Adrenaline Jolts While Sleeping?

I seem to have these ''jolts'' as i fall asleep and first felt them when i recovering from an operationi had in oct 2010. I was also taking tylenol 3 it happened 2 or 3 times then went away 5 monthes later they came back. I feel something by my heart but its not my heart its nerves by my heart that twitch. when im about to sleep i get this jolt that wont let me go to sleep 'Pisses me off'' I think its stress and sometimes i go out and walk get air and try to get my self tired by the end of the day when i do that i can sleep fine. Im 20lbs over weight and going to start exercising to see if that works. If anyone finds out how to get rid of this please let me know and let everyone else know so we can live our live better.

Update: I did a 20 min workout before i went to bed last night and i felt GREAT i havent felt that way in months the jolt seemed to go away i know it not gone completely but its going away! My chest feels better and i think its the start getting rid of anxiety. i am going to keep on doin my workout before i go to sleep and see if i can rid this problem. By the way i'm using a Mini Stair Stepper Climber my wife got on Ebay to work my legs out and it does the trick my heart races and pumps and after 20 min. i feel great ! I think the jolt is from your body not getting enuff cardio exercise. your body is trying to tell you something. This might not work for everyone but try it what do you have to lose....

Amazing, I knew I was not the only one with this sleep issue. I am no medication, no alcohol,no caffeine product no smoking, no drugs and lower range of average weight. It took me quite a while, many years in fact, to get some sense of what was happening. For a long time would get up tired. Condition tends to be worse during the cold season. Then the violent palpitation that would jolt me out of my sleep like clock work almost every morning at 4:00AM, tired and breathless. All kinds of medical test turns up nothing. Stop talking to my doctors about it not wanting to be labeled with some name for someone who is healthy in every way excepting for this condition which neither sleep study, Holter monitor and a battery of test can detect. What have worked for me; eating small, no late eating, keep warm, sleep in warm clothing, eliminated rice and sugar from my diet. Recently, the condition has returned thought not as violent at this time. Will have to find some way to regulate this adrenaline burst in the mornings (not to mention the terrible dreams that accompany this condition.) Please share what your story with what works. Thanks.

Second Update: I been feeling great with the exercise i been doing and the sudden jolts of adrenaline seem to have completely gone away! I still have some anxiety but very little. I know for a fact its going away every week i feel better and seem to have less anxiety. In my case i think exercise is the key and am going to keep on doing it. Trying to keep my self occupied and not staying at home on the weekends seemed to help a lot also. I also stopped eating after 9:00 PM (I think eating late is bad and causes sleeping disorders.)I never had bad dreams or tremors or nothing like that just the jolts and the anxiety. Hopefully this will help someone because this is a terrible thing. You can try the exercise, changing your diet and other combinations of things to see if this works for you which i hope it does. Well good luck to everyone and i hope this was helpful for yous....

I've been reading every post regarding this and everyone seems to be saying similar things but really no 'cure' or 'help' regarding this. I have had this for the past couple of years. I still go through it and it drives me nuts! The one home remedy that works for me (most of the time) is taking 1 tablespoon of taking regular classic yellow mustard. Sounds crazy, right? I use French's. None of this fancy stuff....... It has vinegar and turmeric which helps the enzymes in your stomach settle down. It cures heartburn & settles your stomach. I know this sounds crazy, but TRY IT. Your stomach can produce adrenaline, especially with those who suffer with anxiety, which wakes you up with such a terrible jolt, you think you're having a heart attack! Refrain from alcohol, caffeine and late night snacking. 1 tspn and down the hatch! It's gross but it really helped me and has helped those who have had the same problem. Good luck and have a peaceful sleep...:)

Fuel1212 wrote:

I have had the same issue on and off for about 6 months. I got a complete physical and the Dr. said I was in great shape. I went to a sleep Dr. and he thought it might be apnea, keep in mind though that I am 32 and never had this earlier in my life. I am 5ft 11 and 170, so I am not overweight by any means. I have no issues during the day at all. I have noticed and this may be a stupid correlation but when I exercise I seem to have them more. Same exact thing. Surges of what feels like electricity right before dosing off. Let me know if anyone figures this out without huge doses of Meds.<quoted text>

