tazmania wrote:
My question I hope to answer is why do I continue to wake up in the early morning, every morning? It seems it is still always around 3 or 4 am that I wake up (depending on when I start my sleep). I am still tired, not well rested when I wake up at that time. Does it have to do with my normal sleep clock, REM Sleep or something else? The data doesn't always point out large leaks at this time, some times but not the majority of the time.
Could be any of those things.
You also post:
tazmania wrote:Last night's sleep pattern.
In bed and hooked up by 10:10pm
Slept straight through to 3:30am
Turned over onto my side without removing my mask, slept until 4:40am
Alarm goes off around 4:55am so I took off the mask fell back to sleep ....
That 3:30 wake where you turned over could be post REM---it's about 5.5 hours after you first go to bed, and while REM cycles typically occur about every 90 minutes, there's some variance. Sometime you hit REM a bit earlier (80 minutes) after the beginning of the current sleep cycle. Sometimes it's more like 100 minutes. And the REM cycles lengthen as the night progresses. So it could be that you're at the end of a REM cycle by around 3:30AM most nights and the wake is a normal post REM wake.
Or it could be that you are waking up because you need to turn over (to prevent stiffness) and you are still learning how to turn over without fully waking up. After all, turning over with six foot hose attached to your nose is a skill that you have to learn. And it takes some people some time to really master this.
Or it could be part of your normal sleep pattern if a 3:30ish wake predates starting CPAP. Waking up
briefly a few times in the middle of the night is actually pretty normal---it's as though we have a need to wake up enough to know that everything is "ok". But in a person without sleep problems, these middle of the night wakes are usually so brief (less than 5 minutes) that we don't remember them when we wake up in the morning. And a very small number of wakes that you don't remember can and should be ignored.
As for the 4:40 wake: Many people start waking up 10-15 minutes before the alarm goes off. We do get onto a sleep schedule and if the body knows the alarm is going off at 4:55, it may indeed want to wake up 10-15 minutes before hand simply to be sure that the alarm does not wind up startling you awake from deep sleep stage or from REM sleep.
You also write:
I ask because I am still not feeling as good as I know I can. Today I have a hint of a headache and some fog like I do nearly every day.
But you have also written:
Alarm goes off around 4:55am so I took off the mask fell back to sleep ....
AND PROMPTLY HIT SNOOZE A FEW TIMES BEFORE WAKING UP FOR THE DAY! Jumped out of bed at 5:18am.
If you actually fell back to sleep for the twenty minutes between 4:55 and 5:18, that might explain the headache and brain fog. The thing is that some of us are super-sensitive in terms of daytime symptoms: Any sleep at all without the mask can allow a whole series of events to occur and that can leave you feeling pretty lousy even though most of the night's sleep was good.
Question: Was the hint of a headache there when you first woke up at 4:55? Or did it only start after you woke up for good at 5:18?
Maybe it is moot if I'm able to get back to sleep using the machine. Please let me know if it is important to try to determine a cause.
I think it's a moot point. Rather than trying to identify a cause for the wake, you need to focus more on your
reaction to finding yourself awake in the middle of the night.
If you are doing things that make it take longer to get back to sleep after waking in the middle of the night, what you need to work on is teaching yourself to not over react to the wake.
When you wake up in the middle of the dark, what's the first thing you do? Look at the clock?
After looking at the clock, do you start
thinking about how much sleep you've gotten during the night and how close it is to the time the alarm goes off? Do you start
worrying about the fact that you are awake? On bad nights, do you then have a lot of trouble getting back to sleep because you are so worried that you're going to be exhausted the next morning when you do have to get up? All of these things tend to prolong the wake, usually to the point where we can remember it in the morning and then worry about how it's messed up an otherwise decent night's sleep.
So if any of that is applicable to your situation, then what you really need to do is teach yourself to not worry about the wake. Don't look at the clock when you first wake up and don't try to figure out how much sleep you've gotten or how close it is to wake up time. Instead work on comfort issues:
- Is there a leak? If so, fix it, snuggle back down and allow yourself to go back to sleep.
- Do you just need to turn over? If so, turn over and get comfortable and snuggle back down and allow yourself to go back to sleep.
- Too hot or too cold? Adjust the covers and snuggle back down and allow yourself to go back to sleep.
- Dry mouth? Try to work it out and snuggle back down and allow yourself to go back to sleep. (Note: you say the cervical collar seems to have fixed most of this issue. You still might want a water bottle on the bedside table in case you need a drink to help the mouth since you say you don't like getting up because that makes it harder to get back to sleep.)
- No identifiable comfort issue to trigger the wake? Assume it's a normal post-REM wake and snuggle back down and allow yourself to go back to sleep.
As you can see, there's a theme here: Deal with any physical thing that might have triggered the wake and then don't obsess about it---just snuggle back down and allow yourself to get back to sleep.