fruit and insomnia : Paleolithic & Neanderthin Forum : Active Low-Carber Forums

#16 ^

Wed, Jun-30-10, 16:51

Secondrain Secondrain is offline

New Member

Posts: 13

Plan: Paleo
Stats: 118/115/125 Female 5'8"

BF:
Progress:

Quote:

Originally Posted by AimeeJoi

So I have been eating a ton of fruit for the last month and I have been having serious insomnia. I usually sleep like a brick so this is a very unnatural state for me. I realized that I was eating big bowls of fruit about 1.5-2 hours before I go to bed and started wondering if there was a connection. I did a little research and found that if you have fructose malabsorption and fructose enters your small intestine it can eat up all the tryptophan and cause depression and insomnia. I have also been sort of depressed lately and have been crying a lot (even when there is no hormonal explanation

) I was thinking that my lack of sleep was making me weepy but now I'm starting to think it's all connected to fructose! I suspected before that I may have fructose malabsorption but I really didn't want it to be true. I love fruit and would be devastated to have to give it up. Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

The same exact thing was happening with me and my kids. Summertime (plus being pregnant) and we were consuming more fruit. We were all waking up every couple of hours with wicked insomnia. I cut the fruit (except berries) and cut the sweet potatoes and squash and now we're sleeping again. It TOTALLY sucks, especially for my kids who don't get any sugar in the first place. And I'm having a lot of trouble gaining weight on my VLC diet while preggo. Sometimes it makes me want to throw in the towel, but I know this is right, eating paleo. Sigh. If you come up with a solution for the fructose malabsorbsion, please let me know.

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#17 ^

Thu, Jul-01-10, 05:52

AimeeJoi

Senior Member

Posts: 552

Plan: mindful eating
Stats: 184.5/178.5/140 Female 66

BF:41/40/25
Progress: 13%

Location: pa

Secondrain, my solution has just been to quit eating fruit after 2pm and to cut down on portion sizes in general. Also I started taking more magnesium and drinking lavander tea before bed. I am pretty much back to normal now. I still don't know for sure about fm. I probably don't have it completely because I would probably be having severe intestinal distress and I'm not but I think it is possible that all the sugar is feeding some bad bacteria and that may be messing with my tryptophan levels. I am thinking about doing a few weeks of vlc just to kill off any out of control bacteria but I have to wait until I eat up all the fruit in the house. I imagine it would be very hard to be vlc and pregnant, especially in the summer when the heat makes you crave fruit.