Have your sleep taken away..

[Crashing Doors]

Okay for those who possibly don't like Angel, or haven't seen it, or haven't seen that episode--the title is referencing "Life of the Party" from S5.

To the point: I have sinus?allergy?breathing? problems that really whacky-up my sleep. My ENT doctor said it's very likely that I have sleep apnea; long story short--I try to have the "normal 8 hours" and end up hitting my snooze button 10 times in the morning (hardly exaggerating) because I feel so groggy. Then all day I feel pretty crappy, unless I drink at least 5 cups of coffee, etc.

This has been going on for almost 2 years. (Yes, I have been to the doctor.) Now, Wednesday morning I woke up at around 7am for work. I stayed up until around 3 or 4am that night (technically, Thursday morning). My ferret was sick and I was keeping a close eye on him, plus I was catching up on reading for school. I thought that I'd end up sleeping until way into the afternoon Thanksgiving day.

I woke up at 7am-ish, which means around 4 hours of sleep. Turns out, I forgot to NOT set my alarm. Funny thing is, I just got up as soon as the alarm woke me. No snooze. Checked on my ferret, went to take a shower, had breakfast, checked on Duke again, did homework, and so on. Did that again Friday, felt fine Saturday.

I didn't feel 100% great, but getting such little sleep didn't seem much different than getting a terribly non-productive "8 hours". Those 4-hour-seep days, I felt a little better than average.

Does that seem strange? I didn't mean to go on so long, but anyway I was wondering if any of you have that kind of experience with sleep? I'm debating whether I should continue with this.... I'm worried that I might try getting 4 hours, then see how I do at school; but I don't want to completely fudge up my school day.

 

[Lyri]

I never, ever have the full eight hours sleep we're all supposed to have. I'll be lucky if I can get six, but I can get by on five, and have even managed on three hours more than once.

If I do end up sleeping more than my six hours, if I'm sick or being just plain lazy, I'll wake up feeling tired, groggy and not at all myself.

Sometimes our bodies just work differently. What works for me might not work for someone else, but we can't all rely on what doctors tell us, because everyone's body is different. My doctor friend told me that, lol.

 

[frankie]

I suffer badly with insomnia. The only way I can possibly get 8 hours is by taking sleeping tablets - which I refuse to do, not sure why, I just would hate to be reliant on them.
I normally get by with three/four hours sleep, and sometimes on rare occasions no sleep. When I rarely do manage 8 hours, I wake up miserable, no energy, mood swings, well, to be quite honest I'm an anti-christ 😀 So i'll stick with my four hours.
I think everyone is different. I spent years trying to achieve those 8 hours, but it just doesn't work for me.

 

[Mozzymandias]

With my sleep I have no middle ground. I either sleep for 4-5 hours or I sleep for 9+ hours. I usually feel a lot more tired when I sleep for longer periods and tend to nap in the evening. I've also found that between those hours I've stated I cannot be woken, not even by alarms. Which is partly the reason I stay up really late when I have work early on in the morning so I won't get up late.

On to your point though, if the 4 hours is making you feel better throughout the day carry it on and see how it feels over a prolonged usage of keeping to that sleeping pattern and see if you still feel the same 🙂

 

[Willow-Tree]

I don't think I've gotten the full eight hours of sleep each night since fifth or sixth grade, to be honest.

My body works fine on five-six hours of sleep, and I end up feeling miserable if I sleep too much.

 

[Lyri]

Which is partly the reason I stay up really late when I have work early on in the morning so I won't get up late.

I do exactly the same thing. The early I have to be up, the later I'll go to bed. It's 3am here, at the minute, and I have to be up at 8. That's five hours, perfectly fine for me.

 

[Tasha]

LOL don't get me started on sleep!
haha!

Normally i get about on average 4/5 hours sleep each night, 6 at the weekends if I'm extra lucky but i doubt it 😛
On school nights i end up going to bed at 4ish, then up for 8am, and i barely feel tired, when i have an early night and go to bed at 1,
i seem extra tired when i wake up that morning, it's so strange!


I really do keep bad hours, it's crazy. Sometimes i wouldn't get to sleep until 5/6am then up for 8 for school.

It's been like that since i was a kid too, i do have sleeping problems.


HAHA, Lyri it's 3.10 here too , and i need to be up for school at 8am too 😛 HA, what we like?

I hate sleeping in late! i feel icky.

 

[Megalita]

I'm not a doctor, but I think if you're comforting with just getting that minimal amount of sleep, why worry? As long as you can get through school (or work) without wanting to die and go back to sleep, I say go for it. 😀 I'm insanely jealous that you are able to feel rested after four hours. I need like ten.

 

[white avenger]

To the point: I have sinus?allergy?breathing? problems that really whacky-up my sleep. My ENT doctor said it's very likely that I have sleep apnea; long story short--I try to have the "normal 8 hours" and end up hitting my snooze button 10 times in the morning (hardly exaggerating) because I feel so groggy. Then all day I feel pretty crappy, unless I drink at least 5 cups of coffee, etc.

I've had the same thing for several years. I wear a breathing mask when I do manage to sleep, which is rarely more than 3 or 4 hours a night. (It's 1am as I write this, and I'll probably be awake for at least another hour, possibly 2 or 3, and I'm usually up by 7:30 or 8 at the latest.) In addition to the mask, my doctor has prescribed Provigil for me to take during the day to avoid the drowsiness. You might ask your doctor about something like that. It beats the caffeine overload from all of that coffee, and there are little, if any long term affects from using it.

