Why is waking such a painful ordeal?

[Leather Neck]

I didn't know whether to put this in the Sleep Disorders or the Pain Management forums, that's why I put it here in the General Health one. Every time I wake up, regardless of what time it is, or how much sleep I get, I am always in excruciating pain; and if I move, it makes it worse. It's reminiscent of what I've read about fibromyalgia, with migraines thrown in the mix, but it goes away with the fogginess that accompanies waking. The only thing that seems to help is going back to sleep. But I don't want to sleep my life away, and I have to wake up eventually; and like I said before, whenever I do finally wake up for good, it will hit me, regardless of how much sleep I've gotten. I haven't tried pain pills or anything, especially as after about 30 minutes or an hour of laying in bed after waking, I get up feeling like my generally healthy waking self again, and don't usually have intolerable or irregular pain symptoms during my waking hours, aside from that period of time (anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes, usually) immediately following waking up. Is this normal? Does everybody experience this to some degree? I don't have any major physical dysfunction or disorder that I know of, but this is just unbearable. I'd say the pain ranges anywhere between a 6 to a 15 on a scale of 10 every time I wake up. It is honestly just excruciating. It is not a localized pain either, it is just a general body pain; although it does seem that the pain seems to be the worst in my head. Not exactly a headache, per se, but just lots of pain in my whole head all around, i.e. sinus pain and pressure, muscle pain, nerve pain, and yes, very frequently short-lived headaches do accompany all of this. It's just that it's not just headaches, it's my WHOLE head that hurts. I've tried hot, cold, and warm showers upon waking, but none of them seem to do a whole lot, other than to a certain extent distract me from the pain. Sometimes though, just the movement necessary to get to the shower and even the pressure of the water itself hitting my skin exacerbates the pain until it subsides. I am really frustrated by this, any and all suggestions or insights will be highly appreciated. In case you need this information, I am male, I just turned 32 this month, and I have been dealing with this pretty much my whole life. I've never thought to ask about it until now, because I just thought it was something everyone dealt with, and most were better at dealing with it than me, though in general I do have a pretty high tolerance for pain. It's just that this whole waking up thing is making me miserable, and the condition itself, not just the symptoms of it, is becoming unbearable. I will say as one last thing that there are the occasional days, about as often as a blue moon I'd imagine, where I wake up with an overall lack of pain and really feel pretty great; but for the most part, I'd say 199 times out of 200, that's not the case. And yes, it is generally intensified terribly if I am required to wake up without at least 8 hrs. of sleep. Very often I will find myself sleeping 10-12 hrs. a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. Again, thank you in advance for any help you can offer.

 

[Charlotte =]]

The first thing that comes to my mind is sleep apnea, especially with the sinus/headache symptoms. Have you ever had a sinus x-ray? Been told you have a deviated septum?

Any back or neck pain during the day? Arthritis is often worst in the morning and in the spine it can cause all sorts of symptoms.

Or maybe a dietary issue - dehydration, low potassium, low calcium - can all cause muscle aches/spasms and would be worse after sleeping. Do your fingers or toes ever feeling like they're curling up? (carpopedal spasms)

The next thing to check would be an endocrine problem.

Have you talked about this with your regular doctor?

 

[Pr-T Filipina]

Umm, I sort of thought of that myself, but the problem is, like I said, I've dealt with this my whole life, so unless I've had sleep apnea my whole life, then I don't think that's what it is. I've never had a sinus x-ray that I know of, and no, I've never been diagnosed with a deviated septum. Though I will admit that I haven't had a general check-up in well over a decade, as I haven't had health insurance for quite a while.



I do encounter mild pain during the day, but it's NOTHING compared to what I deal with waking up in the morning. And it's not just like it's my bones hurting, it's every fiber of my being. And it's always been like that, for just about as long as I can remember. So once again, unless I've had arthritis all my life, which I've never been diagnosed with (and I did go for general check-ups quite routinely for most of my adolescent life, wherein it was never even remotely suggested that I might have arthritis), then no.



