Sleep, or the lack of...

He he he.

People used to say to me all the time, "but ya had eight hours of sleep!"  "Bi*ch, come say that to muh face!"  Eight hours is all fine and dandy, ya know, if you don't have Fibromyalgia.  I always KNEW I needed more! Even before I was diagnosed, eight hours didn't do crap for me.  Never did.  Oooh, ooooh, lemme tell you why!  People with Fibromyalgia don't go into REM!  Can you believe that?  I was shocked, too, but TOTALLY makes sense.  What's REM?  Rapid eye movement.  It's the sleep cycle you go into every 90 minutes.  It's called rapid eye movement, because yo eyes go all rapid and what not.  Watch a person when they're sleeping, or just Youtube REM.  Not the band, the actual sleep thingy.  Our eyes freak out when we're in this cycle, freaky, huh?  This REM cycle is incredibly important to your health.  It's our restorative sleep.  If the body can't wipe the slate clean every night, and let it do the restoring thing, guess what?  You're gonna be in a lot of pain.  Ooooh, kind of like Fibromyalgia!  Yeah, kind of like that.  Us Fibrotics don't go into REM.  It hasn't exactly been proven why, but it has been proved this is the case.  Doctors, lawd, I swear!  Maybe we don't go into REM 'cause it already hurts so freaking bad?  Eh, perhaps.  That's my theory, and I'm stickin' to it.

So, while everyone tells you that you need 8 hours of sleep, they're dead wrong.  Turns out, people with Fibromyalgia need 10-12 hours of sleep every night.  Crazy, I know.  Before I knew about this, I always felt my best when I got ten hours.  I found that to be my magical number.  "You're depressed.  People who sleep ten hours are depressed."  "Fine, I'm depressed, doesn't change the fact that I still need ten frickin' hours of sleep!"  Ha, "it's part of my treatment plan, biotch!"  Take that.  So why do we need 10-12 hours of sleep?  While we're not getting REM, we're still resting.   I dunno, its been tested and proven.  Its been proven to be true for me.  When I went to the doctor yesterday, the hubby asked my doctor, "how much sleep do people with Fibromyalgia need?"  "Up to twelve hours."  "Yeah, we read that somewhere..."  Twelve hours sounds totally unrealistic, especially since Fibrotics already deal with insomnia as it is.  You, my friend, need to be talking to your doctor.  I've tried all sorts of sleeping pills, and nothing worked.  Tramadol's what did it for me.  It kills my Restless Leg Syndrome, helps take the edge off the pain, and works as my sleeping pill, too.  Talk to your doctor about what you can do, sleep is vital to your health, and yeah, it's vital to your family's health, too.  :)

Now, someone PLEASE come tell that to my kids, 'cause this mamma is a psycho biotch right now.

I'm not kidding when I say good sleep is imperative to your health.  (Click on me to see me larger.)