Hello everyone, my name is Jessica. I just registered today, and it is nice to know that im not alone. I dont know about any of you, but I am always talking about my "disorder" to others, and all I ever hear is "i cant sleep ever either" and it gets really old. I am at the other end of the spectrum. I fall asleep fast, I stay asleep for many many hours (usually about 8), and I CANNOT get out of bed in the morning. I wake (by alarm) un-refreshed, and miserable. It is almost painful, and gut wrenching to get out of bed! Through out the day, I go through spurts. I will feel awake once in a while, but for the most part I am usually like a zombie, with sand bags under my eyes! I notice my head will feel very strange, like un-real a lot. I am suffering memory loss, bad depression and anxiety, which they tell me my depression and anxiety is causing me to have severe sleep fragmentation. The primary diagnosis so far is Insomnia. I had a sleep study done, which showed I only got 4 mins. of "delta sleep" the stage you need the most! Normal people should get near an hour of that stage alone! It seems almost like nobody takes this seriously. I was told to do breathing exercises...I think I need a little more then that! I start to get panic attacks when I think about how bad this never ending situation actually is. You are aware that severe sleep deprevation puts your heart through HELL right? It shortens your life tremendously. It deprives your brain of oxygen. I basically always freak that my body is slowly killing itself, and driving me crazier each day. I swear I could go to sleep, and if I had no reason to wake up, I could sleep forever and ever. I cant remember the last time I was not tired, maybe when I was like 10? If anyone has a sleep problem similar to this, any info. would be GREATLY appreciated. Well thanks for reading this, if you didnt fall asleep after the first sentence (no pun intended!!!)

Jessica:

There is another discussion in the General Discussion forum that you may find helpful; it's called "Can't wake up in the morning," and you can access it here:

http://www.sleepeducation.com/Forums/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=1&MessageID=244

Sleepeducation.com Moderator

I just stumbled on this site, and in reading your post, I found some of the same symptoms as what I suffer. Mind you, my symptoms are not exactly the same as yours, but I'll tell you my experience in hopes that it will help you.

First off, I also always seemed to not ever completely get enough sleep and I was always exhausted. That wasn't what doctors noticed when I tried to seek help, though. The fact that I was depressed lead to a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, which I was classified as being atypical because I presented a tendency to oversleep rather than have traditional insomnia. By traditional insomnia, I mean those stories you tend to hear about people lying awake all night long without a wink of sleep, or waking after an hour and not being able to go back to sleep. It seems to me that there is a prevailing school of thought among some doctors, and some people, that if you haven't lost a limb in front of them, you aren't "really" sick, and that depression and anxiety are always a stand-alone diagnosis. After being treated with many different antidepressants, I finally found that I was in a better mood while taking prozac. I also had a thyroid test done, and was found to have a slight deficiency in thyroid hormone. The prozac, unfortunately, had two unexpected side effects - I was experiencing strong panic attacks, which were then treated with xanax, a benodiazapine like valium, and awful vertigo, that took me years to figure out the cause. The vertigo and my anxiety about driving with it became so bad that I got my psychiatrist to write me a doctor's note to take some time off from work. Work immediately let me go, but in California, where I lived at the time, I was able to get state disability for a time. The date I took off from work was December 2004. In March 2005 I developed fibromyalgia, which is widespread unexplained muscle and joint pain, that doesn't result in permanent damage to the suffer's body. It was terrible to develop a pain disorder, but it pretty much cured my depression. I went through a string of lousy doctors until we moved to Texas. I went to a pain doctor that took everything I told him seriously, and immediately sent me to a sleep clinic.

