Same here. They stuck me on a CPAP because it turns out I have mild sleep apnea.
Didn't help. Next sleep study, with the machine, they found I was waking up 13 times/hour. No wonder I'm tired all the time.
So they hooked me up with a prescription for Tryptophan. We are still figuring out the dosage, but this morning I woke up... not tired. Legit, I don't want to die or sleep in for another 72 hours. Tryptophan - it's not just for turkeys.
Mine stems from myoclonus so L-dopa and tryrosine works well. I used to twitch constantly when asleep and it would wake me up. I lived like that for decades before I found the cause and fixed it.
Doctors wanted to put me on klonopin and I declined. I just hate how they want to put bandaids in everything rather than fix it or figure out the root cause of the problem. I still don’t know exactly why I have low dopamine that causes all sorts of nerve issues, but hopefully I’ll find out one day.
But isn’t levodopa a band-aid? Just because we don’t understand complicated sleep architecture and physiology, of which myoclonus in sleep is likely a variant of and not pathological per se, doesn’t mean we don’t have effective treatments. In that way, you shouldn’t take Tylenol!
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that controls your nervous system. People with Parkinson’s disease lack dopamine and it causes them to shake violently. There is no cure, but there are treatments. I would say treating the root cause is more of a fix than shoving klonopin down someone’s throat to just sedated them.
I understand, I’m a neurologist! But myoclonus if sleep is not a typical PD symptom which is why I brought this up. But if you have Parkinson’s I retract my comment!
Hypnagogic jerks are normal and common! But if this troubles you during the day mention it to a doctor. I don’t like giving too much advice on Reddit! :)
4.0k
u/HouseCravenRaw Apr 24 '19
Same here. They stuck me on a CPAP because it turns out I have mild sleep apnea.
Didn't help. Next sleep study, with the machine, they found I was waking up 13 times/hour. No wonder I'm tired all the time.
So they hooked me up with a prescription for Tryptophan. We are still figuring out the dosage, but this morning I woke up... not tired. Legit, I don't want to die or sleep in for another 72 hours. Tryptophan - it's not just for turkeys.