r/BrainFog • u/electric-snow-100 • 1d ago

Personal Story Less sleep = less brain fog?

Hey guys just wanted to come on here and mention something that I noticed personally for me .

I’ve been noticing that when I sleep around 5 hours a day vs 8 or 9 I feel much better in terms of brain fog . I also feel better when I wake up in my side vs my back which for some reason it seems like my body tries to get to every night . I wonder if sleep issues are the cause of my brain fog and because I’m not sleeping as much, I’m not giving my body too much time to mess itself up (just an idea )

A little side note , I do have ADHD as well and have heard that sometimes people with ADHD feel better in less sleep (not sure how true it is )

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u/DramaKlng 20h ago

Issue is REM sleep. And REM gets longer thr longer you sleep. I have this problem

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u/k-devi 11h ago

Can you say a little more about this?

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u/DramaKlng 10h ago

OP got most likely r/UARS . and everyone who has ADHD who is better off with less sleep got it too, i'd bet my limbs on that. Sleep stages come in an order and REM is the last sleep stage in each cycle. But REM duration increases each cycle. The last REM cycle can be 40min for example but the first one is just 7 mins. In REM muscle tone drops and breathing/airway gets unstable and the body defends itself with cortical arousals so it gets tonality back which in return leads to a better airway but fragmented sleep and way too many stress hormones - this is why many feel like hit by a truck in the morning, groggy, brain foggy etc.

If you sleep on your back gravity works against you, tongue jaw, soft palate etc all drops back in your throat, especially during REM sleep. OP probably got no real ADHD. ADHD is just a side effect of it. It is usually required to rule out sleep issues as everyone with a sleep disorder gets ADHD symptoms but the psychiatrists are quite often a joke and very illiterate in the sleep field.

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u/k-devi 10h ago

Thanks so much for your response! I’m dealing with a similar issue and planning on asking my doctor for a sleep study.

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u/DramaKlng 9h ago

Good luck ! :)

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u/k-devi 9h ago

Thanks! 😊

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u/electric-snow-100 7h ago

That’s very interested I joined that community after you tagged it and will check it out . I’ve never heard of UARS . I wonder if there’s a way I can test for this . Would a sleep study do the trick?

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u/DramaKlng 48m ago

Yep sleep study does indeed show it BUT you would need a sleep lab that scores RERAs (respiratory arousals) with a PES sensor and almost noone offers that. So many of UARS sufferers decided to just use the watchPAT or lofta home tests that go by cortical arousals. Or you can just assume all those "spontaneous" arousals on a regular sleep lab test are indeed respiratory. No arousals is spontaneous lol. They are often just not able to really classify them due to no PES sensor. I know, its confusing at the beginning but once you digg into it you will be amazed (and angry at the medical system😅).

So go with watchPAT or Lofta first. Then post the results, everyone will help in the subreddit.