Stages of Sleep Help

Been reading thru some great posts on here, and after my appointment yesterday to schedule the next stage for me, we discussed trying to remember if I dream or not, as its actually a good thing to dream. During both night of my split study i never entered REM as well, or even got near Deep Sleep and I don't remember dreaming. Before CPAP and Before i was cut back on the Opiates, I could recall uncontrollable, very scary beyond nightmares where id wake up soaked to the bone, usually requiring clothing change, and sometimes changing sheets. After the cutback dreams seemed to taper, that I can recall, and get a bit nicer. Then CPAP started and I cant remember Dreaming at all, till a week ago when I tried using some Bi Neural Sleep music. I can only stand it for about a half hour but I have been dreaming again, but they are usually off the wall totally bizarre and again I have no control.

Anyway, Where is a good resource to how the stages of sleep work, and what happens in each stage. I understand not entering Deep Sleep is 90% of my fatigue and illness issues as that's where healing and restoration happens. The condition I ail from Neurofibromatosis 1, I have an innumerable amount of tumors in my body mainly on core nerves, so restorative is really needed to help keep me going. Im trying to learn this the best I can so maybe I can start figuring it out as well. I just hope the ASV Study helps now that I know what to expect during the test, or at leas figure out why CPAP has actually created more issues, less sleep, other then like PaleRider my pressure is too low, yet she wants to keep it at 6cm till after the test.

Just tired of being tired, and having no energy to do much. Thanks for such a wonderful informative group, I have already learned so much..

RestlessinWoolley wrote:Been reading thru some great posts on here, and after my appointment yesterday to schedule the next stage for me, we discussed trying to remember if I dream or not, as its actually a good thing to dream. During both night of my split study i never entered REM as well, or even got near Deep Sleep and I don't remember dreaming. Before CPAP and Before i was cut back on the Opiates, I could recall uncontrollable, very scary beyond nightmares where id wake up soaked to the bone, usually requiring clothing change, and sometimes changing sheets. After the cutback dreams seemed to taper, that I can recall, and get a bit nicer. Then CPAP started and I cant remember Dreaming at all, till a week ago when I tried using some Bi Neural Sleep music. I can only stand it for about a half hour but I have been dreaming again, but they are usually off the wall totally bizarre and again I have no control.

Anyway, Where is a good resource to how the stages of sleep work, and what happens in each stage. I understand not entering Deep Sleep is 90% of my fatigue and illness issues as that's where healing and restoration happens. The condition I ail from Neurofibromatosis 1, I have an innumerable amount of tumors in my body mainly on core nerves, so restorative is really needed to help keep me going. Im trying to learn this the best I can so maybe I can start figuring it out as well. I just hope the ASV Study helps now that I know what to expect during the test, or at leas figure out why CPAP has actually created more issues, less sleep, other then like PaleRider my pressure is too low, yet she wants to keep it at 6cm till after the test.

Just tired of being tired, and having no energy to do much. Thanks for such a wonderful informative group, I have already learned so much..

Try these on for size.

https://www.google.com/search?q=sleep+s ... 8&oe=utf-8

viewtopic.php?t=3524


Den

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two things, you can dream in any stage of sleep, though it's thought to be more common in REM.

second, if you don't wake up during or just after the dream, you won't remember it, ... because the brain cannot form memories during sleep.

I have done a lot of reading about sleep but I can't remember any one specific source that was particularly useful.
Mainly I would just start on the web with something and just keep opening hits to searches and then follow links, etc.
If I happen to think of anything particular useful pertaining to sleep stages I will let you know.

You might start with the Wiki...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep#Stages

Thanks. We got off on a tangent at my appt about what each stage of sleep is responsible for and how long each stage should be, but we ran short on time. I just wish I was like my old man, he goes in, crawls into his bed, shuts off the lamp and within minutes he's out like a light and within a few minutes he's snoring. I mentioned that and she said some.people can get thru the stages faster than others as well. I can't even get comfortable in that amount of time. Lol.

Thanks for that link that is what I wasn't understanding. I'd hear cycles and didn't realize we go thru the entire cycle many times a night. So basically on my test nights I never entered REM at all my breathing seemed to act up apparently right before that and that's where my centrals were happening. And I'd wake up and it take me an hour or so to reset and start over and get back to sleep. I'm gonna keep trying the bineural music as it seems to help even in the short time but I'm now waking up now after one cycle and unable to get back asleep.

Yeah...we actually should have several cycles through all the sleep stages in a normal amount of time spent in each stage...so a normal progression of stages/cycles...for the restorative powers of sleep to work their magic.
When the sleep cycles get interrupted for whatever reason then the progression either gets stopped and we have to start over or we don't get the normally needed amount of time in each stage.

When a person has trouble either falling asleep (that's sleep onset insomnia) or trouble staying asleep (that's sleep maintenance insomnia) then we don't get the normal progression of the sleep stage cycling nor do we get the amount in each stage that we need. Everything gets all messed up and we end up feeling like crap the next day.
Now why you can't fall asleep or why you wake up and can't go back to sleep....that's the million dollar question.
For some people it's the sleep apnea that is causing the wake ups and once cpap fixes the sleep apnea and they start sleeping soundly they feel better.

Unfortunately there's a lot of stuff out there that can cause insomnia of some form and the cpap can't fix stuff unrelated to sleep apnea no matter how much we want to blame all our sleep problems on sleep apnea.
But when we have sleep apnea...at least we have a potential cause for the bad sleep and a chance of making it better.

My OSA is much worse in REM stage sleep. This is actually quite common. Prior to cpap I simply wasn't getting much REM because every time I would slip into REM stage sleep the OSA events would happen fast and furious and it would wake me or cause an arousal which of course stops REM and then I would have to start all over with the sleep cycles.
I never got much REM at all. I was waking or at least having a big arousal many, many times during the night. No wonder I felt like crap.

CPAP therapy fixed the REM sleep apnea issues but I still have some other issues with sleep maintenance insomnia due to pain and the meds I take. So my sleep quality still isn't perfect but it is much improved over what it was pre cpap therapy.

We know you take some pain meds...so we know you are going to likely have some issues with pain messing with your sleep. Part of your insomnia issues could be related to the pain...and part of it could be related to medications and part of it could just be plain old insomnia that we can't put a finger on the cause.
That's why insomnia fixing is a multi billion dollar industry....lots of things can cause insomnia.

When you are reading you might google both sleep onset insomnia and sleep maintenance insomnia...there's a huge list of potential culprits for both and sleep apnea is only one of the many culprits.