If you've ever suffered from sleep apnea then you've no doubt spent plenty of time battling with constant fatigue and tiredness.
When your sleep apnea causes you to stop breathing during the night AND you get up at odd times (shift work), then it's no wonder that you wake up feeling like you've just been hit by a Mac truck! This disruptive sleep pattern is a bit like interrupting your washing machine as it goes through its wash cycles.
(You probably think I've lost my marbles right now but just stick with me here).
You see, just like your washing machine needs to go through certain cycles to complete a wash, so too does your brain when it's asleep.
In order for you to wake up feeling refreshed, it's imperative that you wake up at the end of a completed sleep cycle.
(In the perfect world we would because we wouldn't be dictated by our alarm clocks!) In the example below, your washing machine has 5 'cycles' that it must complete in order for it to wash your clothes properly.
Stage 1: Loading of the machine and adding the powder.
Stage 2: The wash.
Stage 3: The rinse Stage 4: The spin Stage 5: The emptying of the machine.
Now imagine if you stopped the washing machine half-way through its cycle and you took out your clothes to wear.
I'm picturing wet and soggy underwear here - covered in clumps of washing powder! Not pretty.
Your clothes would not be clean and rinsed because you didn't let the machine finish its entire cycle.
This is exactly what happens when you wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle (aka shift workers and sufferers of sleep apnea).
Your brain hasn't finished doing what it's supposed to do.
So when your alarm clock goes off and you stagger out of bed in the middle of the night, your brain has been interrupted making you feel fuzzy and disorientated.
It's like trying to wear your clothes even though your washing machine hasn't finished its cycle.
Have you ever gone into work with your shirt still wet and covered in washing powder stains? I'm thinking (and hoping) not - but this is exactly what you're doing when you push your body to work against its natural sleep cycles.
So to my fellow shift workers and sufferers from sleep apnoea - don't beat yourself up that you're not bouncing out of bed when that alarm clock goes off.
You cannot expect to function at 100% when your sleep is constantly being disrupted.
Just manage it the best way that you can and if need be - book yourself in for a bit of a nana nap later in the day!