Empathy vs. Sympathy

I'm having a difficult week, which I won't be writing about here, except to acknowledge it's happening and say I'll probably be absent a bit longer.

Fat Talk

This made me cry,...

Magnesium: Good and Bad News

A friend of mine who has been experiencing some of the same symptoms I have lately (insomnia, fatigue, heart palpitations, occasional shortness of breath, weight gain, worsening periods and PMS) went to see her naturopath this week.  The naturopath did some blood tests, but prescribed a few supplements to address the symptoms in the meantime.  One of the things she prescribed was magnesium, which reminded me that I had some magnesium citrate in my cupboard that I bought a couple of years ago but wasn't taking for some reason.

I took the magnesium last night an hour or so before my bedtime, and it did make me appropriately sleepy around 11:00 pm.  It also caused me to feel short of breath for five hours.  That must be why I didn't continue taking it.  I do seem to remember having a problem with it before now.  However, around 2:00 am my breathing became more normal and I went to bed and fell asleep easily and slept very deeply, which is unusual for me, even on a good night.

Young Woman Sleeping - François Boucher

I'm going to try a different form of magnesium, and maybe try an epsom salt bath before bed (which I've done regularly before) if supplements continue to give me problems.  I read a Q and A about magnesium where a registered nurse said that she very occasionally sees people who are apparently so deficient in magnesium that it seems to affect them in exactly the opposite way as the desired result, and she suggests they start with smaller doses early in the day and work up to more gradually until they find the highest dose that doesn't cause problems.

I do think the magnesium can help, so I'm going to get a different form of it today. (The bottle in my cupboard expired in April anyway, Ha!) It's the first thing that has had at least some promise of helping in a long time.  Hey, I got about seven hours of good sleep last night, so the shortness of breath was worth it, but I wouldn't want to do that every night.

Sleepy

Over the long Thanksgiving weekend I found myself sliding back into that lazy, sitting around all day, and not getting dress pattern that I was experiencing before.  I had a really good week before that, but probably let the bad news from the scale get to me a bit.  The fact that my husband was home for 5 days also sitting around and doing nothing helped me justify sitting around myself.  Now I'm trying to get back into the nice groove I found two weeks ago, but I'm struggling a bit.

For two nights in a row now I have not been able to fall asleep until after 4:00 am, which as you might suspect, leaves me feeling really tired and foggy the entire next day.  I took a walk yesterday and know I should do the same today, but damn.  I'm tired.

The progesterone cream doesn't seem to be making any difference.  After reading other women's experiences with using it I was hopeful that I would sleep better, not worse, and that I would experience more energy during the day.

I'm not giving up, though.  I have a healthy homemade soup on the stove
for me to eat for lunch for the rest of the week.  I'm going to keep trying to make better diet choices.  I'm going to get a little bit of exercise in today, and I'm going to hope for a better night's sleep tonight.

Support

I'm grateful for:

• being able to sleep late into the morning after a sleepless night.
• my husband who works hard, allowing me to stay home with my kids.
• relatives who know how to fix cars.
• a generous son who is working his way through college with two jobs and still offered to help pay for my car repairs because he uses my car too. (I told him, "No, thank you.")
• loyal friends who get me and care.