It’s like can’t win. Its been like this my entire life. I currently have don’t have problems getting to sleep but it’s waking up that’s bullshit.
Maybe you have a vitamin deficiency. You can get tested at your doctor.
Or just buy a multivitamin and have one daily. It is much cheaper than test at doctor.
Sure, but it is good to know if something is wrong.
A complete REM cycle is usually around 90mins, and it takes about 30mins to start falling asleep deeply. For me personally, 7.5hrs is the perfect amount of sleep, which equates to 5 REM cycles.
Now, if you wake up in the middle of a cycle, you will usually feel groggy as your brain gets to grip with reality. Therefore, you want to aim to wake up just at the end of a cycle, ideally.
Try sleeping without an alarm, and make note of when you went to bed, and when you woke up. Hopefully, that time should be roughly divisible by 90mins, assuming nothing woke you up.
Knowing the above info, you can time your sleep better to ensure you don’t set an alarm for mid-cycle. As the other commenter mentioned, there are also apps & devices that can help detect when you’re coming out of REM and time the alarm based on that.
Lastly, if you do snooze after waking up, try “snoozing” for a full REM cycle (90mins), or try a power nap (<25mins). That might help “catch up” on sleep after you wake up.
I used to purposefully set my alarm 90mins before my actual wake up time, and then “snooze” for 90. That was mainly to induce lucid dreams though.
+1 for sleeping without an alarm. If you really need an alarm to get up every day, you might not be getting enough sleep to begin with. Some of that is unavoidable (noises, light waking you up at night etc.) but a lot of people think they can get by with like 6 hours or less of sleep and just get by on extra coffee.
Taking a week or so to just let your body wake up when it wants (even if it means going to bed early, ugh) will help you figure out how much sleep you need.
If you want to know how to fix this problem, the term to search for is sleep hygiene. You’ve been waking up at the wrong times in your sleep cycle. Quality sleep is a matter of habits, every person is a bit different. Research and apply what fits best with your lifestyle. Also, invest in quality beds and pillows, as well as temperature regulation. It’s far more important than most people give it credit.
As others have explained, waking up at the wrong point in a sleep cycle feels crappy. But also as the night turns to morning, your sleep cycles change and sleep becomes lighter - waking up is a process, not a moment. So get up when you wake up naturally and you should be good, but also keeping to a schedule helps, so if you are naturally waking up at 7am or whatever, going past that time can interfere with, well, falling awake.
I get you though - so often I feel like sleep is so close by I just want to go back.
My husband handles this with coffee, he gets up, makes coffee, drinks it in bed (while I sleep through all this) and then either feels awake, or, if he does go back to sleep the caffeine helps him wake back up, like a coffee nap. I can’t do that, prefer to wake up then coffee a few hours later, but it works for him.
You been checked for sleep apnea?
I Think i have sleep apnea but i don’t want to to pay to greedy US healthcare. Can I self cure this ?
That is a great question. I’m not a doctor, but I do know there are different kinds of sleep apnea, like your airway isnt collapsing, but because your central nervous system has problems. I started using my father’s old CPAP and noticed an improvement, but I also had a previous sleep study with enough hints for me to pursue it further. I know US healthcare isn’t ideal, but doctors also know the answers ya dig?
Everyone else has good suggestions, but for me, it turned out to be sleep apnea. See if you can talk to a sleep doctor.
Seconded! I found out in my late twenties that I was waking up every three minutes, all night long. I used to sleep 10-18 hours a day if I could get the time, and was still exhausted.
I won’t even nap without my breathing machine now; the difference is shocking.
Late twenties as well. Unfortunately, my machine hasn’t made a difference for me yet, which has been pretty difficult. Hopefully a solution is in my future
Man, that sucks. I hope you get a solution soon.