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RightSleep® Method

Go here for personal help with your sleep issues and here to purchase a RightSleep Workbook to guide you.

The RightSleep®  method is an over-the-counter  vitamin regimen that has worked to improve or normalize sleep in over 5000 of my patients. It works for all types of sleep disorders including apnea and insomnia. There are very important observations about sleep and what constitutes “normal” sleep that are based on my patients’ observations as well.  Please read all the Blogs as well as all the sections under Learning before you start . The more you know the more successful you will be.

Vitamins will not just magically make you sleep. Read all the FAQ’s, download the RightSleep® Workbook and commit yourself to 6-12 months of observing your sleep.  Within 2-3 months you’ll  feel better.  There may be a set back or two in the first six months but if you stick with it you will permanently fix your sleep . People who haven’t slept normally for 40 years should expect to take longer, at least 2-3 years to get better.  Be patient, realize that if  you have 30-40 years of deferred repairs that must be made during the small amount of deep sleep that you have every night it will take many nights to make all of those repairs.

As a general rule the regimen includes vitamin D and all 8 B vitamins taken as  B50 (a B complex that has 50 mg or 50 mcg of each of the 8 B vitamins). You will also need to check your B12 level and supplement it separately if it is below 500pg/ml. You will need to take a small dose generic multivitamin as well, all 8 B’s in small doses. B50 is taken just for three months. D is continued for the rest of your life or until your D level is stable off supplement.

Patients who already have fibromyalgia or significant arthritis should start with D plus  B50. After about a week, if you still awaken with significant pain increase to B50 morning and evening. The right dose is the dose that allows you to wake without pain. Arthritic pain takes weeks to improve as the joint injuries are slowly healed every night. Watch for when your joint pain begins during the day, it should slowly move to later and later in the day. Once the intestinal bacteria are back making B vitamins, (after three months) you must stop the B50 supplement. You now have the healthy bacteria in your gut making your B vitamins and continuing to take the B50 pill means you’re on a double dose.

Both vitamin D and B5 affect our ability to get perfectly paralyzed in deep sleep and can cause body pain if the dose is not right. Every time you feel old and stiff on awakening check the D level first, if the D is 60-80 ng/ml then then B5 dose is either too high or too low, (or you just fell out of a tree and you shouldn’t have been up there with that chain saw anyway).

Some people get nausea from multivitamins or B complex when they start RightSleep. If this happens to you wait 2-3 weeks, taking D by itself, then try a small dose multivitamin and slowly work up by one multivitamin a week until you can tolerate one mvi plus B50 per day without nausea. You can also try a child’s chewable multivitamin with lower doses of all 8 B’s and slowly increase by one every couple of weeks until you are tolerating the equivalent of B50, then switch over to B50 plus the multivitamin.

If you have fibromyalgia, muscle pain, arthritis, or burning in the hands or feet you probably have pantothenic acid (B5) deficiency. Every person who starts vitamin D supplementation (without correcting the intestinal bacteria by taking B50 or B100 for three months in combination) eventually becomes B5 deficient and starts to wake with pain in the morning. In order to bring back the “right” intestinal bacteria B-50, (a B complex that has 50 mg or 50 mcg of each of the 8 B vitamins) should be taken for 3 months in combination with a vitamin D dose high enough for the blood level to be > 40ng/ml. If it takes a couple of months for your D blood level to get up to 40 ng/ml you must start counting the three month time span once your D is 40 or above. Supplying the vitamin D and all 8 B vitamins together encourages the “right” bacteria to grow back.

What to do in months 6-24 of RightSleep:

A Vitamin D blood level that stays in the range of 60-80 ng/ml for months to years on end encourages the brain to spend more time in deep sleep to make long-deferred repairs. In order to make those repairs you need all 8 B vitamins. The B vitamins are the building blocks of repair. Never take B vitamins (except for B12) individually. The B vitamins have always come together in a specific relationship to one another and are very biologically intertwined. If you take one B you should take all of them. In months 4-24 of D supplementation each person needs a specific amount of B5 based on how many repairs they’ve put off for how long. The intestinal bacteria appear to make the exact amount of B’s needed by a normal human who never fell apart, but they cannot respond to a request to make more B’s for the extra repairs that you need. For your “bone on bone” joints, or your autoimmune disease to repair (to get back to being a normal human again) you will need slightly more B’s for a finite period of time. When your brain has the right amount of B5 it will get correctly paralyzed during REM sleep and you will wake pain free. My patients have usually been able to tell a difference in 5 mg changes of B5 at this stage. Each person needs their own individual dose depending on how much extra REM repair they need. Both above and below that “sweet spot” there is pain on awakening. I ask my patients to go up by 5 mg of B5, every couple of days usually using a multivitamin with 5-10 mg of B5 per pill, until they awaken pain free in the morning. People who have been sicker longer and have more deferred repairs, appear to need much larger doses, 75-90 mg of B5, someone who has only been sick since the last pregnancy two years ago may only need 15 mg. Each person needs to find their dose. As the repairs get finished and you return to being a normal human you will need to lower the dose by 5 mg increments of B5. When all the repairs are finished you will no longer need vitamins in pill form (except for vitamin D). You will be back to using only the amount of B’s that your intestinal bacteria make and you’ll be sleeping normally again (as long as you keep the D in range), and even a low dose multivitamin might be more than your brain wants. Patients with sleep apnea on CPAP will take much longer to complete this process and will need to stay on their mask until they are documented to have no apnea on their sleep study.

Warnings about the B vitamins:

The brain only wants extra B’s if it is staying in deep sleep longer than normal so after the first three months of B50 stop large dose B’s and stay on just a multivitamin with small doses of B’s. Your multivitamin should have all 8 B’s and approximately 100% minimum daily recommended dose of each one. The routine generic multivitamins at large pharmacies usually have these doses. Cheaper is better, the expensive health food multivitamins often have very large doses of B vitamins which can hurt you if you don’t need them.
The first three months take D plus B50 and a mvi. After three months stop the B50 and continue the mvi. There is frequently a several month “honeymoon period” where everything runs well on just a mvi with 10 mg of B5. Then, if the sleep continues to be excellent the body pain may start to reappear. I believe this means that the brain has decided that it’s doing well enough to start making long-deferred repairs and it’s asking for more B’s to stay paralyzed longer. At this point you will need to add back smaller B doses in 5 mg increments of B5 until the morning pain is gone. Also, both B5 and vitamin D can make people act out their dreams if the level is not right. Thus kicking or chewing or talking during sleep are all signs that the body is not getting paralyzed correctly, either the vitamin D blood level or the B5 dose is too high or too low. Pantothenic acid (B5) blood levels do not reflect the pantothenic acid body stores and are therefore not reliable to determine what amount the brain wants. The body pain on awakening is more reliable, which is why I am not recommending that you test your B blood levels except for B12.