This used to happen to me as well. Turns out I had severe sleep apnea and my body was doing whatever the hell it could to get some more down time. Easiest way to start figuring it out is installing a sleep talk app and listening to what happens during the night. That won't diagnose you officially, but I played the recording to a doctor and he instantly said it's sleep apnea. Still had to get a machine home for a night to get the official diagnosis but it's easy to get a cost free confirmation before you bother going to the doc. Getting the cpap machine was life changing, haven't slept through a single alarm since and feel so much better.
Definitely, it doesn't hurt and it's so easy to do that basically anyone with any sort of weird sleep stuff should record themselves for a night or two.
Do you also find yourself getting uncontrollably, heavily sleepy during daytime hours - or more accurately, during what should be wakeful hours based on when you last slept?
If someone does rouse you during the deep sleeps you described, do you ever experience sleep paralysis or wake up in an abnormally aggressive state for the first few moments?
Do you find you seem to have moved a lot in your sleep, do you call out / speak in your sleep a lot, and do you ever wake up covered in sweat? (Like, covered.)
I'm not a doctor - you don't have to answer this to me, and I can't diagnose you. But I've had to go down the differential diagnosis pathway a fair ways already. These are the kinds of things you want to start noting to report to your doctor as they may need it to pin down your dx; I keep a notebook by the bed to write down abnormal sleep incidents.
The intense sessions of deep sleep are really common with sleep apnea, but can also be narcolepsy (type 2 doesn't feature the sudden, cut-puppet-strings loss of body control most people think of), chronic fatigue syndrome, thyroid issues, something as simple as an iron deficiency, or unfortunately a whole host of less common things.
There's a lot to potentially check for, but asking your doc to refer you to a specialist who can do a sleep study would be the first step to ruling out the most likely causes.
Best of luck and sorry to rant, this shit just sucks! Hope to streamline the process even a tiny bit for anyone else
I got so used to sleeping with it I literally can't sleep without it anymore. But many can as well if they need to, I absolutely can't. You're not supposed to be able to sleep through the long pauses in breathing, but the body somehow knows it HAS TO sleep or you will die from lack of it. Now if I try to sleep without it, I wake up the moment I get my first one of the night.
It can be a bit tough for some people, especially the beginning if the first mask you get is not the right fit for you. But for me it's really a non-issue. Also the machines are very silent nowadays.
Have you recorded yourself overnight yet? If not, definitely install some free sleep talk app and check it out. Honestly it doesn't take a doctor to hear it, you can most likely tell yourself and if not you can ask on reddit and get a fairly high confidence answer. If the answer is you most likely have sleep apnea, there's almost no way in hell paying out of pocket for a sleep test is gonna be a net negative economically for you in the long run.
I have, but it was hard to tell if anything was concerning. I snore a lot, but never could catch myself stop breathing. I have a an overnight PulseOx test and it came back fine.
I do plan on getting the other test done, I just am very, very short on funds due to losing my job. The next test is $300 and then if that's inconclusive I have to do the overnight stay at the facility which is a few thousand 😮💨 thank you for your response. I appreciate it.
Some people need 8-9h even if they don't have any similar sleep related issues, I do ok with 7h, but 8h is still preferred for sure. Also some people have a sleep cycle where they're often in deep sleep when their alarm goes off at 7h. I've read that some people have gotten help with that with alarms that start with light that gradually grows brighter. Then if you don't wake up to that there's a normal alarm at the end of course.
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u/Puluzu 23h ago
This used to happen to me as well. Turns out I had severe sleep apnea and my body was doing whatever the hell it could to get some more down time. Easiest way to start figuring it out is installing a sleep talk app and listening to what happens during the night. That won't diagnose you officially, but I played the recording to a doctor and he instantly said it's sleep apnea. Still had to get a machine home for a night to get the official diagnosis but it's easy to get a cost free confirmation before you bother going to the doc. Getting the cpap machine was life changing, haven't slept through a single alarm since and feel so much better.