hootOS

HOOT_OS - V.30

Stryxnine Amity Pulsatrix
(30/🇨🇦/Saskatchewan)
NACRS Organizer
esports broadcast producer
plural, autistic, adhd
disability & queer activist
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given im too disabled to work, i've been able to basically sleep when i need to and let my body choose when to wake up. so im working off of the assumption that i'm receiving the full required rest my body needs before it wakes. however, i notice i'm going through cycles of "sleep debt." every week and a half to two weeks, i get exceedingly tired after only a few hours of being awake. since i go to sleep when my body shows symptoms of requiring it, i end up sleeping for a significant portion of the day for multiple days. once this stage of the cycle passes, the timer starts until another 10-14 days pass and the sleep debt cycle begins anew.

however, my understanding of sleep debt is that the body will grow more tired as full rest continues to be infringed upon. by resting, you are "paying a debt" to your body that you accumulated during the day through physical and mental activity. if you interrupt the rest cycle with an alarm, there is still debt owed to your body that it has not received payment for - payment being in rest time. it will accumulate over time until such an extent that your body begins to experience symptoms of tiredness well before normal, because your body has not had adequate time to recover from the mental and physical activities of your daily life.

the thing is, i feel as though i'm giving my body enough rest. as explained above, i go to sleep when my body experiences symptoms associated with a need for sleep, and i do not set alarms so i can wake up only when my body chooses to do so naturally. Even so, sleep debt still frequently occurs in a regular enough pattern as to, at times, be mistaken for a period - or it would, if it was not on a separate schedule that did not synchronize with my periods.

so, im left to ask: "the fuck is goin on? anyone else feeling this? what's the explanation? did i have covid and now suffer from post-covid symptoms without ever realizing i had covid? have i done something to agitate an existing disability and raise it from an inconvenience as a teenager to a completely overpowering menace in adulthood? the fuck is happening to me?"

answers and sympathies appreciated.


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in reply to @hootOS's post:

The flaw in your reasoning, I think, is that 'sleep debt is only increased when awake', which is... Not true. Sleep debt is absolutely accrued when sleeping - if the sleep is not REM/deep sleep, or is very low quality, or is at the wrong time of day (regardless of light quantity though more light does make it even worse).

Circadian rhythms exist despite when the body may initially give signs of sleepiness, and, per the details of a woman that recently left a 500 day zero-daylight experiment living in a cave, exist regardless of any direct daylight. Oversleep, therefore, is always a constant threat, regardless of how much the body may tell you it wants to sleep - the body may want to rest, but the brain may not be primed to do all the necessary tasks it does when actually sleeping, so, not only is not all sleep good sleep, but a lot of sleep your body tries to convince you of, can actually be bad sleep!

Sleep quality, not just quantity, is a known factor in total rest. You might sleep for 14hrs, but might only get one full cycle of good quality sequential undisturbed REM sleep, and the rest might be fitful tossing and turning and gaining little actual value from the sleep, your brain effectively in a not-sleep state, and thus not gaining 'rest'.

Oversleep is a real thing. As above, sleep quality is a thing, and can drop if you persist in sleep beyond what is required by the brain - which, unfortunately, is NOT always an accurate indicator of when it's good to sleep and when it isn't.

Daily consumption, daylight, exercise (intended or not), anxiety, light tricking your brain into the wrong mode, literally anything that can drastically alter the chemicals pumping through your body can bring on, or remove, sleepiness in surprising speed. Sleeping at these times isn't necessarily going to be good true REM sleep, because your brain isn't actually ready to sleep, it's just getting some of the chemicals that tell it now MIGHT be alright for a snooze.

Circadian rhythms are more like 'processes our brains evolved to know when it's time to try to properly sleep', and unless you have a circadian rhythm disorder (which is often considered distinct from fatigue or sleep quality disorders), sleeping before your brain has gone through those processes (daylight dwindling, daily activity decreasing, been awake for an extended time, among others) will lower sleep quality. Much as it sucks to acknowledge, a lot of the generic advice given for better sleep isn't meant to be 'advice to strive toward', it's more 'this is the basic framework of how we've found it to work over the last several hundred years - deviate either at your own self-knowledge or peril'.

