My wife (35 yo, healthy, not overweight) had a moderately bad case of COVID in early July, and afterwards (~day 10) started to experience extreme insomnia. Little to no sleep for weeks on end, and she’d never had sleep issues previously. Fast forward a couple months, several doctor appointments, and every supplement and prescription sleep aid under the Sun, and my wife decided to try fasting (she was trying everything and anything out of desperation). At this point she was getting some poor quality sleep most nights by using various prescription sleep aids. She’d never fasted before. She fasted 72 hours, then ate keto for a couple more days. On the 5th night after the fast began she took no meds and slept soundly for the first time in 2-3 months. Hasn’t needed meds since, and sleeping great. Says she feels sleepy at night in a way that she wasn’t while experiencing insomnia. She’s convinced fasting cured her insomnia. Just wanted to share this anecdote with this group.
Anyone else experienced this?
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