sleeplessness and apnea?

[Diana]

Hi everyone:

I am new in this forum, and I don´t know english as well as I wanted, but I would like to ask you something...

Usually, when I do my best freedives, It could be or not my best times or distances, I can´t sleep at all in the night, I feel all my body heavy, it isn´t like pain but like uncomfortable. The strange thing is that it doesn't happen me when I train harder but when I feel better my dives, more comfortable.

Does anybody know what I means?

So, if somebody can help me to know if that kind of sleeplessness have any relation with freedive and how could I avoid it, I´ll be very happy.

Thanks,

Diana.

 

[Cliff Etzel]

Diana - What kind of preparation do you do? From my experience, I usually sleep very hard after doing any amount of apnea, either training or a day out in the ocean.

What about your diet? Do you consume a fair amount of caffeine (Coffee)?

This may have to do with doing relaxation exercises after your attempts.

Deep breathing drills, driniking plenty of water (I now drink 1.5 liters minimum a day) and removing any stimulants (caffeine) from my diet have all contributed to my sleeping.

I still go through nights of sleeplessness, but they are usually due to other areas of my life that add stress to it.

HTH,

 

[Diana]

Cliff, thanks for your answer.

I never take coffee or any other that seems.

I have always had problems to sleep, but not sleep nothing in the all night, it just happens to me after some freedives.
But maybe it doesn´t have any relation with freedive. I think I will visit the doctor and hope he could help me.

Thank you, and congratulations for the "performance freediving clinic". The articles are great!

Diana.

 

[Bill]

Originally posted by Diana
"I have always had problems to sleep, but not sleep nothing in the all night, it just happens to me after some freedives. But maybe it doesn´t have any relation with freedive."

Aloha Diana

I noticed something very similar after I started doing six minute statics. The better I did the worse it was.
When I mentioned it to one family member, she recommended something to increase blood flow to the brain. Sleeplessness and depression (same symptom) runs in our family.
I tried thirty minutes in a position with my head lower than the rest of my body (well before bed time) and a good aerobic workout (heart rate about 125 for over an hour). Both seemed to work. I have no medical training whatsoever but, some of the other home remedies to increase blood flow are pretty safe to try. I'm thinking of a baby aspirin or 15 ml of alcohol.
best wishes
Bill

 

[Cliff Etzel]

I vote for the latter...

I'm thinking of a baby aspirin or 15 ml of alcohol.

I'm thinking a glass of some of the local Pinot Noir or Cabernet would do the trick for me...

 

[Diana]

I´ll try the wine first

Hi Bill:

Thanks a lot for yours advices.
It`s great to know that someone else feel something like what I do.

I guess I´ll try the wine fist, like Cliff say.
But it seems interesting to me the position with my head down, I hope it not be necessary to be like a bat...

Best wishes to you too.

Diana.

 

[freediver48]

Hi,

Alcohol is not really good for sleep, you tend to miss R.E.M. periods, which is when we dream. Cliff's idea of increasing your circulation is worth a try, but start slow, even slightly elevating your feet might help, or walk your feet up a wall so that you end up laying on the floor with your tail bones against the wall,, slowly. Give it a try, it will be an interesting experience.

Best wishes,

doug

 

[Uli]

Bill wrote:

I noticed something very similar after I started doing six minute statics. The better I did the worse it was.
When I mentioned it to one family member, she recommended something to increase blood flow to the brain.

I used to work in a hospital for my "civil service" and there sometimes elderly people with sleeplessness due to low blood flow to the brain (no, not you Bill...) were in fact given caffeine with good results.

However, due to the high carbondioxide levels after apnea exercises the blood flow to the brain should in fact be increased.

So maybe there are more complex things going on here?

Regards,
Uli

 

[Erik]

Hi there, I have experienced something similar in the past: hot flashes and flu-like symptoms, similar to the hormonal changes during adolescence. These are the same symptoms I notice when I can tell that I may be fighting an illness, or am on the verge of getting a cold....my immune system has stepped up it's efforts. Usually my first indicator is that my heart rate is over 60 bpm (my resting bpm is 48).I believe that the restlesness may have something to do with the massive amount of free-radicals that are generated in the system as the result of extended breath holds. Heavy static holds could be analogous to running a marathon: you don't do it every day, or even very often. Long statics are hard on the body, and I think we need some time to recover from them, plus we need to eat lots of free-radical fighters like fresh vegetables.
When I have been training hard for a month or so, the sleeplesness has disappeared as my body adapted; maybe the immune system becomes stronger.
Laminar (Peter Scott) knows more about this than I do....help us out Peter?
Cheers,
Erik Y.

 

[Diana]

Thanks

¡Thanks to all you guys!

I will have present all your advices, and I`ll begin to try (slow)with the position to increase the blood in my brain... Without alcohol.

But also it`s make me so happy to know there`s another people with some sleeplessness in relation with freedive, `cause in my city there`s nobody.

I will try to investigate deeply in that... and maybe some interesting date from freedive could be dyscover.

So if you know something about it in the future, just keep in contact.


Happy and free -dives,

Diana.

 

[freediver48]

Hi,

Erik has a good point about conditioning in regard to the immune system functioning. The work of Richard Deinstbere (sp?) is quite clear that toughened individuals show markedly different responses to stress. In particular smaller amounts of peripheral catecholamines are required to generate high arousal levels and less cortisol is released by the adrenal cortex, which is what down tunes the immune system. These results have been found in experimental studies with animals subjects and correlational
studies with human subjects. There seem to be two routes for this toughening to occur, passive toughening and active toughening. In passive toughening the organism is intemittently exposed to stressors such as being dipped in cold water (mice, but it reminds me of surfing and diving in the winter), or active toughening where the organism intentionally exposes themself to physical strsseors, social stressor do not seem to work. The key here seems to be intermittent exposure to stressors, rather than chronic exposure, which leads to Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome, something akin to overtraining syndrome. I do not know if this is the case with you, but a higher level of fitness and physiological toughness should help to reduce the symptoms. If anyone is interested, I'll run down the references and post them,
these comments are off the top of my head.

Best wishes,

Doug Morgan,
Lantzville, B.C.

 

[Diana]

Thanks a lot, Doug.

I´m interested in those references.
Please post them to me when you could.

My e-mail is: yahuaria@elsitio.com

Good Luck!

Diana.