Early Awakening and Depression

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NinaC2005

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Hi everyone. Among the many non-fatal reasons one might suffer "early awakening" is, according to both my GP and psychologist, good, ol' depression. I have been diagnosed by both--and separately--with anxiety and mild depression and in fact, at the outset of depression, I would awaken like clockwork (pardon the pun :oops: ) at 3:00AM. Neither of them, nor my neurologist, have told me this is a symptom of ***. Never read it anywhere either--and before I found this site, I read a heckuva lot of things about ***.

So I think we can all sleep well--or as well as we can--that this has nothing to do with ***, but probably the worry one may bear that they have ***. Even if it was a symptom of ***, early awakening is also a symptom of about 3 bazillion other things as well.

Mark
 
Oh--by the way, I now routinely sleep until my alarm clock goes off at 5:30AM; slept till almost 7AM this morning. And the meds I'm on actually have a bad side-effect--sleep interruption. In fact, as soon as I mentioned my sleep pattern, both docs immediately said that it was a "classic" sign of depression; the literature backs them up as well.

Rather perverse that I would be grateful for a diagnosis of depression, given my ultimate fear when I went to see them.

So, sleep tight--it ain't ***.

Mark
 
My neurologist said the same thing as Mark's did. He said that anxiety causes people to have trouble falling asleep and depression causes them to wake up throughout the night. I have both - yay!!!
 
If I remember correctly from my days in psych work (and it's been a while but I think I have it right" , 3-4 am is the most common time to wake when your body is in an anxious state. No worries- concentrate on the anxiety and see if the sleep gets better. Sometimes we forget how anxious our bodies can be even in the sleep state and once you start waking at a certain time, your body gets used to it quickly
 
There is ABSOLUTELY no correlation with early waking/interupted sleep and ALS. I am going to say that again - there is ABSOLUTELY no correlation. Alot of people wake for no apparent reason from the very benign to sleep apnea. Had, there is nothing wrong with you waking up at 4 am that you need to be concerned about an awful progressive disease. Kit
 
I've been having this same problem - I wake up at about 3AM and can't really get back to sleep until about 5-6ish. I've seen some somewhat frightening posts that this could be linked to a paraneoplastic syndrome - can someone debunk this? I should add that my GP had me take a CXR and all was well.Thanks,Vance
 
Waking up in the middle of the night can be related to a multiple number of things from aches and pains, to altered sleep patterns due to diet, anxiety, sleep apnea, to environmental issues such as post nasal drip to to dry air, the heat turning on, a partner snoring, reflux, to simply having finished your REM cycles. Why has it become so very easy to equate anything out of the ordinary with something awful. If we wake up at 6am with the sunligh streaming through the window we don't make the assumption that it must be a nuclear attack causing the light. If we fall asleep watching television we don't naturally make the assumption that we must have cancer because we fell asleep we assume we were tired or the program was boring. Early waking is not a DIAGNOSTIC, I use this word specifically because I have seen symptoms and complaints bandied about as if they were diagnositic and they are not, symptom of anything other than altered sleep patterns. I would look to my mattress, what I ate before I went to bed and what was on my mind first before I jumped to paraneoplastic syndrome and ALS.Dr. Kit
 
Thanks for bringing me back to reality; It's so very, very easy to let your mind wander into believing the worst possible things. I've been working on flipping things around and being generally positive but it's hard work.Thanks again.Vance :cool:
 
I got BFS over 3 years ago. Have never been able to sleep past 4 or 5 hours since then. Sleeping pills don't do any good and can never take a nap like I used to. I could sleep anywhere at anytime before BFS. I am convinced that my BFS came from shots I took for Flu etc.60 days prior to symtoms. Oddly enough, and this is why I think it is autoimmune, I have never had a cold, allergies, or sickness of any kind since these started. And I was a person that sneezed constantly and had colds etc evry year. Can only hope that it goes away someday.
 
YOU GUYS IF YOU HAVENT CAUGHT ON YET, HAD IS ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE THAT COME ON HERE TO SCARE PEOPLE AND TRY TO START THINGS IN PEOPLES HEADS. IF YOU LOOK AT HIS PREVIOUS POST YOU WILL SEE EVERYTHING HE SAYS IS NEGATIVE AND TO SCARE PEOPLE.HIS RECENT ATTEMPT WAS HIS "BFS SCREEN SAVER" THAT HE HAS NOW DELETED- I HAVE REPORTED HIM TO THE MODERATORS. IM SORRY IF I AM SOUNDING HARSH, BUT I GET UP EARLY EVERY DAY AND CATCH A LOT OF POST THAT HE HAS DELETED B/C OF THE REACTIONS. JUST THOUGHT I'D THROW THAT OUT THERE- I NEVER WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT- AND IM 6 MONTHS PREGNANT (NOT EVEN TO PEE) I SLEEP REAL LATE TOO, WHATS THAT RELATED TO HAD???? GET A LIFE STOP THIS CRAP. ;)
 
