I've been a terrible sleeper all my life, and the keto diet is making it even worse. I'm a classic short sleeper and always thought it was fine, but the newest research is finding that women in particular who sleep less than 5 hours per night have a higher incidence of dementia, and with my APoE4 gene and severe familial Alzheimer's, now I'm really worried.
If I take ALL of these at bedtime, 1-2 nights per week I can get 6 hours of sleep. The rest of the time it's mostly 3-4 hours.
Melatonin - now up to 20 mg per night, both fast and slow release
glycine - 3000 mg
progesterone cream
Gaba - a special form that crosses the blood-brain barrier
5HTP (tryptophan)
Mg L-threonate
creatine
taurine
It seems crazy to take this many bedtime supps, but nothing else works, and even this barely works. I'm not even close to the 7-8 hours per night that Bredesen wants for us. If I take Gabapentin one night per week, I can get 6-7 hours from it for that one night. But I don't know if it is safe. Does anyone here know? I don't think it's anti-cholinergic, but when I research it, no one really knows how and why it works except that it attaches to gaba receptors. So it's kind of a fake gaba? Anyway, if I don't take it too often, it does help.
I do all the sleep hygiene things very carefully, as you can imagine!
Any other suggestions are welcome!