Same thing over here, healthy 6'2" @ 190 lbs. Totally fine until around early 30's when it started and the ammount of rest I get each night is greatly diminished, not to mention my memory sucks now, especially at remembering faces. I got diagnosed for sleep apnea, but again I think there is something under-lying here that is more than just bad sleeping. A few times, I have literally jumped out of bed, fully standing or running in to the next room thinking I'm having a heart attack or something. I took a very low dosage of Ritalin <2mg per day when I was diagnosed with mild ADD a few years ago. Even though I've totally stopped this, I still wake up in the night. It's worse for my girlfriend because when I wake up, it wakes her up to and then neither of us get any rest.

The problem seems a little like not being able to quickly enter REM state. When I was a kid, I would have super vivid dreams and wake up with tons of energy, now it's the exact opposite and I'm most awake after 8pm at night. When I got put under for a knee surgery two years ago, those two hours under gas were the most restful sleep I had in a long time. Maybe it is some form of anxiety. I'll try cutting out all caffeine from my diet this week and see if that makes a punch in this issue. Thanks for everyone sharing.

I was having panic attacks and anxiety so I went on Prozac. After a few days I started to experience hot flashes on my back chest and upper arms. Followed by adrenaline rushes all night long when I drifted off to sleep and through out the whole night. The day I doubled my dose was the worst night ever with nocturnal panic attacks all night and hot patches. I stopped taking the Prozac and started taking zoloft 5 days later and the symptoms continued. After my 5th night on zoloft i was still having many adrenaline rushes, hot patches through out the night and started to feel manic. I stopped the zoloft and after 3 days the hot patches diminished as well as the adrenaline rushes. I started taking .5 Xanax instead. I keep the Xanax in my purse in case a panic attack arises but came to the conclusion that that ssri's were causing these symptoms. I am doing much better now. I don't think my body responded well to the ssri's and thought they were nocturnal panic attacks.

rusty wrote:

I read this. I have been experiencing these the last few months on and off. At the time I started getting them I was not on any medications. Also struggling with air hunger, airway phlegm, anxiety, and heart palpitations.
from my extensive research on all these problems, reading probably hundreds of posts online, I think it could be some sort of a bacterial infection in the body, possibly h.pylori or another one.
My symptoms seem to have started after I dated a girl from Africa. h.pylori, which can be transmitted through saliva and can be found by a gastroenterologist, it is written, is much more prevalent in developing countries. I urge readers of this to get checked for this and if you can, for other bad bacterial cultures in the stomach or elsewhere in the body and post with your results.
good luck

Hello, I am experiencing this now. Did you find out what it was?

nattygirl_nz wrote:

Hi there - my symptoms are EXACTLY the same, weakness, twitching, nausea, cant eat, I am just about to drop off to sleep and i'm woken with a huge surge of burning hot adrenaline through my diaphram that radiates through to my arms and leaves me feeling weak - I, like you have had tons of blood tests (I have a 11 week old son and two other little boys), i've also had an MRI and waiting on an appointment with a neurologist this week. Please let me know the outcome of your appointments with the neuro and the endo - I'm just at the end of my teather and want to know what I can do. Thanks so much, Natalie
<quoted text>

UPDATE Oct 2011
For the adrenaline jolts in the night, I went in for a huge number of blood tests by my doctor. He suspected a possible thyroid condition or worse, cancer. Everything came back clean with the exception of a large Vitamin D deficiency. He put me on 50,000IU once a week and I've been feeling pretty darn good.
I'm way more relaxed and I don't think I've been waking up in the middle of the night ever since. Please be aware that Vitamin D is not water-soluable like the other vitamins, so you can get toxic levels if you're not careful and over-dose. You cannot keep taking 50,000IU once a week without eventually becoming toxic, so it's only temporary. PLEASE go through a doctor to get proper blood testing to find out if this treatment may help you or if you suspect being deficient. If the night attacks come back, I'll let you all know.

