How is your dose lately, badnights? Still reduced?
Yes! If I ever catch up here, I'll find time to post an update. I;m at 9 to 12 mg, and I was pretty ,much ready to get a formal reduction of my presctiption from 12 to 9 plus a few extras, but I told her I would hold off til after my field project, which was only 3 weeks this year. Good thing I did, because I am messed up again - not terribly, just my guts are messed and I need 12 mg more often, possibly related. I will try to update my Wahls thread soon.
I am now a certified yoga teacher, and I learned during that grueling 3 weeks of getting up for 8 AM class every single day, that if I do a lot of yoga during the day, including meditation, I can get by on 4-5 hr sleep. Also, that sleep became restful instead of fractured after about a week. So .... I decided to keep doing it. I spent the next week in the office arriving at 8:30 (vs. the 11 am I arrived at before) & leaving at 5 (vs. 7:30), and then 3 weeks in the field, more or less the same thing i.e. getting up early every day. But I also got up early enough to do 30 minutes of yoga, breathing exercises and mediation every morning. And it works - so far. Sort of.
My theory is that we need to train our bodies to activate the parasympathetic (candle-lit dinner) nervous-hormonal system, and de-activate the sympathetic (run-from-tiger) one, so we should be practicing relaxation daily. When the parasym. system is active, bodily resources are devoted to digestion, immune work, reproduction (not that I have any need of that), and general repair and maintenance. (as oppsed to when the sympathetic is active, and ll of that is supporessed, and heart rate and breathing rate go up and acetycholine & other so-called stress hormones race into the blood). So ya, that was (is) my theory, but I was getting so bagged by the end (doing yoga outside in +3C in foggy rain is no fun) that I began to skip it so I could sleep. And I was in dire need of sleep by the time I got back, plus my guts were acting up...
I'm repeating myself. More some day