Understanding the Impact of an Irregular Sleep Pattern on Energy Levels

[member 392791]

Hello,

I woke up really early today fully awake, around 5:15am. However, feeling that it was too early and taboo to be up at this time (especially on a saturday), I went back to sleep and woke up again at 8:20 am, but this time feeling very tired and groggy, not wanting to get out of bed. I am curious, how is it that I can sleep another 3 hours, yet feel completely tired, when I was lacking that 3 hours I was perfectly awake.

Yet most days of the week, I wake up at 6:15am with an alarm clock and also have that groggy feeling. Is an irregular sleep pattern the cause of the groginess? I should mention I will go to sleep from 10-11pm, so all the times I am talking about have roughly the same starting hour of going to sleep.

 

[sozme]

I believe you enter REM every ~90 minutes, so if you woke up during this time you would feel quite groggy since its your deepest stage of sleep. I should really brush up on sleep physiology, though.

 

[Pythagorean]

That's what I remember from intro neuro. Your thalamus has the job of doing the switching between wake/sleep state and when you wake up in the middle of sleep state, you still have a lot of switching over left to do.

If I have time later, I'll dig up some proper research. A lot can change in neuroscience in 5 years.