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Insomnia, sleep walking, crazy nightmares - could it be related to gluten?

VeggieGirl

By VeggieGirl
in Related Issues & Disorders

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VeggieGirl Apprentice
VeggieGirl
Posted

Hey :)

So I've been gluten free for over a year now, and not i'm on the gluten challenge so I can test for Celiac... 

Around the time I started noticing that gluten was making me really sick, I started having A LOT of sleep problems. I suffered with insomnia for years so I just thought it was 'normal' for me... I would sleep a maximum of 4 hours per night, and that would be enough (..sometimes just 2 hours). A few months before going gluten free however I started having some strange 'sleeping' patterns... I would be awake, talking to my friends or doing something else, and I start feeling so sleepy that I can't control it... After around 15m of feeling like I really need to sleep I would go to this 'sleep walking' stage where I'd feel like I was in a dream and basically have no control over my actions, and I could be up for hours like that! I'd wake up the next morning with barely any recollection of what happened after I felt super tired (- very similar to when you get super drunk and can only remember bits and pieces, if at all).. I was also having a lot of 'normal' sleep walking and talking, I'd call and text my boyfriend or one of my friends and only realize the next day after seeing the call history / msg on my phone. To add to that, the little time I did sleep, I'd have these crazy nightmares and my boyfriend would usually have to shake me to wake me up, after I wake him up with my screaming / crying. I was tired ALL THE TIME and was dreading going to sleep cause I always woke up even more tired than the day before.

I know it sounds strange - I even went to specialists at the time, and they recommend I go off birth control for 3 months. I did - but I also went totally off gluten that same month - and in a few months my sleeping patterns improved soooo much (now i sleep 6hrs every night, sometimes even up to 8)... I had assumed it was the birth control which was causing my crazy sleeping patterns but now I think it might have been the gluten...

After being on the gluten challenge for 1 week, I m having trouble sleeping (although no where near the trouble I had a year ago) but it's led me to make this possible connection... Could it be that the gluten does this to me and how is that even possible?

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AmberJ Rookie
AmberJ
Posted

Yes. The connection between gluten and the thyroid is strong. And the connection between sleep issues and the thyroid is strong. So it's not unreasonable to think the issues are connected to gluten.

  • 1 month later...
zoial Newbie
zoial
Posted
On 9/9/2016 at 10:06 PM, AmberJ said:

Yes. The connection between gluten and the thyroid is strong. And the connection between sleep issues and the thyroid is strong. So it's not unreasonable to think the issues are connected to gluten.

 

On 9/9/2016 at 10:06 PM, AmberJ said:

Yes. The connection between gluten and the thyroid is strong. And the connection between sleep issues and the thyroid is strong. So it's not unreasonable to think the issues are connected to gluten.

hello I am new here..I suffering from insomnia too...doctors in Greece have not related insomnia to celiacs yet...they think its all about depression and treat it as such..i m researching it on my own and I strongly believe its related...the mosti common treatment i have read here is calcium and magnesium...i started the treatment today myself..

 

 

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