Night Terror Juice

“Awake” and “restless” indeed

It happened again. For the second time in three months, I had a night terror episode. I thought I had this thing beat - it had only happened once in the last few years. Now that I’m wearing a sleep tracker to bed, I have more information, and some validation about what happens during night terrors.

Other than this particular night, I’ve had night terrors twice in the last few years. Once was at the end of a two-week experiment I was doing, to “give myself jet lag” in advance of a trip to Europe. The other was after a women’s counter-abduction workshop. These make sense to me for different reasons.

The jet lag experiment involved trying to shift my schedule by half an hour every night, so that I was closer to the schedule I’d be living during two weeks in Europe. It totally worked! It worked except for the last night, when I ran around trying to close down the house and put off eating dinner too long. I’d been messing with my sleep schedule for weeks, then I ate a full meal and tried to go to bed ninety minutes later.

Result: Woke up standing in my bathroom, shaking and crying. Decided to end jet lag experiment a day early.

The problem with the counter-abduction workshop was probably threefold. One, PTSD, enough said there. Two, I was bruised up and very stiff and sore. Three, I had a huge meal after the workshop. My working hypothesis is that blood sugar is key to night terrors, and I definitely threw it off that weekend. The night terror episode happened the second night after the workshop, so it’s somewhat surprising that it was delayed a day.

When it happened the other night, I felt really stupid, because it clicked into place what I had done.

I drank an 8-ounce glass of juice right before bed.

I fell asleep and woke up standing in my living room, heart racing. “A spider” had been “crawling on my husband.” I looked at the clock on the microwave and felt very annoyed that I’d only been asleep for about 35 minutes. Then I went back to bed.

[I’m not really all that bothered by spiders during the day. They’re purely an issue of my sleeping brain, probably a limbic system thing].

BOOM, it happened again. “The same spider” was “crawling on the wall” on my side of the bed. I looked at the clock on my phone. Are you kidding me??? Thirty-five minutes!

Usually night terrors seem to happen within the first 90 minutes of the sleep cycle. It was a little weird for my personal experience to have them that soon after I drifted off to sleep. I blame the juice, though.

The reason I was drinking juice right before bed is that I was recovering from a stomach bug, and the juice has probiotics. I hadn’t quite hit my hydration goal for the day and it seemed like a good idea.

I got sick at the tail end of a week and a half of intensive event planning, a week in which I got very little sleep. Stress was high and I ate dinner after 9 PM a few nights.

What seems to be going on is a combination of stress level and blood sugar. I’ve had sleep issues since I was seven, and there may be some kind of genetic propensity toward this condition. I’ve been managing ever since I made the connection between blood sugar and sleep, and started timing my meals.

My main goal is to stop eating three hours before I go to sleep. I am not always able to avoid this, and eating closer to bedtime does not automatically trigger night terrors. The rare occasions that I’ve had them, though, are connected to eating or drinking something closer to the time I fall asleep.

I first became aware of this connection after going on a very strict three-month calorie restriction diet. My “reward” for making my weight goal was to eat a chocolate truffle. I saved it for after dinner, and I savored it. Then I had night terrors for the first time in months. I immediately blamed the candy, because chocolate had been on my list of possible triggers for some time. Then I thought a bit more and put some ideas together.

I had been tracking my metrics for years, looking for an answer. I kept a detailed food log, which is how I found out that paprika triggers sleep disturbances for me. I logged all my exercise. I kept a spreadsheet with all my sleep disturbances, including whether I screamed, jumped out of bed, crawled on the floor, opened doors, and/or ran through the house sound asleep in the dark.

The connection: When I went on my strict diet, I quit eating my late-night snack. I had been in the habit of eating something before bed, usually either a large bowl of cereal or a can of peaches. Whatever I had, it was always sweet and in the range of 500 calories.

A friend who works with dementia patients confirmed that many of them experience night terrors, and that it’s widely recognized as a blood sugar issue. I wish I’d known that sooner, although I probably wouldn’t have made the connection to my own eating habits.

I don’t think it has as much to do with *what* I eat as with *when* I eat. I eat candy and desserts, and they only seem to cause night terror episodes if I eat that stuff after dinner, not in the afternoon. Same with paprika: I can eat it, just not late in the evening.

Obviously people who do not have problems with night terrors (aka pavor nocturnus) can eat whatever they want. There are likely to be a lot of different triggers for night terrors besides blood sugar or meal timing. Maybe various medications, trauma, dementia, or other health conditions are factors. For me, meal timing has made a proven difference.

I just need to put a sticker on my juice bottle reminding me of that.