Ummm I love milk (dairy products in general really), bananas, and last but far from least, water. I generally drink anywhere from 1/2 to a full gallon of water a day. I don't usually get spasms similar to what you mentioned, except the occasional toe cramps, but those are generally obviously related to physical over-exertion.



Alas, I don't have a regular doctor; as per my mention before, I don't have health insurance. Which is mostly why I'm here, on these boards, trying to find a solution. Would an endocrine problem be consistent with this being a life-long issue?

There is one thing I hadn't thought of so far, but I hesitate to mention it, because though it did cause me sleep problems, I could hardly believe this would be the root cause of all of my problems, and I'd really rather it not be a psychosomatic issue, I would like to discover that it is something definitive physically that hopefully can be resolved. But in an effort at finding a solution, I imagine full disclosure is my best option. I ask one thing though, please don't take the easy way out and write off all other possible options. Though I do consider it a high possibility that this factor in conjunction with solely physical considerations could be my overall problem.

So basically, this is what happened. When I was a kid, my brother and I were 13 months apart, and we would wake up in the middle of the night a lot (mostly it would be me waking up first and then waking him up to enlist him as my cohort and playpal) and raise havoc throughout the house, making white bread, mayonnaise, and William's Chili Seasoning sandwiches and the like (we didn't know quite how to make real sandwiches at that point yet), and just generally cause trouble like some mischievous brats. We didn't mean anything by it, we were just bored and trying to entertain ourselves. In my youth, I could generally get to sleep pretty quickly after lying down, with no trouble, even if I wasn't terribly exhausted or anything. But then, after a while, my dad caught on to what we were doing, and as he was trying to sleep as well, he couldn't really police us himself to keep us from doing this. So he bought these alarms that went on our doors, and if we would touch the door handles while they were armed, a horribly loud beeping noise would go off alerting our father that we were trying to sneak out of our rooms in the middle of the night again.

We were about 5 and 4 when this all came about. So we were no longer waking up in the middle of the night anymore to cause trouble thanks to the alarms (or at least if we were, we weren't leaving our rooms anymore). In the mornings, after the night had passed, my brother would wake up first almost always, and he would come and wake me up, which wasn't a problem until these alarms were installed. Since my dad was not usually up by the time my brother was, the alarms were still armed, so when my brother came to open my door, the alarm would start going off, and it was so loud that after just a few times, I was honestly badly traumatized by it all. And from that point on, I always had trouble falling asleep at night, it would take me an hour or more, whereas before it had always taken me just minutes. And as a result, yes, my sleep was no longer quite as solid as it had been before, and I always thoroughly LOATHED waking up for school in the mornings.

But at this point in my life, I'm not even employed currently, and without the pressure of having to get to sleep by a certain time to get a decent amount of sleep and then wake up at a certain time, I don't even seem to have much of a problem falling asleep anymore, usually. And I sleep soundly, don't really wake up much in the middle of the night, and I often sleep for around 9 or 10 hours, and after the immediate waking pains; after COMPLETELY waking up, I usually feel pretty refreshed.

I don't know quite what to make of it all, really. One last thought, ummm, for the last five years or so, I've had kind of loose stools, and I've tried bulking up on fiber in my diet, and sometimes it seems to work, but not always, and really, most of the time, they are loose, to the point that when I flush, there's usually some left floating in the bowl after the first flush, so to get it all I would have to flush a second time. I've tried to figure out on my own what's up with this, but to no avail. Recently, I saw a health expert on the Tyra Banks show who said that this can indicate parasites in the digestive system, and I haven't really tried to determine if this is the case or not, just haven't had time to research it much yet. Could this be part of the problem? If so, are there any kind of home remedies I could try, or first and foremost, is there a way I can self-diagnose to find out if I do in fact have some intestinal parasites or something like that? I read somewhere that introducing cloves in the diet can get rid of parasites, but I don't know if that's true, or even if it is, if it gets rid of all of them, or the ones I'm dealing with, if I am.

Please let me know if any of this makes any sense to you. Thanks again.