Here is where I can relate to your tale. I had a sleep study done, and when I got the results back, most of them were unremarkable. On my copy, all I saw was I had too little rem sleep. My doctor's copy showed an unexpected culprit - transient brain arousals. Basically, my brain was being stimulated without explanation and without totally waking me up about 38 times an hour. That is roughly every minute to a minute and a half. Since I was taking lyrica, (pregablin) which helps a person get more stage 3 and 4 sleep, which is thought to help relieve the pain in fibromyalgia, I don't know how the results were changed, if at all. My doctor was surprised at my result, and explained that it was obvious that while sleeping, I wasn't sleeping, and that would be why after sleeping 8 hours I still felt unrested. He also diagnosed me with organic insomnia, so although I may or may not have difficulty falling asleep, insomnia still covers people that aren't getting restful sleep.

It sounds as if you are very upset about your situation, and that is understandable. A person's mood doesn't bounce back as fast when a person is really tired. I know for myself, I felt really isolated because I slept so much and couldn't wake up without incredible effort. In our society, people are generally expected to be able to survive spending their 20's getting only 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night. I could hardly survive on a full 8. Some treatments take a while to be effective, and some doctors you may not get along with. Permanent harm to your body will take longer than you think from a sleeping problem, and since you are trying to get treatment it is even less likely. Stress, however, has also been shown to cause problems. If you don't like how your doctor is treating your condition, let him know. You have a right to have your questions answered.

After everything I have been through, I decided that I would not be part of what makes me ill, and that is something I recommend to you. Be nice to yourself. There are more than enough people out there that won't be.

I have written a whole lot here, but I hope some of this helps. I have a tendency to be long winded...

Hi.  I just get part of this Web.  I live in Costa Rica and we do not have Sleep Disorder Centers, so I have never had a test, but I´m sure I have just few minutes of real rest during the night, since I spend whole night dreaming and when I said dream it really means, I can remember around 5 different stories every night, and I remeber lots of details of thouse stories and I feel like really living in the story.  Even when I fall sleep for 5 minuts I start to dream.

once I slept every day for 20 hours each day.  I could not stop dreaming and when I got back to work, I was still tiered.  

Also, once a pshyc send some sleep pill very strong I try even with 3 pills together every night and even when I slept whole night, I could not stop dreaming.

I´ve been tried with lots of drugs for depression, fibromialgia, bipolar sindrom an so on, but non of them have been able to help have a good rest.   Also I´ve had lost of test and they show I don´T have phiscial illness.

I´m 40 year old and I really feel I can go with feeling of tired any more.

Do you find finally any answer?.  Sorry for my english.

Interesting that you dream so much. I too spend much of my time dreaming, as if my brain won't turn off. The only time I didn't dream that much was while taking the sleeping medication called Xyrem.

Please be careful when taking medications: taking more than the recommended dosage without your doctor's supervision can be very dangerous. Some medications can take a long time to affect the body when it has been sleep starved for a long time, so you may not see results as fast as you would like. Try to keep a written record of your medications and all the things you notice while on them.

I hope you find some answers!

Hi, Jessica,

I am new here, too, but not new to sleep disorders. What you are describing is that you are obviously not getting to your right stages of sleep. You could sleep for 24 hrs a day, and if not getting restorative sleep you are always going to feel like you are tired, like your head is not attached, etc. However, not sleeping is hard on your body and mind, but stressing out over it as much as you are, is not helping.

Stress is something the docs like to fall back on, even though usually the sleep problem started first, and THEN the depression comes. If your doctors are not listening to you, make them listen. They work for you, and if they are going to use depression as a catch all diagnosis for you, then they are NOT doing their job.  My GP takes care if everything for me, med wise, but I do see a sleep specialist, pain doc and others.You said your primary diagnosis is Insomnia. There has to be a reason for it; an underlying cause. That is why keeping a sleep journal, practicing good sleep hygiene, and a good bed time routine is so important. Your body is not suffering from lack of oxygen, unless you have sleep apnea for a diagnosis. Then, you are into a whole other problem.

Even though you are sleeping, you are not getting any if the benefits. Brain arousals or anything else that shows up are going to make you exhausted in the morning. I have to literally drag myself out if bed in the a.m., but I do know why my sleep sucks. Sleep study showed apnea, PLMD (leg movements in sleep) and I have RLS when awake. Now, fixing it, is another story!