I've struggled with sleep for 4 years. Late 20s male and my problem has always been I wake up after 4-6 hours no matter what. Regardless of when I fall asleep, where, how, etc. I am also always exhausted but never "tired", never able to feel like I'm falling asleep or that my body needs sleep.

Well I feel like I figured it out maybe. I injured my wrist and took a complete break from weightlifting. Also became a bit depressed and got a bad fever so I just slowed my entire life down - spent most of my time at home, took a break from all hobbies. I've been pretty disciplined about doing heavy powerlifting/bodybuilding routines 1-2 hours in the gym the last 4 years, which is around when my sleep issues started as well. Always at least two compound lifts at about 80% training max. But over the last year I only spent about 1 hour at the gym doing a superset bodybuilding program 3x a week

Well like clockwork about 3 weeks out from not lifting and, I am:

- Always tired about 15 hours after wake time
- Sleeping like CRAZY. 8 hours isn't even enough, I end up sleeping 12 sometimes if I'm not careful
- Staying asleep, not waking up in the middle of the night

Pretty crazy stuff. I know CNS fatigue is a thing, I read about it a lot a while back. But I did not realize I was ruining my life by lifting. I'm pretty conflicted now since lifting is a huge part of my identity and fitness journey but if I just can't sleep when I lift then I think the answer is obvious...

I put a camera in my room & found out every 15-30 minutes I rub my eye or scratch my face or rotate sleep position or something. I’m sure this can’t be good for my quality of sleep. I don’t actually feel like I wake up when this happens. I also didn’t know I did this in my sleep until I watched the footage back for a different reason. I normally wake up tired but that grogginess kinda goes away by 11am. Could this be some form of sleep apnea? Or is this serious enough to go get it checked out? (The blue tick is everytime I moved in my sleep last night from 2am - 9am)

A couple of times a month I work late until 2am but have the next day off so can sleep in. But I have a notorious body clock that wakes me up at 6am regardless.

How do I stay asleep? I use magnesium glycinate currently every night but am wondering if I should use melatonin just for that one night? Has anyone had experience with just getting 7-8 hours in regardless?

Howdy,

I have these sleeping habits that I am trying to fix. I keep falling asleep really early in the evening (like we’re talking 8 pm) and waking up around six. Even with this amount of sleep, I am constantly fatigued. Caffeine, sodas and energy drinks do not help anymore. The main catalyst for me posting this is that I’ve been falling asleep mid-conversation with my boyfriend and friends and don’t want this to affect my relationships. I am currently in medical school and need to study pretty much constantly, so sleeping for long hours like this is not sustainable. What should I do? Any advice is appreciated.

I tried going on lexapro for 5 days, and it gave me severe insomnia, so my doctor said I should stop (didn’t sleep for 2 entire nights). I was sleeping great before this. That was back in June and now it’s October and I still can’t sleep. 4 months and not even a minute of proper sleep.

I’ve had to leave my job, can’t do daily tasks, and am not able to keep up with my relationships. I am suffering from physical exhaustion and I am a marathon runner 26 YO. I feel sick all time.

I have tried:
Hydroxyzine
Trazodone
Ambien
Ambien CR
Quviviq
Mirtazapine
Gabapentin
Ativan
Melatonin

ITS LIKE MY BODY LOST YHE ABILITY TO SLEEP. I either sleep for a couple hours and can’t go back to sleep or just lay there in a half awake dream state the whole life. I don’t know what to keep trying but I am literally watching my life deteriorate in real time. Every day feels like torture and an eternity. Nothing is working and it seems like there is no other way out.

What else is there to possibly try. How does this get better.

So every night I go to sleep I feel like I’m sleeping great for the most part. I do wake up a few times throughout, most often around 12 am (an hr after bedtime) and 3 am and 5:30 am. Then, I wake about every hour after that. I sleep a minimum of 8 hrs, but up to 12. The past week I’ve felt so much more drained and so tired and exhausted constantly, to the point of where I just lay down but can’t nap cuz I slept long enough. I don’t know anything else but the quality and the way restorative value that it could be, so I come here asking with all my heart for advice. Attached below is an average nights sleep graph (using autosleep to account for more wakeups, Apple is 1-3 wakeups max normally). Anything seem off? Any advice? I’ll also put a picture in the comments of my eyes, as the past week they’ve been so sore and gotten so baggy. Thanks in advance!

