Muscle twitches won’t let me fall sleep. Overtrained CNS or Epilepsy?

[SharpManDressed]

Greetings Everyone

I decided to run a topic here, as it is probably the last thing I can do in my situation.


I’m working out regularly for a 2,5 year now. About a year ago I noticed a muscle twitches that occured after workout. It first started only in my legs (calves mostly), but then, after about month or two it spreaded out on the whole body. Normally I wouldn’t give a sheet about it, but it was so onerous that it affected my sleeping (the falling asleep phase to be exact). Night by night while falling asleep I had (and still have) these myoclonic jerks, and because of them I couldn’t fall asleep and get a proper rest. There are nights when because of that I can’t get sleep at all. As you can imagine, it totally damaged my life, work, workout effects, relations with friends etc.


At first I was aware that it can be some vitamin/mineral deficits, so I started supplementing my diet with extra magnessium, potassium, then calcium, D vitamin, fish oil, omega acids, glutamine (so I do for now). It didn’t help at all.


After that I decided to go see a neurologist. For this year I’ve visited four of them, and all of these ‘experts’ had different diagnosis, mostly based on our talk. First suggested me depression/neurosis, second one the same, third one hypothesis was that it is caused by severe insomnia and it’s some kind of perpetuum mobile. All of them gave me the recipes for medications (mostly anti-depressants based on benzodiazepines, diazepam etc. and some sleeping drugs). I never had the problem with depression, my mood never went down, I didn’t feel nervous, anxious etc., and as they didn’t send me for additional medical examinations I felt like it is a total bullsheet just to get rid of me out of their cabinet. However, I tried to take the lighter sleeping/chill out pills for a couple times (hydroxizinum, benzodiazepines). The effects came immediately and I had a proper sleep during that couple nights.


The fourth doctor which I contaced lately suggested me that it is something called ‘myoclonic epilepsy’, which is a rare variety of traditional epilepsy. It is triggered by stress, lack of sleep and heavy fatigue after physical activities. Still I have a dillema if this diagnosis is right (after the previous ones). He sent me on couple examinations, for example blood tests, emg, eeg, magnetic resonance imaging and all these tests didn’t show anything alarming. I don’t want to take an epileptic medication which he suggested me (as the antidepressants) because I don’t want any side effects of it, such as addiction, gaining weight, bad metabolism, problems with consciousness, mood swings, impotency, driving problem etc.
When I take a total break from workouts ( had couple ones during this year lasting 1-2 weeks) the myoclonic jerks dissapear somewhat after a week and I can sleep barely normaly (sometimes they still occur, but they are so light that I can fall asleep). Lately I had a 2,5 week break caused by flu and during this time I didn’t have them. After coming back to workouts twiches always appear immiediately, even though after that last break I drastically lowered intensity of workout by about 50%.


I also should mention that the year of 2017 which this thing appeared was indeed very hard and stressful for me because of work and other personal problems. But with the end of 2017 everything end up, and for about 4 months now I’m living without any stress. Late 2017 I reduced my training by taking off cardio workouts and increased carbos and proteins in diet to bulk some mass (til now) but all this changed nothing, problem still occurs.


I never took drugs (occasionaly smoked pot at the parties in high school), I don’t drink, I don’t smoke cigarettes. I have a healthy, balanced nutritious diet. I never thought that something like overtraining can happen to me, as I’m not a professional bodybuilder and I’ve always treated training like a form of recreation. However I trained hard and progressed a lot, mostly basing on a medium weight and big amount of reps. Can it be the cns overtraining? I can’t believe I have a epilepsy either, as all medical tests are ok, and no one in my family had such problem. I don’t want to cease training for a longer period and loose all the effects of hard work of this 2,5 year. Also, I don’t want to take epileptic medication/antidepressants as I mentioned above. But I can’t live like this anymore. I have no idea what’s wrong and I guess that doctor’s haven’t got it either. What should I do?

[szyygy]

Hi, this is probably a shot in the dark since this was posted many years ago. But to you or anyone that happens on this know if this condition ever resolved on its own?

I am experiencing the same hypnic jerks at sleep onset after intense physical exercise. Personally speaking, I can still train intensely through cardio activities, but weightlifting seems to really set it off. Specifically, pull ups appear to be my biggest trigger.

Nowadays I've considerably reduced my lifting and am doing much lighter weights with no/minimal jerks at night, hoping that I can slowly build back to my previous fitness level without aggravating the issue. I'm curious to hear whether this can be treated or if this is the new normal.