Anyhow, good luck with your sleep problems, and just one final bit of advise. Snooze buttons on alarm clocks are the worst possible way to get up in the mornings. When the alarm goes off, get up immediately and start getting ready to face the new day. Putting it off in 10 minute increments only makes coming fully awake that much harder.

 

[Tueuse de Vampires]

4 hours an feel rather refreshing, surprisingly enough more refreshing than 6 hours, but I think that's conneted to sleep cycles...at least that's what friends told me.

But on the long run, I'm one of those people that just need their sleep. There's enough days when I sleep the full 8 hours per night (possibly more), and take afternoon naps for 1 or 2 hours. I doubt that muh sleep is healthy either.

 

[Crashing Doors]

I spent years trying to achieve those 8 hours, but it just doesn't work for me.

I've tried that for a while now too, and it just kind of dawned on me to throw that out the window. You always hear that "8 hours" but agh. It's 1:17 now, I have to get up to get ready at around 6. We'll see... I'm looking forward to this new sleeping pattern though; that's 3 to 4 more hours to get things done.

Snooze buttons on alarm clocks are the worst possible way to get up in the mornings. When the alarm goes off, get up immediately and start getting ready to face the new day. Putting it off in 10 minute increments only makes coming fully awake that much harder.

Those stupid things. I always tell myself not to hit it, and I end up doing it anyway. But the other day when I had my 4 hours, I didn't hit it at all. Shot out of bed, took a shower.

I remember, especially in high school (I used to sleep great 8 hours in Jr. HS and HS) I would try so hard to get by on 4 or 5 hours but couldn't. Now I try to get 8 hours and it just doesn't work. Funny how things work. Well, that is assuming that I can get along with less sleep--it could have been a fluke, but I'll just have to wait and see.

 

[Professor Walsh]

Looking at the husband and myself, I think that there are differences both in how much sleep a person biologically needs and how much sleep a person can happily get by on. I'm really lousy at getting myself to bed, and in retrospect I can see that I've been constantly somewhat sleep deprived for the better part of the last fifteen years. I'm always a little tired, but I get by nicely and rarely seem tired to others. But then, I don't demand all that much from my body. I'm the kind of person who loves to read, write or sew in what little free time I have. My hubby, on the other hand, likes to run, cycle and ski, and at quite demanding paces. It's very clear that lack of sleep affects his performance a lot, and thereby also his general feeling of well-being.

 

[Flannen]

I used to think I needed lots of sleep, I don't function very well when I'm too tired and I'm also quite close to being evil too. 😛

But I've discovered recently that I think I get by better on 7ish hours than 8 or anything longer. I can get up easier and get through uni better, it's just the evening when I feel tired.

I don't think I could get by on anything less than six hours sleep if I have to be up and out doing something that requires concentration.

 

[Nix]

I need as much sleep as I can possibly get and i've always been like that. 10 hours and Nix is a happy bunny! Now I take my Bipolar meds at night to help me to sleep. However, I have a daughter of nearly 3 who does not like 10 hours of sleep. She normally wakes me up during the night alot. I got to bed between 11 - 1am normally around 11pm, she wakes at around 3am 4am 5am 6am then again at 8am. Every night 🙁 I have tried so many different things to get her to sleep but if i'm lucky 1 night out of 14 she will sleep all the way through then I just love it lol.

 

[Angels baby101]

Before I had the baby I used to get 9 hours or 10 sometimes 11 hours on my days off from work It was bliss...Even when I was pregnant I got about 9 hours even with a foot in my ribs all night. Unfortunately my little one doesn't sleep for 10 hours. I'm lucky to get a really good 5 hours sleep at night.. Because he still sleeps with me and keeps me from really getting much sleep anyways Like eveyone said it just depends on the person everyone is different. Also sometimes you end up trainning yourself at what you can get by on with whatever is going on in your life like a job, or a kid.

 

[TheCheese]

If you have sleep apnea, then as long as you lie down for 3 hrs (at least 1 rem cycle) you aren't going to do much better. Your body balances the necessity of sleep with the percieved risk of suffocation, so you get most of your sleep when you need it the worst (first 4 hours or so) and then your body continually wakes you up for the rest of the night because it has a minimum of sleep and will not risk percieved suffocation.

The idea that "normal" people get 8 hours is a fallacy.

ScienceDaily (July 3, 2006) — A study of the sleep characteristics of 669 middle-aged adults found that people sleep much less than they should, and even less than they think. Published in the July issue in the American Journal of Epidemiology, the study also found that blacks sleep less than whites, men sleep less than women, and the poor sleep less than the wealthy.

Although participants spent an average of 7.5 hour a night in bed, they spent only 6.1 hours asleep. White women slept the most, 6.7 hours a night, followed by white men at 6.1 hours, black women at 5.9 hours and black men at 5.1 hours. Higher income also was associated with more sleep.

 

[Crashing Doors]

So if I do in fact have sleep apnea, ~3 hours is about it huh? I ended up getting around 4 or 5 hours last night. Was up until 2, probably fell asleep around 2:30, woke up somewhere between 6 and 7 (I can't remember exactly). Typically after 'sleeping' 8 hours, I have a crash the next day at around 2. Today, I didn't really have that. I was still kind of tired throughout the day, but overall I functioned at least as good as a normal day, if not better.

I have such a hard time comprehending all this biological stuff anyway. I bet most people do though? It's crazy how the body works.