That’s fascinating.
I haven’t heard of it curing insomnia, but I have heard people with long COVID do some extended fasts and have it cure them.
COVID can definitely add inflammation to the brain, and that can have all sorts of unpredictable consequences.
A quick google search of “long COVID and fasting” draws interesting results!
A few articles have suggested that fasting relieves some symptoms of long COVID. Another one suggests that fasting itself decreases severe COVID symptoms/death:
Me too! I’ve had life-long middle of the night insomnia. If I stop eating by 5:30 (I go to sleep at midnight) I will sleep through the night. If I have dinner too late or a late night snack, I’m up for hours.
Completely anecdotal, but I developed insomnia after COVID as well, around July of this year. I pretty much went through the same shit your wife did, including trying taking anything/everything I could to sleep, eventually being put on medication, which did work for a few weeks. Then it came back.
What finally worked for me, was hearing on a podcast about “sleep constraint” where I only allowed myself 6 hours of sleep per night, maximum.
I did this for a week, and that really seemed to do the trick - pretty much back to normal now. No meds or supplements for sleep needed anymore. Fasting was going to be the next thing I tried…just because not sleeping is horrendous, and might as well exhaust all possible ideas.
Good luck to your wife, hope it’s all better now.
That’s great! I’m glad she could find relief. Sleep is such a core component of good wellbeing
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While my sleep still isn’t good, since doing extended fasts and keeping my body in ketosis, I have noticed a number of improvements with my own chronic illness