As someone with narcolepsy, this very much sounds like narcolepsy. I also have a cpap so I use an alarm for my naps and keep them to 45 minutes.
I think this is mild narcolepsy lol
I’ve been doing this for ages. I finally just started setting an alarm on my smartwatch and ran through a bunch of time trials to see what works.
I can nap somewhere comfy as long as I follow these rules:
If I just can’t keep my eyes open or I have a food coma, 15m
If I know I’m sleep deprived, and all I have is lunchtime 45m
If I have a little more time to spare and i’m just dragging, 90m
I’ve tried 5m increments on either side of those numbers and found I could just wake up at 15,45 and 90 with no problem. At 30m or 60m, I appear to cancel the alarm but fall back asleep.
But I need to pass out right away. If it’s going to take me 10m to get to sleep, I need to adjust for that.
My Biology teacher told us multiple times that you should sleep in time divisble by 90 minutes and nothing else. Need a nap, don’t bother if you don’t have 90 minutes. Going to sleep regularly, and have to get up at 7? Well if you go to bed at 10 you should set your alarm for 7. Go to bed at 1030, set your alarm for 530.
I can’t remember if it was related to some biological thing she tried to teach us or was just an old wives tale she stood by, but I have followed it ever since. I always feel groggy if I awake at one of the off hours.
interesting pattern observation. iirc, they roughly align with early sleep phase durations. Which would explain the difficulty waking up when you’re off the usual times, as you’re deeper asleep
Can’t let the sleep win
What the fuck is going on with his leg?
Hopefully just an ugly sock.
You’re winning at life when you really stopped giving a fuck and just do whatever ^^
I wish I could partake in nap culture, but I always wake up feeling like I’ve been ripped from the goddamn afterlife. Always worse than before. My wife and I just spent two grueling sleepless nights in the postpartum ward, and after returning home today she encouraged me to have a 1-hour nap. I obliged and woke up so fucking brain-sick out of sorts that I could barely interact with my surroundings for the first 30 minutes.
Could be a problem if you’re regularly taking stimulants in medication or drinks unfortunately.
After 20 minutes. It’s better to go all the way to 90 minutes.
Because you’ll have started to enter deep sleep after 20. You probably woke up in the middle of a deep sleep cycle and that’s why you felt dead.
One hour seems too long for a nap. Have you tried shorter ones, e. g. 20 minutes? AFAIK napping for only a few minutes doesn’t affect you much, too long of a nap causes issues you described.
Gotta learn your sleep cycles and stick to them. I think most people go through a full sleep cycle (rem and deep sleep oversimplified) in 90 minutes. If you stick to that you won’t get that coming out of a coma feeling.
I’ve done this many times. My bf hates seeing me sleeping on the dirty floor, but if I get in bed, I’ll be too comfortable and sleep for much longer than I want.
Narcolepsy?
I wish i could just turn off on command.
I seriously don’t get it. My wife can do it every night. She just lays down and goes to sleep. Like what? I need at least three hours of wrestling my worst thoughts before I can sleep
my wife gets mad i can turn off, so sometimes she punches me to wake me up just so i suffer along with her
I call mine “Magikarp” when she flops around in her sleep and hits me. She, uh, is not amused with the nickname, lol.
Every damn night … Toss turn toss turn toss turn… Finally sleep, a gnat on the other side of town farts and I’m up… Go to the bathroom, rinse repeat… 1 1/2 hr before I have to be up and fucking gigantic loud as hell disel trucks start their parade…
I just want to sleeeeepppp
I’m very similar. Earplugs have been a game changer for me. Might be worth a whirl for you.
I am basically your wife. When I lie down to sleep, I am unconscious within five minutes. Typically. My issue comes from staying asleep. I will wake up anywhere from 3 to 15 times a night and I fucking hate it.
You need a baby and a toddler! You’ll wake up the same number of times but at least you’ll have company and something to do.
I will wake up anywhere from 3 to 15 times a night and I fucking hate it.
Someone needs a sleep study.