My boyfriend has been having these same issues for the last 2 weeks or so now. He just recently had a bunch of physical and blood tests done. Everything came back normal. His doctor put him on Celexa and hydroxyzine for the symptoms but since he started them (3days ago) it has gotten worse. He suffered from anxiety back in high school, was on medication and the symptoms went away. He has no idea how or why this is happeneing. Dizziness, light-headedness, adrenaline rushes, blurry vision and constant worry are the symptoms he's experiencing and hes starting to obsess over it which in return is making everything worse.

a smith wrote:

I have these bursts of what feels like adrenaline or something physical when I am going to sleep or have just fallen asleep. I, however, am on no medication, and am having numerous other illness symptoms. These rushes are completely physical and last only a second or two. They wake me up. There's no thought or emotion behind them. It's like a one second purely physical adrenaline/panic rush. I am constantly dizzy and lightheaded, extremely fatigued, having eye issues, nauseated. I've started losing weight. I temporarily lost vision in my left eye on memorial day. I've had an MRI, ecocardiagram, numerous blood tests etc. etc. all with the outcome of everything looks fine. It's quite obvious I'm not fine, and I am exhausted waiting for a diagnosis. I am going to the neuroligist this week and an endocrinoligist next week. Hopefully I will have some answers soon. I have small children to raise. I will not let this bring me down.

For the last couple of weeks my boyfriend has been experiencing symptoms of anxiety. He used to have anxiety problems back in high school. They eventually went away after medication. Well after reading NUMEROUS posts here I have summed up what I think may be going on. About a month ago he was experiencing tender, bleeding gums and sensitivity. He went in to the dentist and was told he has deep periodontal pockets and was starting to develope Periodontal Disease. He was treated with Arestin. Which is a very small tube placed under the gums and releases a time release dose for the bacterial infection. Over the last few weeks he has been experiencing symptoms of anxiety again. Light headedness, dizzy, blurry vision, nausea, adrenaline jolts through-out the day, not just at night which seems to be different from everything I've read here from everyone else. He has had a dream a couple of different times about loosing control of his body while driving and wrecking his car. So he has become nervous about driving like his dream will become real. He went to the doc and had numerous test done and everything came back normal. He was perscribed Celexa and hydroxyzine but since then the symptoms have worsened. He is beginning to obsess over what is going on even though he has been told there is nothing wrong. Vitamin D deficiency and bacterial infections are the only 2 things I can think of that may be causing these symptoms. But if it is a bacterial infection I would think I could ahve it as well since most bacterial infections are transmitable. Yet I am perfectly fine.

Jerry wrote:

UPDATE 2 Oct 2011
For the adrenaline jolts in the night, I went in for a huge number of blood tests by my doctor. He suspected a possible thyroid condition or worse, cancer. Everything came back clean with the exception of a large Vitamin D deficiency. He put me on 50,000IU once a week and I've been feeling pretty darn good.
I'm way more relaxed and I don't think I've been waking up in the middle of the night ever since. Please be aware that Vitamin D is not water-soluable like the other vitamins, so you can get toxic levels if you're not careful and over-dose. You cannot keep taking 50,000IU once a week without eventually becoming toxic, so it's only temporary. PLEASE go through a doctor to get proper blood testing to find out if this treatment may help you or if you suspect being deficient. If the night attacks come back, I'll let you all know.

Well I did have one time since taking the Vitamin D that I woke up quickly around 6am with some light sweating, but nowhere near as bad as when I would pop up in the middle of the night and think that I was dying or having a heart attack while running into the other room at full speed. In all fairness, I drank some alcohol the previous night, so that may have contributed to my disturbed sleep.

I wanted to mentioned one side note regarding bacteria, that a few years ago I was put on Doryx (a time release anti-biotic) for acne and during that time it felt as if a fog had been lifted from my mind. I felt a lot clearer in thought and memory, but that stopped after I stopped the drug. If there is something related to a foreign bacteria in the body, that might explain why I felt so much better while on the antibiotic. I've traveled for work all over the world in Asia and parts of Europe, so it's quite easy that I could have picked up something along the way.

Another website mentioned that it could simply be anxiety, which is a difficult beast to understand. To a psychologist, someone who worries about the world and themselves can pass all mental tests with flying colors and appear to be normal.