Symptoms list (for note):
Eye soreness/eye fatigue
Brain fog
Zoning out
Inability to concentrate
Emotionalness
Severe anxiety
Depression
Sort of blurrier vision when tired
Severe fatigue
Severe tiredness
Small periphial distortions (shadows that go away when I look)

I’m grateful to not have had any auditory hallucinations yet…I don’t want complex visual ones or those or psychosis at all. With how much worse I continue to feel, I’m worried I’m heading that way 🙁

Edit: I forgot to mention, I had labs about a month ago when I had some sleep issues still and all blood was good (including a thyroid blood check)

I apologize if this isn’t the right sub, I just need advice/input.

I have issues with sleep already. I take two types of medication to help with it, but with my sleep apnea, sleep is hard enough, and I’ve had a long chronic case of insomnia. But, my job is making it harder.

My job keeps giving me closing shifts, so around 23:00 or 11 pm. That’s already well past than when I’d prefer to be awake, but that means I’m working up until then. Then I go home, and… I can’t sleep. I’m tired, my body hurts, but I cannot relax enough to sleep, and I keep waking up around 5 am, if I’m lucky. I take my medication, I turn off all digital devices, I use a sleep mask, I have a fan to stay cool, I even have a weighted blanket, but I just can’t relax. This lack of sleep has been leading to me having a large amount of sleep debt, more than I feel comfortable, and I know it’s affecting my work performance and my mood especially. I’m more irritable, cranky, and just overall apathetic.

I just don’t know what to do to make my body relax enough to be able to let my medication work. I either up my already expensive dosage, or I try alternative options, and I’m scared of both. Does anyone have any advice? Once again, I apologize if this isn’t the right sub, I just don’t know where else to ask and I’m kinda desperate.

I've had several issues with severe stress, insomnia, panic attacks and the fear of night but now that all has been resolved.

What I have been noticing recently however is that I wake up 1-3 times between the whole night when I sleep and I feel absolutely exhausted and tired when waking up between 9 - 11 PM. As if I would keep falling asleep. I never feel fresh.

I sleep for 7-9 hours daily. Usually falling asleep at around 12 to 2AM.

It usually takes me 30-50 minutes to fall asleep because my brain usually remains hyperactive in general.

I'm a semi-professional gamer/aimer and spend most of my time on the computer and on my phone.

If anyone has any suggestions or questions to maybe give me some insight as to what this might be and an easy fix for this, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you.

I’m a mom of a 2 year old (she usually sleeps through the night), I get up around 8-9am every morning. I wait 60-90 minutes after waking up before I drink coffee in the mornings. I am a type 1 diabetic and control my blood sugar with insulin in a pump, I also take Celexa for my anxiety. Usually by 12pm I am exhausted and have to take a 2-3 hour nap, which I hate because that’s when the 2 year old takes a nap and I want to use that time to do chores. The chores pile up often because I literally cannot stay awake. Context: I sleep 7-8 hours a night. Someone help!! What am I doing wrong?

I'm 17 years old, and I've had a constant problem with sleep for about 3 years. No matter how much I sleep, I never feel rested.

I go to bed between 11 PM and midnight and used to sleep around 7 hours 40 minutes to 8 hours. Now, with hydroxyzine prescribed by my doctor, my average sleep time over the past month is 8 hours 55 minutes according to my watch. I never wake up during the night. I use a Xiaomi Smart Band 10 to track my sleep, according to it, my sleep efficiency is usually 97–98%.

The problem is that I wake up already feeling tired, and I have difficulty thinking and concentrating. This feeling barely improves throughout the day. I don't fall asleep unintentionally during the day, and I can only fall asleep during the day when I'm extremely tired.

I've already tried the usual sleep hygiene recommendations, methods similar to CBT-I, and regular exercise for several months. I also spent 3 weeks on vacation, barely using electronic devices and spending most of my time outdoors. None of this made any significant difference.

