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Sleep and UC

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Ulcerative Colitis
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Posted 1/24/2009 5:33 AM (GMT 0)
I find that I need to sleep at least 10 hours a day when I have or am recovering from UC. My body must need the extra sleep to heal itself. Does anybody else have this problem?
Posted 1/24/2009 1:07 PM (GMT 0)
Oh yeah.  I actually missed a lot of work due to sleep deprivation and just being completely fatigued due to UC.  I was having like 10 BM's in the middle of the night and by the time the morning rolled around to go to work it was bad.  I am on medication now and things seem to be somewhat better and I find that i am sleeping a little more sound.  Your body is just letting you know that it needs to heal itself.  Hope ya feel better.
Posted 1/24/2009 1:53 PM (GMT 0)

Yes, right now I am feeling unwell from colitis and I also require about 10 hours of sleep.  I do not nap because daytime sleep makes me feel awful, but I have some resting time in the day as well.  Even so I have that foggy tired feeling through the day and my eyes feel like they are stuck at half mast. 

When I make my bed in the morning I often wish the day was over and I was getting back in!

Posted 1/24/2009 5:43 PM (GMT 0)
I find it hard to give myself permission to sleep in or take naps, even when I'm worn out and there's nothing else I need to do. I feel guilty if I sleep too much, it's my mother whispering in my head that I need to get going, get outside, don't waste the day...
I'm trying to go to bed earlier. And I take a trazadone, small dose to help me stay asleep. It's a woman thing.
Posted 1/24/2009 5:48 PM (GMT 0)
Yes, I need tons of sleep too! At least 9 hours a day and I'm barely flaring right now. When I was flaring really badly I needed even more sleep than that. I could barely stay awake during the day.

I also find since I've had UC that if I don't get enough sleep (even if I get 6 1/2 hours), I'm not just tired, but my whole body feels like crap. It feels like I have a hangover almost. My sinuses get all screwed up, I get a headache and my gut is upset. I never used to have this happen.
Posted 1/25/2009 3:39 AM (GMT 0)
I find I'm tired all the time, even with 8 hours of sleep. But I can't stay asleep after 8am it seems. I usually have to get up once in the night to pee and when I was on lots and lots of prednisone I would be lucky to get back to sleep. Sometimes i'd be awake for 2 hours. It sucked. Makes going to school interesting when by noon I'm already half asleep. hehe
Posted 1/25/2009 4:54 AM (GMT 0)

yes, I find that I do need to have at least 10 hours as well.  My work is very accomodating for me at the moment and will let me catch up my time when I'm able to.  (knock on wood) I am so glad my boss completely understands what i'm going through.  Most days I get into work by 10 am, supposed to start at 8 am, but i'm in my bathroom mode from about 7 to 9:30 am.  Or that I fell asleep again. 

Or a couple of times a week, I wake up at 2 am and can't get back to sleep, not sure why that happens.  But this are the times, when I fell back asleep and get up to rush to work.

My thought is our body is trying to tell us it's trying to heal and sleeping helps. 

Posted 1/25/2009 5:12 AM (GMT 0)
When I was on the high dose of Pred ( 40 mg ) I didn't need sleep at all. There were times when I would go 24-30 hours with no sleep. LOL. Probably why I had such a dramatic weight loss. As I started to taper, that went away. I am now at 17.5 mg. I find that I can function on 6 hours, but it is hard to get up then. My body is screaming for 8 plus hours. There just is not that kind of time in the day. We ( my body and I ) will have to learn to function on 6 -8 hours. Thats all the time I can allow for sleeping. I also detest sleeping through out the day, I always wake up cranky and then can't sleep at night. My normal is to go to bed, lie ther for less than 5 minutes and BE OUT. When on the high does of pred though, I would wake up after three hours and have to find something to do... GF got tired of me cleaning at 2 in the morning. And that is if I went to bed at all. I would even be so awake in the middle of the night that I would work out then. Part of me misses that kind of energy. Though the bad side effects of Pred out weigh the "good" ones. LOL.
I do know that no matter how late I sleep... or what time I get up... My "morning" started then. If I didn;t go to bed until 6 and slept until 9. then my morning bathroom trips started then. If I went to bed at 11 and got up at 2 or 3, thats when my morning bathroom trips started. Still kind of the same way, even though my Throne runs have evened out to 1-2 every morning... morning is a flexible time depending on when I wake up.
Of running myself ragged is the way I have always been. Not sure why, but I have always preferred to run and run till I drop. Always hated to go to bed until I was ready to SLEEP.
Posted 1/25/2009 9:02 AM (GMT 0)
It seems like sleep helps me too. Especially being consistent with sleep. If I get 8 hrs a night for a couple weeks my symptoms will subside. But I rarely find that possible. I think the sleeping doesn't really help the physical healing of the colon, as much as it controls stress. Sleep is more for the mind than the body, the more sleep you get the better your body can deal with stress.
Posted 1/25/2009 9:41 AM (GMT 0)
Sleep has become a luxury for me. Normally I am up at least three times for my UC issues and while my son is teething (which he is finishing molars and starting on the eye and stomach teeth...poor little guy) I'm up with him at least once normally to walk him back to sleep. I would say that I get an average of 6-8 hours sleep, but that's with the interruptions, so really it's more like 3-4 of good sleep...maybe...b/c I could be up with UC issues every 30-45 minutes...and sometimes I don't make it back to bed before turning back around.

I too find that I feel my day is wasted if I'm not up by a certain time trying to get things done. My fatigue has forced me to lay back down when my son takes his morning nap, and lately I've just been a big blob of laziness...or I feel...b/c I haven't been well.

Someone mentioned on another thread that UC is just a fatiguing condition in and of itself...and I could not agree more. It could be that you may not even need to be in a flare to require the extra sleep and relaxation. Our bodies are going through some major issues with this disease. I sometimes feel like there's an alien life form in me that's jsut sucking my life force! : ) And honestly, no amount of sleep really helps me at times. Right now I'm up b/c I did get a few solid hours of deep sleep and I'm tapering prednisone so insomnia is setting in a bit. However, really, I am just tired all the time. All. The. Time.

: ) Robin
Posted 1/26/2009 3:17 AM (GMT 0)
Wow, it's a relief to read this thread and realize I'm not the only one who's noticed an increased need for sleep. I thought maybe it was just the dark days of winter plus my insomnia medications...

Sarah14, I've also noticed that since UC, lack of sleep makes me physically ill -- it is kind of a hangover feeling, though I hadn't thought of it that way.
Posted 1/27/2009 4:44 PM (GMT 0)
Good to know I'm not alone in that, emory, though I'm sorry to hear you get that way, too1
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