To slow down the mind and reduce worry, try meditating or praying before bed to calm the mind, listen to soft music, avoid alcohol or caffeine after 12 noon and maybe try an herbal tea or warm milk.

Cell phone studies in Japan show that daily usage decreases melatonin production, so consider taking at least 1mg of melatonin when the sun sets to get the body ready for sleep. As mentioned by someone above, they found that if they did not exercise for a few days, they were more inclined to be restless during sleep, so try live healthy and exercise.

When I was on vacation recently without cell phone service, I actually slept much better knowing that no one was going to text or call me with an emergency. With that in mind, I should turn off my phone during the night.

Finally, watching TV right before bed, if it excites you or invokes emotion could also be similar to witnessing a traumatic experience or accident and then trying to sleep. Try cutting out TV for a few hours before bed and see if that helps too. Who knows, maybe the bright blue color from the TV or laptop screen, may trigger our minds into thinking it is daytime with blue sky and time to wake-up when it's time for bed. Good luck to all who have this issue.

a smith wrote:

I have these bursts of what feels like adrenaline or something physical when I am going to sleep or have just fallen asleep. I, however, am on no medication, and am having numerous other illness symptoms. These rushes are completely physical and last only a second or two. They wake me up. There's no thought or emotion behind them. It's like a one second purely physical adrenaline/panic rush. I am constantly dizzy and lightheaded, extremely fatigued, having eye issues, nauseated. I've started losing weight. I temporarily lost vision in my left eye on memorial day. I've had an MRI, ecocardiagram, numerous blood tests etc. etc. all with the outcome of everything looks fine. It's quite obvious I'm not fine, and I am exhausted waiting for a diagnosis. I am going to the neuroligist this week and an endocrinoligist next week. Hopefully I will have some answers soon. I have small children to raise. I will not let this bring me down.

Did you ever find out what was causing your symptoms. You sound exactly like me. It's very difficult getting and accurate diagnosis. Can you please share any info. thank. mrivers5@yahoo.com

it happens to me a few times a night right before i fall asleep i jolt awake and it feels kinda cool...but also scary but everyday i wake up alive
so im not worried best thing to do is keep a rugular sleep schedule i know its some kind of sleep anxiets withdrawl symptom because i have take anxiety pills and they dont happen they only happen when i dont take the pills XD so dont worry guys were all just hypochlondriacs worrying all the time its just your body is so tired and your mind isnt that you feel your body go to sleep and u freak out and jump up so...stop thinking about stuff and just go to bed and stop staying up late go to bed at a descent time

Its been a few years since you posted this. Have you been able to figure out what causes it, as I seem to be going through the same situation. Every test has been run, including some that didnt need to be. Mornings are horrible lately. My Dr's think I am crazy, and I am begining to wonder myself! Thank you!

a smith wrote:

I have these bursts of what feels like adrenaline or something physical when I am going to sleep or have just fallen asleep. I, however, am on no medication, and am having numerous other illness symptoms. These rushes are completely physical and last only a second or two. They wake me up. There's no thought or emotion behind them. It's like a one second purely physical adrenaline/panic rush. I am constantly dizzy and lightheaded, extremely fatigued, having eye issues, nauseated. I've started losing weight. I temporarily lost vision in my left eye on memorial day. I've had an MRI, ecocardiagram, numerous blood tests etc. etc. all with the outcome of everything looks fine. It's quite obvious I'm not fine, and I am exhausted waiting for a diagnosis. I am going to the neuroligist this week and an endocrinoligist next week. Hopefully I will have some answers soon. I have small children to raise. I will not let this bring me down.

I've had these jolts for quite some time occasionally. Two days ago i had a stressful day. That night I experienced so many violent jolts i got scared. I could not sleep for more than a couple of minutes each time. To weeks ago i had a sleep study and was diagnosed with moderate sleep apnea. I am wondering if the two are related, but these are also clearly associated with stress. Also, my digestion becomes disrupted when i am nervous and start belching a lot. When this happens, I am more likelly to have rapid heart rate. The rapid heart rate tends the be there on nights that I experience jolts.