Typically, best results for naps are less than 40mins (not enough time to shift from phase 1 of sleep, thus not waking up feeling like groggy death) - this is for a quick body-rest, to shake any false feelings of sleepiness. Then, somewhere between the 2.5 and 3.5hr mark (give or take) - long enough for roughly one good REM cycle. A mini-night's sleep, effectively.

The HARDEST part, IMO, is correctly timing it (and that's saying something). It's less than 40mins from when you actually fall asleep. Not from when you lay down. Same with the longer nap. Same with it all.

'8hrs' recommended sleep a night is an average that accounts for 'time going to bed and trying to fall asleep', as well as daily and individual differences in circadian rhythms. 6-9hrs is actual sleep time, 8-11hrs is more realistically the 'winding down for bed' sleep timeframe for most people, which is yet another way Capitalism sucks the life out of the worker, since daylight is time to spend and time is money.

Experience: a carer of 10 years to my partner, who has fibromyalgia and an anxiety disorder, who often oversleeps and rarely ever benefits from it. ~10 years of observations of her sleep cycles, experimenting with different wake-up times after naps, how she fares after exercise, etc, sadly tends to align with a lot of the inane advice around 'screen time before bed', as well as the above assessment of nap times and REM cycles. Despite being a 12+hr sleeper undisturbed (which causes her to be exceedingly tired most days), when I get her up and active after ~9hrs of actual sleep, she might take a nap later in the day - less likely if she is also physically active during that day.

So, counter-intuitive as it may sound, try cutting back to regular sleep time, and focusing on sleep quality instead - lights, distractions, lack of exercise, high energy/caffiene/"heavy" foods before bed, all things that need to be ironed out before any other cause can easily be assessed.

Sleep 'debt' is not something we can consciously and easily 'pay-off' without ruining our immediate sleep schedule, but where available, the above timings of naps have been shown to help in the course of a standard day with mitigating sleepiness and ensuring total amounts of quality sleep per day.

alright so im fucked because im unable to cut out any of the habits i've already formed. but it's at least insightful and much more comforting to know i'm not doomed to periodic lethargy, it's just a matter of my poor habits.

It's not impossible, but it's also not fair to say it's solely your fault. No habit we form in our lives is solely of our own making, even ones we strive very hard to create owe some of their success to factors outside of our control.

Your habits come, in part, from living a life on hard mode, a life with disability, and I hope I haven't come across as judgemental, pejorative, or derogatory in any way, and if I have, I apologize, for that sure as heck isn't my intent.

I tried to be descriptive and thorough, but my tone may have been off. My desire was to explain what little I know on the topic (pretty much the sum total of it, barring specific articles I've read in the past), coupled with my anecdotal history as caring for a partner with disabilities that also lend themselves to long-sleeping.

There are also always going to be times when sleeping longer does absolutely give desired positives, and that and 'feeling tired after waking up' is only potentially connected to any of the above/previous, in that it can come from many different possible things.

It's not necessarily "just a matter of [your] poor habits", and I don't want to leave you believing that's the case. I believe you when you say that you can't cut out any habits you've already formed. I know exactly what it's like to try to change something about my own habits, and to be completely unable to change them, and it has taken many years and many good health steps to get to a point where persistence is finally revealing ways around those problems, but.

I guess I'm just trying to bring it back to sympathy, sharing the hope that it can improve, and encouraging any steps to introspect and examine your sleep to get it on track. :D

i mean to be frank the tone came across as a smidge preachy, but i was also in a bit of a fragile state of mind. so my initial perception was exacerbated by an altered state of mind.

that being said, i do appreciate the detail you went into. it helped me understand the science behind sleep and its mechanics more, which can at least help me understand why these sleep debt cycles could be happening.

Genuinely sorry for coming across preachy. Not my finest work, and this is typically why I try to come back to comments before I post them, to try and avoid this, but today apparently wasn't that day!

I hope there's something useful there for you.

there certainly is. communication is a difficult, complex interaction from one brain to another - there is bound to be fault within. you did your best to communicate a significant amount of information without having to spend centuries ensuring it was perfect, and the information given is beyond anything i've received thus far. it'll be used as reference for certain in the future.