Poll: Does taking supplements to 'support' mitochondria at a particular time of day improve your sleep?

So the intention of this poll is to see if anybody has noticed an improvement in their sleep from taking any supplement(s) that are meant to 'support' or 'fuel' mitochondria, such as Nicotinamide, total vit B 3, CoQ-10 and/or amino acids, and whether the time of day that they were taken made any difference.

Please choose the time option that most closely matches when you take the supplement, and please add any additional information that you think might be relevant as a post below.

I have set it to only allow one vote, so if you take relevant supplements at multiple times in a day, please select the later option - i.e. if you take supplements in the morning and evening, please choose the evening option.

 

Magnesium and taurine injections helped calm my brain when I had severe insomnia 18 years ago. The 'hyper-brain' feeling and insomnia occurred at the same time. I took the shots in the afternoon and don't feel it would have made a difference what time I took them.

 

I've never taken anything with the intention of supporting mitochondria, but I do know from running out of money that whether I take nicotinamide, BCAAs or total B3 or not, my sleep is roughly the same.

Noise and other external factors aside, it's only really influenced by being in PEM/not being in PEM, overstimulated/not overstimulated, and to some extent by melatonin.

The latter can help reset my sleep pattern when it's drifted out of sync, so that I'm awake until very late at night and then sleep until 10am. (This is partly due to being a natural 'owl type', which I loathed even before ME made it more pronounced.)

 

I have taken uniquinol, a more bioavailable form of Co Q10. I don't find it has ever helped my sleep.

I take sublingual melatonin at bedtime. That helps, but I don't think melatonin is considered as mitochondrial support.

 

Taking Kaneka Ubiquinol for 3 months seemed to help with 'energy', but it was false energy and didn't address PEM. Also, after 3 months I had to discontinue b/c it gave me insomnia.

Melatonin is an antioxidant.

 

Yes, ubiquinol helps with energy. Interesting melatonin is an antioxidant. I think I'll look it up again. ME memory and all that...

 

The only supplement that I've taken that improved my sleep was magnesium. However, after taking it for several weeks I found that I was sleeping 24 hours a day, I couldn't think, and I felt like crap so I had to stop taking it. Even small amounts in a multi-vitamin gives me the same result. It didn't matter what time of the day I took it, the result was the same.

 

Your poll should have allowed multiple selections for 'didn't improve' or just had one selection for 'didn't improve regardless of when taken'. None of the supplements listed affected my sleep. What has had a positive effect is CLAs (conjugated linoleic acids). Without them, I generally wake up every 90 minutes (and can fall back asleep again). With CLAs (consumed earlier than evening), I might sleep as long as 3 hrs (depends on the amount consumed) before waking. This has been a reliable effect.

 

I’ve tried various supplements, taken at different times of the day, none really seem to make any discernible difference to anything. The only thing I take that helps sleep is melatonin and phenergan taken not long before bed.

Everything else..well, when I don’t take them for periods of time, I don’t feel any worse, which begs the question of whether I’m wasting money on them - perhaps it is the doses, who knows.

I have recently been prescribed salt tablets by my cardiologist, who was clear, if they don’t make any obvious difference, we will stop them, so, am guessing that’s what we will do and makes me wonder about the rest of them on that basis.

 

The trouble I also have is working out whether something has any effect, or, whether I have just done a sterling job of resting for a period of time or have overdone it. Is one masking the other? There are so many moving parts to living with ME and what worked at one point may not work at another. So, is a supplement having a effect on my sleep when other things in my life are up and down on a daily basis, who knows..

 

I take ubiquinol but it doesn't help my sleep (and neither do other similar things I have tried). I take it because I found it to improve chest pain I was having and when I stop taking it the pain appears to start up again. I had never considered it may be claimed to help sleep.

I take magnesium at night but to be fair I don't know if it does anything.

My sleep was helped amazingly and enormously by a combination of melatonin (to fall asleep) and diazepam (to stay asleep) and I have been doing this for over 10 years now.

I did not know how to vote in the poll. xx

 

So hard to answer this one, not even going to try, but can give one single insight.

Sometimes still on Resveratrol, was on it for years though not for ME, but on it I slept less than normal, but functioned better with less sleep. In other words I was more tolerant to sleep deficiency.

Never noticed any correlation with timing that I can recall, but I have severely disturbed sleep, and can sleep any amount to nothing, and at any time of day.

 

Ubiquinol at breakfast and also at lunch. Taking it too late in the day makes it hard for me to sleep. If I've got a late afternoon/evening that requires me to be up (have energy), I'll take a third ubiquinol dose ... but I know doing this third dose and doing too much will leave me with less energy and likely in bed the next day (PEM).

B2 at breakfast and also at lunch. If I take a dose later, it keeps me awake.

Magnesium before bedtime (aids with sleep). Half of a small glass of Good belly probiotic drink at bedtime.

My other supplements (D3, B12, etc...), I take in the morning and I don't know the impact on sleep at other times.