I have suffered from insomnia for about four years now. If anyone out there has even gone a few nights without a good night’s sleep you know how debilitating it can be. I spent the greater part of 18 months without more than a couple hours of uninterrupted sleep each night and I was basically a high functioning zombie.
There was no shortage of people willing to impart their advice on the situation either:
Have you tried this?
Yes, it did not work.Have you tried that?
Yes, it did not work.Have you been to a sleep study?
Yes, twice. They prescribed me medication. It sort of worked but I had to take two pills every day.Hmm…
Yes, hmm indeed.I sleep really well. Always have. I can sleep anytime anywhere. It’s awesome.
I’m sure it is. I’ve even gone to a six week information/instructional on how to sleep!Really? They have classes for that?
Yes, and I fell asleep in the last lecture.Now that’s irony at its finest.
Indeed.Have you tried…
The key to sleep in humans is melatonin. The only word to describe this stuff is “magical”, so naturally one of the things I tried was some melatonin supplements. I tried 0.5mg and later 0.25mg and I might have well been taking sugar pills. My non-expert opinion was that this was because it wasn’t naturally occurring. You see, tryptophan metabolizes into seratonin; and if it’s dark out it’s further metabolized into melatonin, and that’s the stuff that promotes sleep. Just plunking the melatonin in directly didn’t seem to be working.
So, enter in this stuff called ZenBev®. Sounds like new age hippy juice, right? Well it sort of is. I call it my magic pumpkin powder. It’s basically powdered tryptophan made from pumpkin seed flour. The myth of the tryptophan loaded turkey dinner is partially true, only turkey has about as much of it as any other meat and three times less than dried egg white and about half as much as dried pumpkin seeds (if you care, the winner by a mile is Alaskan sea lion).
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| Sea Lions Up Close courtesy Liz Noffsinger at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net |
Again, you may be asking, what does this have to do with anything? Fine, I’ll get right to it then. Thanks for sticking with me so far (hopefully still awake, though after first re-read of this post I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve nodded off).
I tried ZenBev® and I immediately started sleeping better. Not more, but better. Same number of hours of sleep at night but I wasn’t falling asleep at my desk at 3:00 every afternoon. The really awesome part though was that I started dreaming again. I’ve probably had less than a handful of dreams in the last four years and after two weeks on this magic pumpkin powder I’m dreaming five or six nights a week, and let me tell you, after going so long without recognizing that I’d had a dream this current influx has me discombobulated to say the least. It’s not quite Jacob’s Ladder crazy, but I have got to say it’s really something.
After a couple weeks of getting some better sleep I’ve felt the urge to be creative again. November was a bit crazy with NaNoWriMo and a work project is bringing some high stress moments at my day job so the first week of December wasn’t much from a creativity standpoint. A couple weeks of dreaming though and my brain itching for creation again, and that’s a good thing. I’m also starting to figure out what The Beatles were talking about in their song I Am The Walrus.
I am the egg man.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sc0L1UoO1M?rel=0]
~ Andrew