That’s not unusual, depending on a few factors. What really matters is how disruptive it is. I do the same, but as long as it’s just a rollover, I can be back to dream land in a minute or two. … unless it was shitty dreams, then I might be missing the rest of my sleep…
I learned a while ago that constant thoughts of death and despair before sleep may indicate an anxiety disorder. However, since online diagnoses from strangers are almost always bullshit, I’d like to recommend a weighted blanket. I know it sounds stupid, but the weighted blanket fucks are right. You probably want one.
Can confirm. Bought weighted blanket, and it helps me sleep to the point where I have a hard time without it. So every night I’m sleeping away from home I need to carry a 20lb weighted blanket with me. Not great but the sleep is great so you gotta take the good with the bad I guess.
Maybe you should just hire a person to lie on you when you travel? Hotel concierge could probably find one.
My anti-depressants definitely help. I already sweat like a pig in 62 degrees, I would die of heat stroke under a weighted blanket, lol.
Smoke weed and listen to boring stories on headphones meant for sleeping. D&D podcasts are great for this.
I just do all that before I get into bed lol…
But no really, I’ve gotten a little better at being aware of my thoughts if they start spiraling, and terminating it before it gets too bad. Took a long time though.
I used to be like this, and suddenly changed virtually overnight after being on an SNRI for anxiety for like a year. It also results in me waking up before 9 am every day, when I used to be a get up at noon person. It’s weird as shit and I slightly suspect a helpful brain tumor.
I’ve been on various anti-anxiety and anti-depressants for years. They definitely helped but still not fully.
Yeah, SSRIs did jack shit for me when I tried them so it’s not a silver bullet. I’m not even sure it’s the SNRI, but I’m not sure what else it would be.
If racing/anxious thoughts isn’t the cause, you may have great success with the military sleep method: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/military-sleep-method
I was sure the version I’d read months ago, had you tense up the muscles before relaxing them section by section; but I could not immediately find any variabts which mentioned that part. I used to do the very lite version, counting my breaths. Worked pretty well, over the years - after getting my head sorted out first - I’ve built a habit of falling asleep in 5~15 mins. Used to often take an hour, occasionally 2~3.
Have you tried meditation? When I do it, I tend to get through most of that nonsense a lot faster. Just sit, focus on breathing, and if something pops into your head, recognize it and clear your mind. Eventually things should settle down and you can try sleeping.
Set an alarm for 10-15 min. Sitting on the floor is best, but aid that’s uncomfortable, a chair is fine for the first few sessions to see if it’ll work.
As an add-on to this, some people are inherently better at meditation to start with. So hearing from other people how short their journey was from “meditation is just a waste of time” to “after some practice it started to be more effective” can be really discouraging for people where that journey can be years. But everyone can get good at meditating. And generally, the harder or more useless it seems to start out, the more you need what it offers.
Yup, give it a few sessions before giving up on it.
I tried it for a month or two before without much luck. I think my wife and I are about to try what another commented suggested. Having a kid and letting them grind me down
I have kids, and I can confirm they do a good job.
I save my wrist thoughts for when I have 3-4 hours of sleep, then they get the rest of the night.
But what about your ankle thoughts?
Too hard to reach
Same, my issue was resolved after I started taking 1mg of melatonin 20min before bed. Now I can just lie down, close my eyes and thats it.
You lie yourself, and you lay other things. Your wife lies down and goes to sleep.
That’s an artificial distinction some grammarians decided to put into textbooks in the 1700s. Many many people use lie and lay interchangeably and the thing about language is how people use it is how it’s defined.
I know of a great way to do it. But you can only do it once.
I can do it too but I’m a psychopath and I can easily push the intrusive thoughts out and clear my head easily.
This Dad needs a CPAP so he can get a real 8 hours. Not needing naps during the day is life-changing.
I feel like one 20 min nap mid-day would do wonders for everyone.
Nah. I despise naps.
Relevant username?
It’s short for Tater Tot. Make of that what you will.
They’re so tempting but I’m an absolute tyrant if I take one. No idea why but I get infinity crankier after I nap.
I just feel like garbage after a nap. I am more groggy than before, more lethargic, less alert. The only time a nap feels good is when I’m legitimately sick.
I wouldn’t mind having a CPAP that doesn’t taste like burnt plastic anymore.
Take it apart and wash everything.
