Posted by utired2? on September 05, 2009 at 19:40:19:In Reply to: sleepiness posted by Selini on September 05, 2009 at 06:45:12:
Hi Selini,
Like you, I rarely get the feeling of sleepiness/drowsiness and also rarely yawn.
Do you have fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, or an autoimmune disease?
I have not been able to work outside the home for some time now and often think about people like you that must continue to. If you are like me, you are productive, but it is difficult to be so on someone else's schedule or you have enough energy to maintain your home and home finances, but not much beyond that.
Many people with immune system diseases also have problems with their autonomic nervous systems. Your post has reminded me of the best article I have read which offers an explanation for why some of us feel the way we do and why we can't sleep. It was written by Manuel Martínez-Lavín, MD, a physician who has done alot of research on fibromyaglia.
Here is an excerpt from his article; A Novel Holistic Explanation For The Fibromyalgia Enigma: Autonomic Nervous System Dysfunction:
"We have used heart rate variability analysis to estimate ANS function in patients with FM. We have found that such patients have changes consistent with relentless hyperactivity of their sympathetic nervous system which continues 24 hours a day. Very interestingly, in a different study, we subjected FM patients to a simple stress test which involved having them stand up. Their overworked sympathetic nervous system became unable to further respond meaning that the system was already exhausted.
It is known that as we stand up, blood tends to pool in the lower parts of the body. In normal circumstances, there is an immediate sympathetic surge that compensates for this blood shift and maintains normal blood circulation to the head. People with FM clearly have an abnormal response, and their sympathetic nervous system fails to respond properly. It is pertinent to mention that researchers from different parts of the world have confirmed these abnormal heart rate variability findings in patients with FM.
Based on this research, we proposed that dysautonomia (the medical term for ANS dysfunction) is frequent in patients with FM. Such dysautonomia can be characterized as a sympathetic nervous system that is persistently hyperactive but hypo-reactive to stress. Furthermore, we propose that such dysautonomia explains all FM features. Our ANS findings fully agree with previous ground-breaking research on sleep disorders and hormonal abnormalities in FM.
Sympathetic hypo-reactivity provides a coherent explanation for the constant fatigue and other symptoms associated with low blood pressure, such as dizziness, fogginess, and faintness. This phenomenon can be compared to what would happen to a constantly forced engine that becomes unable to speed up in response to further stimulation.
Relentless sympathetic hyperactivity also explains the sleep disturbances associated with FM. It is known that parasympathetic tone predominates during deep sleep stages and that seconds before awakening episodes there is a sympathetic surge. Our concurrent studies of polysomnography and heart rate variability analyses have shown that FM people have relentless nocturnal sympathetic hyperactivity associated with constant arousal and awakening episodes."