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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2016 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for January 15, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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I can't google anything useful about my issue and Claude is largely unhelpful, the doctors try to diagnose me with depression (I have a very well managed SAD, so I technically might qualify but this is not the main root cause), sports medicine physicians just don't exist where I am, so I want to dump the list of the symptoms I have and see whether you guys can help me come up with a direction to dig.

The main issue: when I do sports, whether it's cardio or weightlifting, I find it really hard to sleep. Fundamentally, my sleep is more fragile. I fall asleep easily all of the time, but when I work out it's easier for me to wake up during the night (for any reason, e.g. noise, wanting to go pee, being too hot, being too cold) and harder to fall back asleep after I wake up.

  • I've had those problems regardless of whether I'm depressed or not. But in general, I'm not depressed. I get depressed when I don't get enough sleep consistently.
  • Given the allotted time slot of 7 hours 40 minutes, when working out, I sleep 5-6 hours, when I'm not I sleep around 7+ hours.
  • I've worked out consistently for over a year and during all of that time my sleep quality was in the dumpster. As soon as I stopped, it improved drastically. I stopped waking up in the middle of the night as much and I have no trouble falling back asleep almost entirely. I thought that if I power through sleep issues, they are going to go away, but they didn't.
  • I tried to start working out again and bad sleep quality was back after the first session.
  • If I engage in a physically demanding activity (for example a hike) bad quality returns the same day.
  • I have a restless leg syndrome and drink magnesium for it. Magnesium removes the feeling in my shins almost entirely, but it seems like it flares up more when I work out. Rolling out the shins doesn't help.
  • When I work out, I am constantly thirsty, regardless of how much I drink. Due to that, I wake up to go pee 2 or 3 times a night. I tried to stop drinking 1-2 hours before going to bed, but it just feels really uncomfortable.
  • I was working out both when I restricted calories and when I was supporting my current weight. When restricting calories, I woke up due to being hungry sometimes (I attribute that to the sleep being fragile).
  • Working from the assumption that this might be related to the restless legs syndrome, I tried to refrain from targeting legs in my workouts, but it doesn't really matter which muscle group I target.
  • I maintain strict sleep hygiene, so we can rule out external factors.
  • Room where I sleep is cool, dark and (reasonably) quiet.
  • I tried working out in the morning and it doesn't matter when I do it.
  • I thoroughly stretched after the work out (when I did work out) and I also stretch before going to bed.
  • I tried adding more electrolytes (i.e. Gatorade), but I don't know what the hell I'm doing or what I'm measuring. In any case, I eat a lot of salt as is and I didn't notice any difference when adding additional electrolytes in my diet.

I desperately want to see a doctor, but they are trying to diagnose me with a mental health problem rather than a chemical imbalance. Feel free to ignore my complaints about doctors and suggest me to see a doctor, but I'd be grateful if you could spell out what I should say to him.

Others have covered this, but from my experience it sounds like overtraining which can be mitigated somewhat by allowing your nervous system more time to recover over hours before sleeping. I don't lift heavy weights or go running after 7pm for this reason. Morning through afternoon workouts are fine. If its a regular issue I would have my workouts in the morning and scale back intensity until I found the sweet spot of exertion that allowed me to sleep.

Do yourself a favour and try other non-exercise related sleep remedies such as reducing caffeine. I found a shocked nervous system (via overtraining) could be further irritated by electronic stimulation so try to cut out screens before bed. Books and audiobooks are encouraged in the hour before sleep. Magnesium as a muscle relaxant before bed is also good for getting to sleep (but not necessarily staying asleep).

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