Sounds like you are taking too high of a dose of sleep aid... People are too fast to blame something serious like an autoimmune disorder. Your brain may not produce enough melatonin. You can buy melatonin in most stores like Walmart in pill or even dissolvable forms. Take it an hour or so before bed. The amount varies depending on your weight. If sleep aids do work for you, more than likely melatonin will as well. Honestly with the sleep aids though, it sounds as your dose is too high. Try taking a lower dose or a different brand. Do not eat 3 to 4 hours before bed as this vamps up your digestive process and your metabolism creating energy and making it harder to sleep. Do not drink anything one hour before bed as this can make you wake up to go to the bathroom. Do not drink anything except water 3-4 hours before bed as the sugars and caffeine will also hurt your sleep. If you are having insomnia, all of these things can contribute to it. Eliminate these things one at a time to see which is hurting you. I sincerely doubt it is an autoimmune disorder. If it was, you would be terribly sick all of the time and more than likely hospitalized a couple of times for colds that have turned into flu. You would notice digestive issues or a potential variety of internal issues, constant diarrhea, nausea, vomiting to name a few. ( Maybe not all at once ) Autoimmune disease is not just "Oh you might have autoimmune disease." It is an incredibly serious disorder. Typically the only type of autoimmune disease to cause insomnia is Graves disease. You would also typically exhibit other symptoms such as Irritability, significant Weight loss, Heat sensitivity, Sweating, Fine brittle hair, Muscle weakness Light menstrual periods, Bulging eyes and Shaky hands. RARELY there are no side-effects. These would all onset as well as the hospitalizations for being ill with a random cold that would turn flu like. The only other disorder that it could possibly be would be something I am only familiar with because I was diagnosed 2 years ago and that is Addison's disease... which can also be a form of an autoimmune disorder. The likeliness that you have Addison's disease would be almost nothing though, considering the occurrence of Addison's disease is 1 out of every 100,000 people, and if it wasn't being treated, you would die... pretty quickly. So, my medical advice to save you some time, money and testing ( because doctors love that ) is to first try dialing back the sleep aid dose, try some melatonin, cut out food and beverages as posted above first before diving into medical stuff. People are always quick to dive into the doctors office these days. Just my suggestion though. *shrug* You may very well have an autoimmune disorder... I don't know you or your symptoms... I'm just telling you... it's a serious condition and based on what you have written and the fact you haven't posted anything on these side-effects and it just seems you can't sleep.... I sincerely doubt that autoimmune disease is your case... and I can DEFINITELY tell you it's not Addison's disease. Thousands of people suffer from insomnia worldwide with no underlying cause... they just have insomnia... plain and simple.
. The thing is, whenever I get my levothyroxine adjusted I sleep so well for about a month then everything goes to hell again. My hair starts falling out (if you are a vain person this is the worst ever.. I'm very vain about my hair at least lol), my joints and muscles start constantly hurting, I gain more weight, and I stop sleeping. I have no doubt that my sleeping is very disordered. Sometimes I wonder if it's just the constant pain that wakes me up or keeps me from falling fully asleep. Either way synthetic thyroid meds don't work very well for me and I'm at a loss as to what to do.. I'm terrified of ending up with a goiter. As far as sleeping goes, Melatonin might actually be a good idea. I tend to be really sensitive to anything that "may cause drowsiness" such as narcotics and sleep aids like tylenol PM.
