Insomnia and Mental Health: A Personal Experience Follow-Up

By way of background…

I retired in July 2023 after 40 years of service with Toronto Fire Services. I would not have described myself (subjectively) as a person with insomnia, or (related or unrelated) mental health issues during my career, but I suppose the counter-argument is in my use of the word “subjectively”. We don’t, and mostly can’t, see in ourselves what others see in us – and to be clear, I’m not talking about reputation. Reputation is only what people think you are, not necessarily what you are.

When people (mostly) derided that I got to sleep at work, I was quick to inform them that sleep in a firehall wasn’t anything like sleep at home, i.e., near the same quality. I would typically describe it as trying to sleep in a constant state of preparedness, akin to the proverb of sleeping with one eye open. Between that, trying to fall back to sleep when the alarm wasn’t for my truck, and often staying up for a while after calls during the night, perhaps I wasn’t aware of insomnia taking hold. I imagine at least two of these apply to volunteers equally.

I’m a ‘Type A’ personality. I worry, and those close to me will say I often worry too much. I expect that explains my propensity to ruminate, and catastrophize. I used to rationalize with statements like ‘I have more to worry about’, or, ‘There’s a lot at stake’, or even, ‘Someone has to’. I now realize that these were probably mismanagement of stress. It’s now indisputable – unbalanced responses to stress (not all stress is bad) will keep you awake at night, adversely affect your health, and prematurely age you. And we now know that it’s mostly age that leads to death.

I’ve always exercised, and mostly vigorously, carefully combining aerobic and strength exercises. I worked hard to establish good exercise habits, and I work hard to maintain them. I don’t smoke, I’m in my sixth year following a reasonably strict vegan diet (not donut vegan), and as for alcohol, well…more when I’m stressed, less when I’m not, I use periodic bouts of abstinence to assure I can, I can easily be called on to be the designated driver, and I don’t (subjectively) think it’s a problem. Don’t believe what those close to me tell you, they exaggerate! (Yes, that was me being flippant).

Recently…

Things got weird after retirement, no idea why. Sleep became elusive with periodic bouts of insomnia alternating between the inability to fall asleep and waking during the night, each generally lasting anywhere from about two to five hours. There were concurrent bouts of anxiety (sometimes frequent and extreme) and depression (mostly less frequent and less extreme). It was disruptive, for sure, but I continued to manage daily affairs, I believe, mostly effectively. Still, it wasn’t good, and it wasn’t healthy.

I visited my family doctor, described my symptoms, and, after what I thought was far too little investigation (about 5-7 minutes) or discussion of non-medicating alternatives and strategies, I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), told I was likely GAD since early adulthood, and prescribed a medication (I believe it was a benzodiazepine), for life! What the…?!

Currently…

I have an undergraduate degree in psychology and a graduate degree in adult education – in other words, I know a bit about how my brain processes, and I know how to learn (more). I figured it was time to put education and skills to work. For the record, you don’t have to have any post-secondary education to do what I did, just motivation.

I carefully searched for related evidence-based health information online, and I found it primarily in the works of Dr. Mark Hyman (The Doctor’s Farmacy), Dr. Michael Greger (Nutrition Facts), Dr. Rhonda Patrick (Found My Fitness – whom I first discovered through Joe Rogen), Joe Rogen (health topics – The Joe Rogen Experience), Dr. Jordan Peterson (psychology and philosophy topics), Dr. Steven Gundry, sometimes Gary Brecka (The Ultimate Human), and several others. From Joe Rogen, I learned about the outstanding work on sleep by preeminent neuroscientist Dr. Matthew Walker. My son, Denning, a Toronto firefighter, as you know, gave me Walker’s book Why We Sleep for Christmas 2024. I read it. Trouble sleeping or not, it’s a valuable read for understanding how and why our bodies require sleep.

I like to read non-fiction. I’m a visual and conceptual learner, and I tend to learn well from reading textbooks. I now have a particular focus for books on health. I read. I taught myself to learn from podcasts – I’m still not great, but getting better at it. I run for an hour, I do resistance exercises for an hour, those are now podcast times. It’s a two-hour drive to the cottage, and back, that is now podcast time. I’ve had to listen to some podcasts more than once.

So what did I learn from learning, and what did I do with what I learned?

From the outset, my experience is based mostly on consuming science, and then on intuition and personal experimentation, so my results were not subject to the proper rigors of good science. And here comes the disclaimer – prudence dictates that you not adjust your medications, experiment with supplements, meddle with your psychological health, or adjust exercise routines without first seeking advice from a qualified health practitioner, especially a doctor. My experiences below are in the approximate order I tried them. I haven’t provided many details because this is supposed to be less theoretical and more practical, and it would have made the article too long. If my experience interests you, use my list of references below as a start for your own journey. In most cases my resources have search options.

