this is good news

Friday, Aug. 03, 2007 | 4:36 PM

i slept better last night than i have in a long time. i also woke up feeling better than i have in a long time.

i decided to stop taking these antihistamines. i was taking the benadryl and that doxylamine stuff, and i found out that the reason that pamprin makes me tired is because it contains an antihistamine too. i was reading about them, and i read that they sedate you into light sleep, but rob you of deep sleep. that might be why i always woke up still feeling tired, even when i did sleep for many hours. and also why i woke so easily, and couldn't get back to sleep after waking up.

i also was beginning to feel some weird side effects.

i began having this problem. always feeling like i had to go to the bathroom, but couldn't. it started getting really annoying, and i was beginning to think that there was something wrong with me, until i started reading some more about these things i was taking. on this here website and many others lists "difficulty with urination" as a rare side effect.

they were also making my throat real try, which made me want to drink a bunch of water every time i woke up, which didn't help things.

so last night i decided to not take any of the antihistamines, and instead increase my intake of melatonin. it isn't a drug, it is a naturally occurring substance in the brain. the bottle i have contains 3 mg pills, and says, "do not exceed 3 mg in a 24 hour period." i have no idea why it says this. i did a ton of reading about it, and from what i've found, they haven't established any overdose amount. normal sleep aid doses, i read, are 3 mg or 5 mg. in cancer patients they give like 10 - 50. they did a study with giving 75 to a bunch of people for several years, and still found no real harmful side effects.

so last night i took one of these 3 mg pills, with one of these sleepmd things. the sleepmd has melatonin, but they don't say how much. since they don't say, i'm assuming it's underdosed. about an hour later, i was feeling tired, but not very much. so i took another 3 mg pill. i was a little nervous, i admit, but as i suspected, i didn't experience any sort of bad side effect. about a half hour after that, i was REALLY tired, and fell asleep soon after.

i didn't wake up until around 11, when my mom woke me up telling me that she was going to get into the shower, and that i should use the bathroom if i had to. i often wake up when she's in there, and then i have to wait, and it's annoying. i didn't seem to have trouble falling back asleep after that.

bubble slept through the "night" (or whatever) and never whined to go outside. it was the second time she's done this since i brought her home. so i got to sleep all the way through until i woke up a little after 3, when whiley woke me up by barking at some sound he heard outside. i got about 9 hours of sleep, with just the one interruption.

as i suspected, i also had some crazy dreams. when i first started taking melatonin, i had real vivid and memorable dreams. this effect faded after a while though. since i took more last night, i had this effect again. i had one before i was woken up, and another one after. interestingly, they both involved youth group people.

so, i thought i'd share with you my happy news about sleeping well. now i think i'm gonna go find something to eat.

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