I literally just finished replacing the motor on my ResMed S9. It has 8 allen head screws in total, and they were all the same size. I used an allen wrench that came with my 3D printer, it’s not marked but measures 2 mm across. It took me less than 10 minutes to get it apart. This guy has a pretty nice breakdown.Everything except for the main board, SD card, and motor can be washed with dish soap in your sink.
I’ve taken apart a couple others and they were pretty simple too, so I willing to bet that you can find a tear down video on pretty much all of them out there.
Make sure to wash the water tank really well and wipe it’s inside down. Mini cpaps coat there water tanks with a bittering agent that stinks when you run out of water. So just be sure and never to let it run out of water, or turn off your water function.
Did that last week. Follow the teardown guide and cleaned it ALL with isopropal alcohol. Issue remains. I can’t not use the water thing unfortunately because I wake up with lips cracked to the point of bleeding.
I’m just gonna die.
To be fair, that will resolve all ailments…
That sucks.
Is your cpap a unit like the resmed where the water tank can be removed and not used? The reason I ask is because I am curious if you can hook it up without the water tank and let it run for longer than 10 minutes without you wearing it and then check to see if you still smell the burnt plastic? That would at least let you narrow it down to whether it’s a water tank issue or something in the head unit.That’s the spirit!
Do you get new supplies regularly?
No, that would require being able to afford new supplies. I swapped out the nasal pillows about six or seven months ago. The headgear gets swapped out about three or four months ago. The hose and the tub have been used for the past three to four years. Machine itself is 10 years old and I’ve never had anyone ever look at it. Filters I can actually change out a bit.
Don’t know what part of the world you’re in but Amazon cpap supplies were pretty reasonable when I didn’t want to visit the doctor just for a new prescription. There is also a sanitizer used for home brewing that should be able to sanitize your tank and hose to make it good as new.
A full mask replacement for me would be about $200. A hose replacement for me would be about $100. A tank replacement would also be about $100.
I can’t sanitize these things back into use unfortunately. The hose is starting to show extreme degradation from multiple years of use, as well as a cat chewing on it. The tank is starting to show signs of rust and I can’t imagine that that is going to be a great thing for me to be breathing in. So I can’t be using that for too much longer. The entire mask also needs to be replaced because the front face plate is cracked and I cannot order a replacement face plate. I’m looking at $400 to $500. All of which would do nothing to replace the issue of it tasting like plastic because for whatever reason, that is coming from inside of the machine itself.
I may just die.
Have you considered DJS before death?
I don’t understand why your hose would be 100 bucks, the ones on Amazon are more like 10 bucks. That’s where I would start if you have plastic smell because yours is just simply way past its design lifespan.
Also I’ll try to help you find a hose if you tell me what cpap model you’re using and what headgear you’re connecting it to.
The cycle that the medical industrial complex has us on is insane! Don’t pay them.
Okay. I’m still breathing in shit that tastes like burnt plastic though so they might have a point in this case.
You’ve already done great work avoiding the medical supply scam. You deserve to know what the burnt plastic smell is for sure.
The only successful power nap I’ve had was in a car. I was very ready to drive when I woke up.
Fortunately, it appears you woke up before you wrecked
Is that a sock, or does that dude’s leg look really nasty?
I hope that’s a sock. I noticed the same thing
Maybe a tattoo?
A tattoo that looks like infected flesh
don’t worry about that, a couple critters been gnawin at it but it’s healin up real nice
Ayup. He done gone up to dat dere magic medicine man they got ‘round the ridge back o’ the holler, well, widn’t know he dun gived em a half bottle a shine and dat dere man did one a’ them watchamacallit, pacts with Satan, and den, show’ ‘nuff that leg started healin’, now, it does be whisperin’ all late like about the coming of Satan and the sufferin of innocents and whatnot but that there magic man, well he said that’d go away in two, three weeks or thereabouts
west Virginity intensifies
He’s really a ghoul, but don’t worry he’s managing it fine.
Bacon ankle. Worst case I’ve ever seen.
based.
I’m very envious i didn’t think of this myself.
What’s going on with the skin on his ankle, man? That looks burned.
Sock?
Blind?
My guess is plaque psoriasis. I’m no doctor but I watch a lot of TV.
