98% range, so my slight snoring doesn't seem to cause sleep apnea.

I’m on the 8:30pm bedtime, 4:30am wake up program as well. 200mg of caffeine and by 5:30am I can start warm up sets. I drive a desk all day but for some reason I have zero desire to lift heavy by 6pm or later. Summer is not so bad but 4:30 pm sunset in Idaho winter sucks the life out of a guy.

I gave the Unisom a shot, but dependency seems to be a problem. The first night I didn’t take it I woke up at 2am and my body decided the day had begun. Melatonin seems to work just fine.

[Yngvi]

I have started to go to bed earlier like 8/9 pm and then I will actually wake up at 3 am also, but that at least allows me to get 6-7 hours of good sleep. So it seems like my circadian rhythm gets disturbed by the workouts.
Anyways with this schedule, I have been able to consistently get the workouts in without feeling overly burnt out.

Playing with nutrition did not change anything.

Taking 5-10mg of Melatonin makes me sleep deeper I think. At least I will wake up more refreshed.

I also bought a Bluetooth O2 monitor, and I am always in the 96-98% range, so my slight snoring doesn't seem to cause sleep apnea.

Fuck. This is a new problem; 90% is cited as a normal level during sleep. Maybe you are breathing too well.

[UTG2812]

I gave the Unisom a shot, but dependency seems to be a problem.

Yeah, I don't wanna mess with that.

Fuck. This is a new problem; 90% is cited as a normal level during sleep. Maybe you are breathing too well.

The normal oxygen saturation is between 95 and 99, 90-95 is borderline, below 90 is considered hypoxemia iirc

[Yngvi]

The normal oxygen saturation is between 95 and 99, 90-95 is borderline, below 90 is considered hypoxemia iirc

95-99 is normal when people are awake.
94-96 is average for when people are asleep, with average nightly lows of 90%.
Time to take up smoking.

[JFord]

Only if you want to stay asleep. 600mg ibuprofen and 1000mg acetaminophen does the trick.

Not necessarily being an “evidence-based physician”, I totally agree with this regimen. People are often reluctant to take an NSAID (the drug class which ibuprofen AKA Motrin falls into) along with acetaminophen (Tylenol).

Personally I find the two seem to work synergistically as they both relieve pain through different mechanisms and there doesn’t seem to be any drug-drug interactions between them that I’m aware of.

That said, many people get GI upset from the NSAIDs, myself included. What I find is that taking the NSAID/Tylenol combo with omeprazole 20 mg (available over the counter) blocks the GI upset. Also, many of my patients have reported getting the same pain relief with 200 or 400 mg of ibuprofen rather than the usual 600 or 800 mg doses but with less GI side-effects. For me, the 600 mg dose WAS more effective.

I don’t need this “cocktail” every night but when I’m aching, it helps a lot. BTW, Pain is one of the biggest non-psych causes of insomnia.

Not to belabor this discussion but there is some evidence that head-to-head, diclofenac (another NSAID) is more effective than ibuprofen. However, the study I’m citing was for treating non-inflammatory arthritis such as degenerative joint disease (common “wear-and-tear” arthritis). This may be different than the muscle aches often arising post-work-out.

Using myself as a guinea pig however, I’ve personally found that diclofenac (Voltaran) WAS in fact more effective for me (also taken with Tylenol) post work-out. Many (not all) of my patients seem to also prefer this to ibuprofen. Unfortunately, this is NOT available without a prescription. There is a topical form of this medicine (a lotion) that is applied locally to where it hurts. I’ve never tried it but my patients seem unimpressed with it. I’ve stopped recommending it to my patients for that reason. I believe it’s available OTC but is expensive.

Hope this helps.