I am going to quote something, and I want this to put a rest to all of this rubbish "had" started. This quote sums it up as clear and and truthful as it can be; "There is ABSOLUTELY no correlation with early waking/interupted sleep and ALS. I am going to say that again - there is ABSOLUTELY no correlation. Alot of people wake for no apparent reason from the very benign to sleep apnea."There are a handfull of people on here that KNOW BFS and ALS in and out, more than most doctors, and probably more than some neurologists because we have done so much studying on it, and it only for more years than doctors and neurologists go to college to learn a whole array of subjects. You have to consider, we have been studying this stuff for about 10 to 12 solid years or more, talking to WAY more "patients" than numerous neuro's ever see combined on the subject of BFS and ALS, and we have combined all of our information into one pretty massive archive of info, both on this site and in our heads.I can say without a shadow of a doubt that there is NO connection with waking up at ANY time with ALS, not even for breathing issues. Trust me, when you have breathing issues associated with ALS, waking up in the night is the LEAST of your worries, and it is NOT your only symptom! By that time, you KNOW you have it, and are most likely seeing a neuro for it.I can't stand it when "people" come on here and "matter of factly" spew a bunch of FALSE, MISLEADING BS!! If you don't KNOW what you are talking about, then don't say anything! I am not saying don't pose questions or ask about things. What I AM saying however is don't start spewing "facts" when you don't know your A#* from a hole in the ground like "Had", or I will go in and erase EVERY post you have ever posted, and block your IP address from ever being able to access this site again!This site is here to HELP people, not scare the H%LL out of them with stupid claims when you don't know what you are talking about. It is OK to ask and share info as much as you want, but again, do NOT come on here with the intent, or the complete stupidity and lack of compassion to spew a bunch of bogus BS when people are going through a living h*ll right now trying to gather the facts so they can get over this stuff and move on with their lives.
 
Amen Aaron-Thank you for taking care of that situation, people like that distroy progress that others have made with their anxiety.Sean B.
 
I haven't slept more than about 3 hours a night since I left the Army...in 1998.I am sure I don't have AL~S...it is MS that is worrying me at the mo but early wakening is not symptom that I can associate with it...it is just one of my many traits!!!
 
wow, just read this post. "Sleep starts" are common among BFS sufferers. There are also auditory and visual sleep starts. Interesting stuff. I've had a lot of the "auditory" ones, my son has had visual ones. Best Wishes. Denise
 
3am is a good night for me. My entire life I have always woken up several times during the night - just a light sleeper. I go to bed at 12 and usually wake up ahywhere from 1am - 3pm = usually i ahve a drink of water nad go back to sleep - it is worse when im suffering anxiety though - then i have trouble falling back to sleep at times. Anxiety makes it alot worse though - if you have anxiety about your health (I know atleast my case) dont be surprised at all to wake early and not sleep well. Also after a while you start to worry about sleeping which makes it worse as well. I guess what im saying waking up at 3am is not so odd - in fact I think most people wake up atleast once during the night dont they? The only time i ever sleep right through the night is if i go to bed really late and had a few beverages of the sudsy nature :)
 
3am is a good night for me. My entire life I have always woken up several times during the night - just a light sleeper. I go to bed at 12 and usually wake up ahywhere from 1am - 3pm = usually i ahve a drink of water nad go back to sleep - it is worse when im suffering anxiety though - then i have trouble falling back to sleep at times. Anxiety makes it alot worse though - if you have anxiety about your health (I know atleast my case) dont be surprised at all to wake early and not sleep well. Also after a while you start to worry about sleeping which makes it worse as well. I guess what im saying waking up at 3am is not so odd - in fact I think most people wake up atleast once during the night dont they? The only time i ever sleep right through the night is if i go to bed really late and had a few beverages of the sudsy nature :)
 
This is an interesting thread.Yes of course sleep disturbance is not an ALS symptom. Enough said already.I'm normally a very good sleeper, in the 2-3 weeks before my BFS started I was waking regularly at 4-4.30 am, feeling anxious, in fact worrying about another (now resolved) physical symptom. After the BFS started I continued to wake early.Early morning waking (as said in previous posts) can mean nothing, but it is a well recognised symptom of anxiety and/or depression if it is persistent. Are BFSers anxious ? - most of us I would guess !EMW and especially "unrefreshed sleep" (i.e feeling you havn't slept and could stay in bed another 6 hrs) is also connected to fibromyalgia, and other symptomatology which is often difficult to pin down medically in terms of cause. Chronic pain (sometimes of undefinable origin) can also be connected to unrefreshed sleep. Its not well understood how this works but is often explained by Drs as nervous system oversensitivity, as a result of not getting adequate restorative (restful) sleep. This is why amitriptyline (in small doses) is used for sleep disturbance and "nervous system oversensitivity". It does seem to work for chronic pain in some patients. Some of the anticonvulsants are used with a similar rationale.I just wonder if unrefreshed sleep/EMW is a common finding with BFS and whether it might be in some way implicated in causing, perpetuating or worsening the symptoms. Certainly I'm reading on this board about lots of symptoms that are also described by patients with chronic (and medically unaccountable) pain and chronic fatigue syndrome. However, anxiety and depression are also commoner in these groups so maybe its linked through that. Certainly I can personally relate to that when this all started.
 

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