help: can't wake up
Question:
JSoest wrote: > Yes, and yes. It sounds as if you’re a college student, living on a chaotic > sleep-wake schedule. Your body isn’t designed to do that, and some people’s > bodies are more sensitive to this kind of chaos than others.
I think you may be right because when I was working a regular job over the summer, although I still had a very difficult time waking up, I did get up. And on weekends I would end up waking up fairly early (9:00 or 10:00) even if I had slept late the night before. Something that never happens when I’m down here at college. On weekends at college I often wake up at 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. Thanks for your response, Jim P.S. Thank you everyone for responding to my post. I found all of your responses useful. — –Jim Moawad <mailto:moa…@uiuc.edu>——————————— _/_/_/ "Life moves pretty fast… If you don’t stop and _// _// _/ look around once in a while, you could miss it." _/_/ _/_/ _/_/_/ -Ferris Bueller _/ _/ _/ ——————————–http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~moawad–
Response:
Christine, >- left to my own devices, I’m on about a 27-28 hour clock – which means I
sleep and wake later and later each day). Your comment above is exactly what I deal with. Eventually I cycle around to a couple days of normal sleep, PM to AM, (if I am lucky). For me the cycle can take several weeks to make it all the way around. I don’t do AM appointments — well not for anything I can recall in the last year or so. Geez, I am writing this at 5:00 am. I got up from seven hours of sleep (not enough) at 2:30 pm yesterday. I probably won’t be able to sleep until 9:00 or 10:00 am this morning. What a life! I like that you call "it" a quirk. I have been very troubled by this for years. I have often wondered if deep down I am just "built" to be lazy. I think that I will work on looking at it differently — more positively. Thanks for your "supportive ear", it is nice to know that I am not alone. dixie
Response:
No Solution yet, but we’re working on it. so far, I’ve been diagnosed with Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, Major Depression, Dysthymia (chronic, long-term depression),and Hypoglycemia. The sleep doc I’d been seeing also mentioned "snore arousals", and my EEG showed "arousals" as well. Next week I’m starting over with a board certified sleep doc (mostly due to the recommendations of the group, and partly due to my feeling that my primary doc is grasping at straws and basically clueless.) I’m still trying to track down a copy of my original sleep study, but… basically a long way of saying "yes, you are not alone, but no, I haven’t found a solution yet either"! I start sleeping at mom’s house again tonight, so that she can wake me up in time for work, as I’ve been oversleeping the last few weeks. good luck! eve – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -Jim Moawad wrote: > I don’t know if this is really a disorder or not, but I have extreme > difficulty waking up in the mornings. I currently use 3 different alarm > clocks set at various times over a one hour span to wake up in the > mornings. Even so, I still end up sleeping through classes that I really > would like to attend. I often simply stay up all night so that I can make > sure I go to class in the morning. If I have nothing to wake up for, I can > easily sleep 12 hours or more without even waking up. And then even when I > do wake up, I feel tired and can fall back asleep for another couple hours. > The strange thing is when I get only 6 hours of sleep a night, I feel very > refreshed all day long. I would love to sleep 6 hours every night, but I > simply can’t get myself to wake up. It’s like pure torture. > Does anyone know of a solution to this problem? Or have you at least heard > similar stories? Please reply by email. Thanks in advance > — > –Jim Moawad <mailto:moa…@uiuc.edu>——————————— > _/_/_/ "Life moves pretty fast… If you don’t stop and _// _// > _/ look around once in a while, you could miss it." _/_/ _/_/ > _/_/_/ -Ferris Bueller _/ _/ _/ > ——————————–http://www.students.uiuc.edu/~moawad–
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Response:
Hi, Jim, In article <34C68A8C.A5E68…@uiuc.edu>, Jim Moawad <moa…@uiuc.edu> writes: >I don’t know if this is really a disorder or not, but I have extreme >difficulty waking up in the mornings. I currently use 3 different alarm >clocks …. I often simply stay up all night so that I can make >sure I go to class in the morning. If I have nothing to wake up for, I can >easily sleep 12 hours or more… >The strange thing is when I get only 6 hours of sleep a night, I feel very >refreshed all day long. >Does anyone know of a solution to this problem? Or have you at least heard >similar stories?
Yes, and yes. It sounds as if you’re a college student, living on a chaotic sleep-wake schedule. Your body isn’t designed to do that, and some people’s bodies are more sensitive to this kind of chaos than others. My suggestion (not a sleep expert, but a medical writer who has written about sleep disorders for 10 years) would be to organize your life around a regular sleep-wake schedule, and stick to it for awhile, and see if that helps. I know it will be difficult, because of your desire to study late, go out with friends, etc. But it’s probably the only solution. What you need to do is set yourself a bedtime and a get-up time, giving yourself about 8 hours of sleep. Every morning, get up at the same time, and get outside as soon as possible and expose yourself to bright morning light (or at least sit near a fairly bright study lamp for half an hour or so.) Morning light is your body’s main synchronization signal. It will help set your biological clock every day and help keep your insides and your sleep-wake cycle on schedule. It would also help if you would eat meals at regular times — this also helps to send a message to your body about where it’s "at" in the 24-hour day. You probably will need to stick to this schedule for a couple of weeks to see if it’s working. If so, then try to stay with it indefinitely. Unless you have an actual sleep disorder, this should help. If it doesn’t, you might want to talk with a sleep specialist about other possibilities. Best wishes, Sally in Seattle (JSo…@aol.com) Coauthor, with Dr. Ralph Pascualy, of Snoring and Sleep Apnea: Personal and Family Guide to Diagnosis and Treatment, published in 1996 by Demos Vermande, NY. Available through bookstores, ISBN # 0-939957-82-5.
Response:
James and Chris <seebe…@teleport-nospam.com> wrote in article <34C89067.1…@teleport.com>… > Jim Moawad wrote: > > I don’t know if this is really a disorder or not, but I have extreme > > difficulty waking up in the mornings.
<big snip> When I was in high school I used to sleep so heavily that I would not hear my alarm clock which was set for 8:00am, even though the rest of the family did (it was like a fire alarm, sounding for 10 secs with 10 secs silence for up to 5 minutes) and most of the time I relied on another member of the family to waken me. Strangely enough I would welcome being woken by a cold wet face washer on my face. Later, at university, I had much the same problem, relying on other students to wake me, until I started using a clock radio, turning the volume up to unbearable. However, in final year, the problem changed from being soumd asleep in the morning to waking up feeling awful and dozing on for 2 or 3 hours more, not emergimg from my room until 11am and then falling asleep during lectures at 5pm. Many years down the line, I have since found that I suffer from complex sleep disorders and the best thing I ever did was to have a sleep study made at a sleep disorder clinic. Cheers DeLoCh{