I learned about the benefits of lavender, so I often add lavender to my tea and/or spray it near my bed before sleep. I’ve been thinking about a diffuser. If nothing else, my bedroom smells great (unless you don’t like lavender)!

Hyman calls magnesium the ‘relaxation’ mineral. There are seven kinds, each with particular benefits. I supplement daily with broad spectrum magnesium bi-glycinate, and with magnesium threonate because it apparently crosses the blood-brain barrier. Magnesium was a game-changer, it worked great.

I follow Greger’s suggestions for Vitamin B12 dosage for my age, but I don’t follow his recommendation to use Cyanocobalumin because it’s better researched. Instead, I opt for Methylcobalumin primarily based on Brecka’s explanations of methylated vitamins, especially the B vitamins, methylation pathways, and especially the conversion of dietary tryptophan (in my case NOT from turkey) into serotonin (known for affecting mood). Apparently, many of us have a gene mutation which prevents us from effectively methylating vitamin B9 (Folic acid), derived from Folate (common in dark leafy greens). I added a methylated form of vitamin B9 (Methyl-folate). Another game-changer for me.

I’ve been an advocate of vitamin D for many years. I use D3. There are somewhat differing opinions on dosage, but there is some research on a safe maximum. Rhonda Patrick knows a lot about vitamin D3. Actually, she knows a lot about a lot. Not because she says so, but more because of how I’ve synthesized everything I’ve learned, I increased my dosage to alternate between 5,000 I.U. one day, and 7,500 I.U. every other day.

I used to take Creatine only on days when I was exercising, which was so often anyway that I just started taking Creatine every day. I use creatine monohydrate (I believe the most studied form), and I take about 5-7 mg.

This is the one supplement where I depart from otherwise strict veganism – I take fish oil daily. Most, if not all of my references recommend fish oil as a necessary supplement for most people, but especially vegans, because of it being an essential Omega 3 long-chain fatty acid. You can get Omega 3s in other foods, but apparently not as easily as in a fish oil supplement. Olive oil contains Omega 3s, and I use olive oil in cooking and on salads, but fish oil is my preferred supplement. I prefer a fish oil with an International Fish Oil Standard (IFOS) accreditation, but there are other accreditations I haven’t investigated. I first learned about IFOS, and about Omega 3s, their anti-inflammatory properties, and value in the balance against excessive Omega 6s and Omega 9 fatty acids in the modern diet, from Dr. Barry Sears’ book The Omega Zone. Based on the label, I mega-dose fish oil.

I tried Gamma-aminobutyric Acid (GABA), our primary inhibitory neurotransmitter thought to regulate mood, sleep and anxiety, and I tried 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP), which is also a neurotransmitter, that increases serotonin levels and thought to be possibly effective for depression, but less so for insomnia. The primary issue here is in trying to regulate, and balance neurotransmitters – the chemicals that neurons use to communicate with each other. The ‘trick’ is balance. I had to read a lot, and experiment a lot – and I tried to do that safely, primarily by keeping doses low, and by trying to ‘time’ the supplement to a prediction of whether I felt the onset of anxiety or depression. I wasn’t always correct, but I think I got it to work for me.

Talking therapy helps – I have an incredibly supportive partner who excels in the skills of emotional intelligence and emotional regulation – and she was willing to talk whenever I needed it…and there were times when that was a lot, and in the middle of the night. I’m pretty sure if you ask for her definition of insomnia, she’ll just give you my name.

What I call ‘talk therapy’ wasn’t about having company in my misery, though I’m sure that helped, it was much more about analysis. Talking was about identifying and exploring roots, commonalities and meanings, it was about self-discovery. What thoughts were most associated with anxious or depressive feelings (or both)? What were the antecedents? Were the thoughts, and perhaps, therefore, the episodes, rational? If they weren’t rational, was applying rational thinking beneficial. Were lifestyle changes effective? The most important thing about dialogue during insomnia was to make it purposeful.

Obviously, it was important (certainly to the relationship) to show a benefit to talk therapy by transitioning it to an ‘internal dialogue’ that was independently self-supportive. This was also critically important to resolution of the symptoms. I ‘listened’ (actively), I made sense of it, I internalized it, I created a mantra, and another, and I practiced them whenever I felt anxious or depressed. Really, what I was up to was a form of Rational Emotive Therapy originally proposed by Albert Ellis in the 1950s.