Posted by bleauberry on July 7, 2008, at 20:47:31
In reply to Extreme morning anxity, posted by Haightguy on July 7, 2008, at 14:39:29
I forgot about the blood sugar connection possibility. I discovered by accident once that if I had a glass of orange juice, a glass of milk, or a spoonful of peanut butter at about 2am or 3am the morning anxiety was greatly diminished or nonexistent. I took blood sugar readings in mornings before that, as well as routine fasting lab tests, and glucose was fine. But it felt like hypoglycemia anyway. And somehow the snacks with some modest amounts of natural sugar content worked pretty good. I couldn't begin to explain how or why they worked. Something in the blood sugar circuits, or maybe they triggered the response of circulating tryptophan to enter the brain and make serotonin, or what. I don't know.
It's probably worthy of an experiment to see. The problem was that I went to bed around 9pm-10pm, so I had to wake at 2am-3am for the quick snack or drink and then go back to bed. Not exactly something I could do routinely day after day forever. If you think about it though, the body is fasting for 8 hours when you sleep. That's a long time with no food.
Just something to ponder. Since my morning anxiety seemed to calm down considerably after I ate something, I couldn't help but wonder.
poster:bleauberry
thread:838662
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080706/msgs/838738.html