To a healthy audience, this would seem like a small recommendation, but as a decade-long daily witness to a lyme sufferer, I just want to share 1 thing that worked to help 1 thing: easing into your day.....
Get a Phillips Wake Up Light (no I am not affiliated).
Mornings are tough for lyme folks and alarm clocks are sudden and disturbing and there's that adrenal surge and heart rate boost and the rapid flailing in the dark to make it stop. This light goes from dim to brighter over the course of a 1/2 hour, and if you're not awake then, a quiet alarm (choose from 5 sounds) begins that gradually gets louder. No sudden anything.
Good morning.
Posted by feelfit (Member # 12770) on :
Neat post! Thanks Bystander.
Posted by Keebler (Member # 12673) on :
- Bystander,
Excellent suggestion, and for some reasons that make shock many: sudden irritation noise can shock a person's heart.
The adrenal surge is particularly hard on lyme patients who already have adrenal shock just from the toxicity of lyme. Once that shock has started the day, it's hard to recover at all and it just makes the day a wash-out, at best.
If someone has a heart condition where abnormal rhythm causes QT syndrome, a shock can actually trigger a heart attack. It's happened. Alarm clocks have killed more than one person, even young people who had QT problems.
QT abnormalities are not uncommon with lyme, therefore, it is excellent advice to awaken in as gentle manner as possible.
More about QT here, especially in a PBS documentary: ------------------------
Natural Sleep (includes adrenal links as adrenal support helps the ability to sleep) -
Posted by BoxerMom (Member # 25251) on :
OMG! I want one!
Posted by LightAtTheEnd (Member # 24065) on :
The kind you DON'T want, to avoid adrenal stress, is the kind a friend received once, that spoke in an increasingly louder and more urgent voice about the necessity of getting up, then counted down from 10 to 1, followed by a bomb explosion noise. Even though technically it did start soft and get louder...
Just a little levity. Good suggestion.
For a bit when I was a kid, I had an obnoxiously loud electric alarm that was across the room from my bed. About killed myself falling down every morning, trying to leap out of bed, heart pounding, and race across the room to shut it off. You for sure don't want one of those. Posted by bystander (Member # 11893) on :
The light also does the opposite: dims slowly at night to help you shut down.
Posted by Pinelady (Member # 18524) on :
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Even though technically it did start soft and get louder...