To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

 To continue the theme of my children finding answers to puzzling health issues, I will share a couple more:

Gabrielle spent a couple years suffering from sudden onset of terrible gastric distress and pain, debilitating fatigue, and constant nausea. After multiple visits to various specialists, she was finally diagnosed with severe gluten intolerance (pretty much at celiac disease levels), which had caused several big ulcers in her stomach and ulcerated spots in her intestines. Once she stopped eating gluten for several months, the ulcers and intestines healed, the fatigue lifted dramatically, and she is able to eat without vomiting. A low-dose anti-anxiety pill was the final piece of the puzzle to quiet her busy mind. Six months or so later, she sleeps well, eats very strictly gluten-free (she can't handle even a little gluten), and is able to deal with her high-demand job with aplomb. 

Gabrielle's husband, Raine, has also just found some relief after a couple years of mysterious and debilitating pain. I think he racked up visits to no fewer than eighteen medical specialists before he was finally diagnosed by a holistic chiropractor. 

Raine was suffering from agonizing stabbing pain in his intestines as well as vertigo, dizziness, and constant nausea. I do not know how his hiatal hernia was missed by the gastroenterologist (he had an endoscopy, for goodness' sake!), but the chiropractor has been manipulating his stomach and intestinal area in such a way that Raine has found immense relief from pain and is now able to eat normally and without agonizing and constant pain. Turns out the vertigo, dizziness, and some of the nausea were from an entirely different cause: military neck, where the neck vertebrae are straight when they should be curved. The other doctors were probably trying to find a cause that answered all of the symptoms together, so maybe that is why they were stymied and kept bouncing him from specialist to specialist. Fortunately, the chiropractor is the perfect person to treat his neck, as well, and Raine has been able to eat, work out, and put in more hours at work without pain, vertigo and dizziness, and vomiting. 

He's feeling so much better, in fact, that he has accepted an Army deployment to Africa for ten months. But more about that later....

For myself, I have found an excellent answer for my sleep issues: melatonin. I had tried melatonin pills in the past, but they either did nothing or made me feel so groggy in the mornings that I couldn't function well. Plus, I found it difficult to time the taking of melatonin pills for best effect, so I gave up on them thinking that they didn't work for me. 

Earlier this year, however, Husband and I tried 3mg melatonin gummies, and they work so well that I get a solid six-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half hours of uninterrupted sleep every night and wake up feeling refreshed. I spent decades feeling like I could barely function because of poor sleep, so this development is thrilling! Turns out that seven-and-a-half hours of sleep is perfect for me. Husband needs eight or nine hours of sleep a night to feel good. I take 6mg, Husband takes 3mg, and we're both happy. 

Walmart sells a very decent brand of gummy melatonin called Olly Sleep. Olly Sleep gummies contain 3mg melatonin as well as L-Theanine, an amino acid that reduces stress and induces relaxation. Also very good (but no longer available at my Walmart) are VitaFusion sugar-free 3mg melatonin gummies. Both are very affordable.

I thoroughly chew two gummies about thirty minutes before I want to go to bed, and I never have problems falling asleep within moments of my head hitting the pillow. Nor do I have problems waking up in the mornings. I occasionally get some vivid dreams, which is a common side effect of taking melatonin, but they are merely interesting or weird dreams and never nightmares (I can't remember the last time I had a nightmare, actually). 

If my experience with melatonin gummies can help anyone else get some needed sleep, I am glad I shared. The older you get, the less melatonin you produce, so those of us getting close to being able to claim senior citizen discounts need all the help we can get.