Insomnia Support Group
Insomnia is a symptom, rather than a disease, and is characterized by inadequate quantity or quality of sleep. People with insomnia complain of difficulty falling or staying asleep, which results in significant impairment of daytime functioning. Insomnia is categorized as transient (shorter than one week), short-term (one to three weeks) or chronic (longer than three...
Does that include daytime naps?
I've never been able to nap and the older I get the bigger the toll it takes on me...
I sleep somewhere between 5-7 hrs a night, occasionaly even 8, excluding the rough patches of less sleep that come and go.
When I sleep for 5 hours or less, like last night, I am pretty much useless the next day. I am worn out, walking like a zombie, hardly able to focus on anything and all-in-all completely exhausted.
Even then, I can't nap. Instead I wait for the next night and usually sleep better (a milion knocks on wood, I would hate to jinx myself).
Which leads me to this question. I can't imagine what it would be like to sleep less that 5 hrs a night for , say, a week! How do you handle it? Are you able to make up for some of the lost sleep during the day? Do you take supplements to boost your energy, like Adderall? In any case my heart goes to you, it's a horrible situation.
I am a poor sleeper, especially considering I'm still relatively young, but I am humbled by some of the things I see people are going through on insomnia forums.
I think to be able to sleep the person would have to view sleep as being 'good'.
as for how to function. minimal sleep and skipping days is the normal for me. the only time I feel the effects is if I'm awake for more than three days.
I avoid sleep and naps as if it were the plague. no stimulants. just a strong aversion.
So it sounds like you don't need more than 4 hrs of sleep. That's pretty rare, I think. Also it looks like you ... hate sleep? Are you an insomniac by choice?
I would go to bed at 11pm and, ruminate until 3am and, I quickly made a habit of it. I no longer play the sport, which I reached the top at btw, yes you could say it was worth the pain, but maybe not, I liken it to smoking, you enjoy it for as long as, and then you acquire cancer from it, a penalty you have to eventually pay, like it or not. I no longer ruminate and, yet I still am unable to sleep anymore than two hours at a time and, no more than four hours total, for instance last night I went to bed at 12am and was very tired, was awake at 2am and, up out of bed at 3.39am.
The odd thing about my insomnia is I never experience negative after effects from it, it's as if what little amount of sleep I get it is sufficient enough. I nap occasionally during the day, and when I do it is for no more then an hour, the experts say though that quality napping shouldn't exceed 30 minutes at a time, I nap for as long as my body/mind allows me to though.
Having said all of that I may not suffer from insomnia at all, because my symptoms of fail to compare to yours which sounds more like the expected of real thing.
And yes, I guess my brand of insomnia is closer to the definition. I WANT to sleep, I NEED to sleep, exhaustion affects me, but I can't do it. My mind just won't switch off.
Still, could be that my problem isn't your typical insomnia either since I sleep sufficiently most nights. Who knows. My biggest fear is losing the ability to sleep during the night as well as during the day, which is why I want to know more about the 3-4 hour sleepers. In my opinion, if one sleeps ,say, 4 hours a night, then 3 hours a day, that's 7 hours of sleep per day, and thus sufficient. Those people, I think, have more of a sleep schedule problem than an insomnia problem.
Sadly, no idea. Actually, I've had lots of possible causes going through my mind - maybe it's the light, maybe it's tje noise, maybe it's some kind of internal body clock... But nothing definitive, and I'll probably never know.
But it's been like this for me since forever. I mean, probably not when I was a kid, but for a long enough time that I don't remember what it's like to nap in the afternoon.
You said that for you it stopped abruptly in December, what happened? Has the situation resolved since then?