Sleeping Disorder

[DanteJay]

Just further to a post I made in the topic about no caffeine, I was off of it for several weeks while as I was scheduled to attend a sleep clinic to see if I have some kind of sleeping disorder (which I truly believe I had).

Got my results back on Friday and couldn't believe what the doc told me. Just a little backdrop on my sleep study first: I had trouble sleeping that night since I'm a very light sleeper and I could constantly hear the staff in the clinic chit-chatting and other patients coming and going to use the washroom. The other reason I couldn't sleep was because I need to be very comfortable in order to sleep, and having all these wires and crap attached to various parts of my body made it quite uncomfortable. I was there for around 7 hours and filled out a report in the morning where I noted I thought I got in an around 15-30 mins of sleep. I believed this to be true as there were two moments I kinda dozed off but quickly woke back up and aside from that, I laid in the bed for 6 hours completely alert of my surroundings.

With my report in hand, the doc told me on Friday that I slept just over 260 minutes (over 4 hours). I told him there must be some kind of mistake, as I couldn't have possibly slept more than an hour. But according to him, the machine that measured my brain activity is very accurate. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He told me I average 40 something arousals an hour (arousals in this case meaning wake signals). He continued basically saying he believes I am depressed, I suffer from Insomnia and have severe Apnea. Before attending the clinic, I would have sworn I didn't have Apnea as I never wake gasping for air (something almost synonymous with the "disease"). So a big part of me is relieved that there's now some sense as to why I have trouble with my memory and am always tired. I've brought home a loner CPAP machine and will be using it for several weeks and am scheduled to do another study while being on the machine, to see if it improves my sleeping.

I encourage anyone else who feels they don't sleep properly to attend a sleep clinic. I am hopeful that this will have a tremendous improvement on my quality of life.

[Specially Cork]

Very interesting. I've suffered with bouts of middle-of-the-night insomnia for years and even when I seem better, I still suffer with excessive daytime drowsiness. It's frustrating as so much insomnia-based advice is focused on sleep-onset insomnia and most medications are designed to be short-acting so don't do much good.

I ended up taking Mirtazapine (Remeron) off-label at my lowest point. It did the job, but far too well - I ended up sleeping for about 12 hours and the nightmares...my god. The most vivid, sickening dreams of my life and no way to wake up. I couldn't bring myself to take the second night's dose and still have the whole box tucked away somewhere.

I'm doing better these days and take no medication at all. My son goes to daycare now which has hooked me into a nice routine and I've learned a few techniques to sort myself out, but feeling incredibly tired during the day is still a huge problem for me - to the point where it's probably time to consider medical issues. Unfortunately, when you move to somewhere like China you can kiss goodbye to "sleep studies" and I'll have to wait until I'm next back in the UK for that.

Your Apnea diagnosis is really interesting though. I heard about it once and shrugged it off immediately as my wife has never mentioned anything about my breathing or snoring.

[not just souLLy now]

I have regular bouts of insomnia myself, although not too much when first going to sleep these days (I literally don't go near my bed until I'm so exhausted that I drop right off, otherwise I'll wake myself up) but I do wake up in the middle of the night wide awake fairly regularly. I shrug it off and go do something else for a while, it's not ideal but at least I don't wake my wife and I quite like it when the house is silent.

[Eviltaco64X]

I've had frequent insomnia since I was 5.

Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I might as well make use of the time. Drawing, reading, looking for music, late night video game sessions, random long walks to a 24/7 convenience store at 2 AM, etc

Usually get 2-5 hours a night, supplement with coffee, and then crash for a good 10 on an off day. It's irregular, but I like it for the sake of the extra productivity it can bring.