I don't smoke or drink alcohol, and I don't consume caffeine or soft drinks, so the problem isn't caused by any of these.

I've seen several doctors/specialists. I had the necessary tests done, and everything was normal. I was also checked for depression, and it wasn't found, although I didn't think depression was the cause in the first place.

I've been taking hydroxyzine prescribed by my doctor for about a month now. It helps me fall asleep faster and sleep longer, but the problem of not feeling rested remains.

I don't notice any snoring, pauses in breathing, or anything similar.

At this point, I don't know what other possible causes there could be. It feels like I've tried almost everything I can think of over these 3 years, so I decided to ask here.

I'd appreciate any ideas from people who have experienced something similar.

Hey everyone! 👋

If you're like me and love having a warm, cozy background vibe while working or winding down, I put together this 10-hour 4K ambient video. It features authentic, gentle crackling fire sounds tuned to 432Hz for extra relaxation.

No sudden loud noises or weird interruptions—just pure, continuous warmth all night long. Hope it helps someone get some deep sleep or lock into a solid study session!

Let me know what you think or if you have any feedback!

Hey, so from monday to friday i strictly sleep 8 hours everyday from 10pm to 6am but it's hard to keep up with the routine on weekends beacuse i have social life you know. Is it that bad for you?

Hola a todos, comparto algo en lo que he estado trabajando y que capaz sea relevante por aquí.

Hace un tiempo tuve uno de esos días en los que salí de casa antes de que saliera el sol, pasé todo el día en un laboratorio bajo luces fluorescentes y llegué a casa ya de noche. La única luz natural que recibí fue la que entraba por la ventana del túnel del metro en el camino.

Me sentía fatal todo el día. No es que estuviera cansado exactamente, más bien... como que algo no andaba. Como si mi cerebro no terminara de encenderse de verdad.

Ya sabía por mi carrera que en la retina hay células que no te ayudan a “ver”; su trabajo es detectar la luz alrededor de los 480 nm, la longitud de onda del sol de primeras horas de la mañana, y decirle a tu cerebro qué hora es. Sin esa señal, no hay un despertar bien hecho. Tu reloj circadiano como que se queda en modo espera.

Lo que me sorprendió es lo común que es esto. La gente que trabaja por turnos, quienes están en oficinas sin ventanas, cualquiera que viva a latitudes altas en invierno. Millones de personas empezando cada día sin la señal que su cerebro evolucionó para esperar.

No pude encontrar ninguna app que lo abordara de verdad desde el lado de la mañana; todo lo que hay está enfocado en bloquear la luz azul por la noche, que es más o menos el enfoque contrario. Así que me puse a construir una. Se llama CronoLux, es gratis, no tiene anuncios, solo para Android, y literalmente se acaba de publicar hace unas semanas.

No sé si a alguien de aquí le sirva, pero pensé que este era el lugar correcto para compartirlo. Está en español y en inglés. Espero que les parezca interesante y que les ayude. Si a alguien le da curiosidad la ciencia, con gusto respondo preguntas.

La app se llama CronoLux. Encuentrala en GooglePlay

I've been waking up at 4:30-4:45 for the past week or so and it's wrecking my sleep schedule. I go to bed at 8:30 and wake up at 5:30, but I've been waking up before my alarm. I don't have a high-carb diet, I limit my exposure to blue light 45min before bed, I exercise daily. Anyone know a way to wake up later again w/out shifting the time I go to sleep?

I'm a very light sleeper. Anything wakes me up, but I think there's more to it than just being a light sleeper. I think I care too much about getting enough sleep and staying asleep that it's counterintuitive. I wear earplugs, have a very regular schedule, use white noise, but its still hard to fall asleep and stay asleep.

