@Eddie B,
Yeah, generally I would stop breathing. But It's not always as drastic as it sounds. Although the brain sends a signal for you to gasp for air, most of time you don't rememeber it - and/or you don't fully awaken. It just takes you out of a certain Phase of sleep.
Under normal sleep you have different phases in which the waves in you brain enter different patterns. So light sleep is Phase I, Then you go into a deeper sleep Phase II where your breathing changes and areas of the brain and muscles in the body begin to rest, Phase III is a deep sleep called REM which is the phase that actually accounts for the true rest that sleep normally gives you. (REM) or Rapid, Eye , Movement is also the time that you dream. And while scientists still don't understand fully how sleep works, they can monitor the phases and know that the deep REM sleep is necessary. People cycle through these phases through a normal sleeping pattern.
Unfortunatley for me, I would sometimes reach phase II, snd the experience an apnea which disrupts the cycle. Hence you begin the cycle over again at phase I. If this happens throughout the night, you never actually enter deep REM sleep. The result is, that you feel as though you never went to bed. So you feel quite exhausted through most of the day, even napping for a few hours here and there. While this sounds good, it just disrupts your sleep more, and can now lead to insomnia the following night. It's just a vicious pattern of feeling sleep deprived.
I have had many instances of crashing after work at say 5:00pm and failing to wake up until 6:30am the next morning. Only to still feel like I am tired. I then would force myself through my daily routine, usually hopped up on caffiene, (or prescribed stimulants), only to have a sudden crash in the afternoon. Followed by the desire to sleep or nap at all costs. All the while stilly feeling tired, unalert, lazy, procrastination, groggy, irritable, depressed etc...unable to stay focused.
This goes on, day after day, with some so-so days, and some terrible days. It can cause a whole slew of problems including emotional, as you feel the constant need to hide this from friends, work, relationships, and family. It's just hard to explain that you don't feel well all the time, and even after visiting numerous doctors/tests/bloodwork/medications... you have no real answer as to why you feel so lousy. You begin to think that your lazy, and worthless, or possibly fear something worse is going on with you, and that the doctors just haven't discovered it yet. It can be quite a mind boggling experience. You start to think you have every disease out there. (Or that your own medications, that are treating some of the symptoms are actually causing the tiredness themselves).
It effects every aspect of your life - from success in school, career, realationships, and even your own image of yourself.
The good news is that after roughly ten years of trying to figure it out, I finally have an answer and a treatment that should improve my quality of life a hundred-fold.
~zen
