HELP...Difficulty Waking Up

[OsoPardo]

I have been using CPAP for 14 months. AI is less than 1. I usually go to sleep between 10:30 and 11:00 and get up around 6:30 to 7:00. The past couple months I have been waking up at 5:30 or so feeling great, but if I go back to sleep I wake up groggy and do not want to get out of the bed. Are there any reasons the extra sleep is making me feel this way?

[Janknitz]

Yes, there is an Ipod app that capitalizes on this. See http://www.mdlabs.se/sleepcycle/howitworks.html

When you wake at 5:30 you are waking from a very light stage of sleep and feel pretty good. If you go back to sleep, you are probably falling into a deeper sleep stage. Then your alarm goes off and you have to get up, but it's an abrupt wakening from a deeper stage of sleep. So you don't feel as good.

Happens to me all the time. I SHOULD just get out of bed the first time I wake, but I don't. Then I pay for it later.

You might be able to shift your bedtime a little later so that lighter stage of sleep happens closer to the time you are supposed to get up. But don't do it all at once or you'll really mess with your sleep cycles. Try moving it 5 minutes per night.

[OsoPardo]

Thanks for your reply! What you said makes perfect sense. I will give it a try.