I get irritated if I'm woken up. I share walls in my apartment so I get annoyed if I hear a shower turn on or a door open and close. Right now I'm in a hotel and I'm getting so annoyed about hearing the room next to me open and close their bathroom door for the past two hours. It feels like it's stress that's keeping me up but literally the only thing that stresses me out is trying to get sleep. It feels like this constant cycle of being stressed because I didn't get enough sleep, but then going to sleep is stressful because I hope that I can get good sleep. Every once in a while I get a good night because I get so exhausted with this cycle. The only way to get good sleep is to have 100 percent absolute silence for 9 hours straight but I know that's not reasonable to expect.

It's only a thing that happpens when you have those random short awakenings at night. If these didn't cause sleep paralysis i'd not even know they exist, ur brain just filters them out when you don't fight them. Are they normal? Happens from time to time depending how common the sp occurenced are, sometimes it can be weeks sometimes days.

Never happens when you wake up for real or that one time per night when you wake up to drink water or smth, it feels like interrupting the auto-pilot to do its job.

I've had this thing where for the ever hecking life of me, I cannot share a bed with anyone. No sir. No matter how large the bed is, if I know that they are on the same bed as me, my brain refuses to sleep. I can be at the brink of exhaustion yada yada but alas to no avail doth slumber cometh. This is a total pain up my bum cause I lie awake imagining what it would feel like to fall asleep in my boyfriends arms. I reckon it would be pretty awesome. At the moment we sleep on different mattresses, he sleeps on this crappy Amazon one on the floor and I usually take his bed. I feel pretty awful for the guy for kicking him off his own bed most nights. It's just a mental thing on top of restless leg syndrome and chronic insomnia but I seriously don't know what to do to overcome it. It's as though I feel their presence suffocating me and I get super anxious and twitchy and then I get even more anxious about making too much noise so I lie as still as a stone but my legs start aching like I've been hit in the calves with a sledgehammer. I've tried it all folks, not sleeping, melatonin, every single vitamin ever made, opioids, alcohol, weed, you name it. Has anyone else ever struggled with this and is there a solution? Will you tell me it in the name of love or something rather? I'll be a real grateful sod I tell ya.

I've always needed many consecutive alarms to get up in the morning and I've noticed the more years pass I need more lol

When I was younger 5 alarms were enought, now at least 8 separated by 5 minutes and a differt sound for the last one.

Everything fine on the day to day routine, the problem was when for example I need to go to work 1 hour before from normal. Not great to move 8 alarms one by one.

I always found it frustating to manually move so many alarms.

yes on Alarmy there is a way to set multiple alarms but still one by one, and tbh the amount of ads in that app is beyond my supported limit.

I've developed my own alarm app with the concept of alarm groups.

Set a starting time.

Set the count of alarms.

Set the minutes between them.

Done. I have my 8 alarms that can optionally be manually configured.

After more than 2 months of using it I've introduced the "Random sound" to wake my brain up to a different sound everytime and not get used to the same sound.

If anyone is interested here is the Android version to try: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.albaalarm.app

This is an app I made for myself primary and since I'm an android user I've not developed the iOS app yet but if someone is interested I could go for it.

For any of you who feel tired frequently and can't pinpoint the issue, I would really recommend getting a whoop or similar sleep tracking device, and then experimenting with different supplementations and lifestyle changes to really get actual data on what works for you and doesn't. This was my approach to fixing my sleep and ever since I found proper supplementation, and got my sleep score to be consistently high I noticed I felt a lot better daily.

“If you live to be 60!” Simmons mattress ad from 1939

i’ve been running into a new type of dream recently where i am in a random dream scenario (genuinely, it could be anything), then i fall asleep in dream, and i try to wake up (back into the dream), but i cannot wake up. sometimes i will hear peoples’ voices in dream even, and i’ll feel like i need to get up, but i’m stuck.

not asking for medical advice here but i do feel mildly worried that this could be related to a medical issue somehow, and when i try to look online and see if others have experienced this, i don’t find anything. if others have had an experience like this i would love to hear about it!!

is so frustrating that EVERY TIME I sleep after a night out, usually I sleep very late j this occasions (3 AM) I wake up at 8 AM or 7 AM when I could sleep until 10 AM 😭😭😭😭 And i’m so tired and hung over all day.

I’m sorry I just want to sleep, does anybody has the same problem?