WOW this post resonates with me on so many levels. Thank you so much for writing it out!
-I have the exact same issue, I feel overwhelming fatigue that lifts with a 10 minute nap, and need to do it many times per day. I work from home, and can't really work in person because without a nap I just crash, despite getting a good nights sleep
-My girlfriend pointed out that I normally breath unusually fast and shallow, about twice as fast as her
-I've had some very traumatic experiences in the last few years that I still haven't dealt with fully. Around the time of these experiences I couldn't sleep well because I had to constantly get up to urinate, and also at the same time felt an "air hunger" where I felt no amount of breathing was enough
Could you recommend something specific to start working on with these things? I actually just started reading the Mate book "The Myth of Normal" but haven't gotten very far in it yet.
It seems like there are quite a few people here discovering these things, I wish we could form a discussion group or something.
My doctor didn’t think that it would be useful to test but I insisted, lack of sleep was making me desperate. I took at least three naps a day just to be able to function.
The results were surprising even to me, AHI of 23.
Well, first thing is, can you breath through your nose? Do you have that habit down? Fixing this is really important, for me at least. If a person can't breath through their nose, I suggest trying Afrin. This was such a huge lightbulb moment for me, and was my "AHA" moment. I really didn't know that the normal human condition is to nasal breathe. My mom has the same condition and I was raised by her so I didn't realize it and she didn't either to even notice it in me. It works instantly, within 10 minutes, and my world was opened up! And it still took me months to form the habit of nasal breathing, because I could never trust it enough when it worked (due to the nasal cycle). I definitely do Afrin just before bedtime too, every 12 hours or so. And I am getting surgery for the deviated septum too in February.
Second thing, do you have chronic pain? That will keep the body in a stress response. Chronic pain is actually easier to get rid of than I thought, and I tried a lot of things for 20 years. The new research at University of Colorado Boulder, using functional MRI scans in 2020 proves that much chronic pain can be eliminated in a short period with a very specific technique called Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), which is a compassion-based therapy. This is a really, really hard thing to believe, and one doesn't have to believe it fully, they just have to believe it enough to be curious and learn more. And if one is curious, I recommend listening to a 15 episode mini-series podcast called Tell Me About Your Pain by Alon Gordon (Pain Pyschologist) and Alon Ziv (Neuroscientist), then after that listen to the audio book (not ebook) by the same people called "The Way Out" (2022). Then there are 6 specific meditations by Alan Gordon on an app called Curable that I used to eliminate my chronic neck and back pain, I can dig up the link to them if you like. This same technique is what I use to react to my shallow breathing and fatigue with deeper breathing. This got me sleeping through the night.
Third, the trauma therapy (it isn't if we have trauma, it is how much), I recommend starting with the film The Wisdom of Trauma. And if that is interesting then reading In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. Myth of Normal seems like a great book too, I haven't read it yet though but it is on my list. I did start reading Gabor's AD(H)D book Scattered Minds a while back, way before this breathing breakthrough surfaced and need to finish it, but to sum up one thing I learned I have ADD-Like symptoms and this whole shallow breathing thing I have noticed is a large part of it. Once I start conscious breathing, by ADD-like stuff reduces. I've been more motivated to actually exercise and not fall asleep doing it, and I have been working on cold-exposure therapy (What Doesn't Kill Us by Mark Carney, investigative journalist who tried to debunk Wim Hoff, ended up drinking the Koolaid, and explains why). The cold-exposure increases the chemical called norepinephrine, which is one of the chemicals that Adderall increases (along with Dopamine). There is a quote from the film "My Octopus Teacher" (fantastic film) where he says "the cold really upgrades the brain" and references him diving into the ocean without a wetsuit almost every day for a year making friends with an octopus. I really like that quote. The cold does help me think when I do it, and I am still easing into it, and getting my brain back.
All in all, I feel at a really new phase of my life, and that includes this thing called "Hope". I no longer think my fatigue is caused by my diet, and in fact I know it isn't.
I'm happy to chat about this with you or anyone else. I'm also open to saying "hi" on a real-time communication (RTC) chat here https://cal.com/ElijahLynn.
> If a person can't breath through their nose, I suggest trying Afrin.
Be careful of the "rebound" effect with nasal sprays. Years ago I was "hooked" on Afrin. Not in a getting high sense but in the sense that I started to constantly need it in order to breath out of my nose, even after my cold went away. It was a terrible feeling and took weeks to wean off.
With a bad cold and miserable congestion, nasal spray like Afrin is like a miracle. I still use it in those instances but only for 2-3 days max and very sparingly.
If you really can't breath out of your nose well see a doctor.
This is very true! And my doctor/surgeon said that if you use a steroid like Sensimist with the Afrin then the rebound effect isn't as severe, which appears to be someone true so far. I do a spray of Afrin, then 10 minutes later do 2 sprays of sensimist. It isn't ideal and I am switching to surgery option now that I have tested it out for a few months now and would like to make it permanent!
i see you follow gabor mate and i see lot of talk about trauma and understand people's need for processing it and so on. ptsd is real, not denying that. having said that, in the past years i have actually been moving in the other direction, that sometimes trauma narratives tend to keep people stuck in the past. it solidifies certain types of trauma, makes it part of a person's identity and hampers recovery for some. one trouble is trauma is associated with lot of meaning and we tend to stick to things that are meaningful. i understand that too much thinking in this direction isnt correct and the truth lies somewhere in between. just saw that you have been aligning too much towards one direction so couldnt help but mirror that.
I worked with a trauma therapist and this was exactly what we worked on. The way out of trauma is to find out / realize that you’ve worked your way out of trauma. That the danger zone is gone.
I’m constantly blown away by the nuggets of wisdom I find on this website! Thanks for such a breath of knowledge, no pun intended. Going down a rabbit hole of chronic pain. Thank you
-I have the exact same issue, I feel overwhelming fatigue that lifts with a 10 minute nap, and need to do it many times per day. I work from home, and can't really work in person because without a nap I just crash, despite getting a good nights sleep -My girlfriend pointed out that I normally breath unusually fast and shallow, about twice as fast as her -I've had some very traumatic experiences in the last few years that I still haven't dealt with fully. Around the time of these experiences I couldn't sleep well because I had to constantly get up to urinate, and also at the same time felt an "air hunger" where I felt no amount of breathing was enough
Could you recommend something specific to start working on with these things? I actually just started reading the Mate book "The Myth of Normal" but haven't gotten very far in it yet.
It seems like there are quite a few people here discovering these things, I wish we could form a discussion group or something.