Do you feel worse, better or the same when you wake compared to when you went to sleep?

How do you feel in the morning compared to when you went to bed?

  • Better

    Votes: 9 22.5%

  • The same

    Votes: 7 17.5%

  • Worse

    Votes: 24 60.0%
  • Total voters
    40
Wrecked. I have a second wind 9pm-11pm this is probably when I feel the best. Sucks feeling better right when you need to sleep.

Mornings are terrible, the only thing comparable for me is a hangover from pre-me/cfs. I distinctly remember first getting sick being weirded out about how unfulfilling sleep was and worried about forgetting what it feels to wake up refreshed, that only took 2 months. I literally can’t grasp what it feels like to wake up ready to seize the day. Probably same as a healthy person can’t grasp being sick everyday.

My first two years I was putting caffeine drinks by my bed the night before to chug in the morning to get up for work because I was crashing so hard everyday and didn’t know what was going on. I literally couldn’t get out of bed without 200mg of caffeine in my system at 9am. Previously months before being sick at work at 7am everyday for 2 years, yes a bit groggy but fine and functional.
 
I added the caveat ‘in general’ in my mind when I responded to the poll, as (as always) with ME ‘it varies’ or ‘it depends’.

Occasionally I wake up feeling refreshed, though not very often, more frequently I have disrupted sleep so my nights are ‘unrefreshing’ because of disrupted and/or insufficient sleep leaving me wanting more sleep, or equally frequent even if I do have a reasonable six to eight hours sleep it feels that somehow sleeping is associated with my ME symptoms worsening requiring further rest, though not more sleep, to recover from having been asleep, so being ‘unrefreshing’ in the sense of actively worsening symptoms.

To summarise, ignoring the interactions between PEM and sleep, I see three aspects
  1. Sleep that refreshes normally
  2. Disrupted sleep patterns and/or insomnia that results nights not meeting the need for sleep
  3. Sleep that is associated with worsening ME symptoms even if reasonable amounts of sleep had happened
 
Depends. Today worse, but that’s because I did too much me tal activitt yesterday so am paying the price. Sometimes better though. Overall sleep is ‘good’ for me but if the sleep or my body is ‘bad’ then I will feel worse. And as in another thread sometimes sleep can leave me groggy or tired. And I can feel at different times of the day through varying cycles.
Would that mean I answer better? I’m a bit unsure on how to answer the question.
 
AliceLily said:
I wake up Ok these days at moderate the majority of the time but I have had my share of feeling awful when I was severe. I am still needing a lie down throughout the day and trying to keep PEM at bay as much as I can.
Click to expand...
Just to add more to my post. For me PEM is what messes with my sleep mechanism. The severer the ME PEM the less sleep I get. So it is all about severity level of ME.

I'm not sure if using 'unrefreshing sleep' describes ME well because it can sound like you just need to sleep more when it is the ME PEM that is controlling the sleep mechanism and not a sleep problem causing ME symptoms.

I've had a big day and may not be describing this well or understanding what is meant by this thread.
 
I'm severe, but the only difference to being moderate is that I have a very small energy envelope. I get tired very quickly and it adds up throughout the day which means I feel best in the morning when I wake up and before doing anything. I feel worse when I wake up with PEM, but apart from that my sleep has always been refreshing.
 
Depends if I have PEM or not. If I am not in PEM, I often feel a little better or the same when I wake up, and my symptoms slowly get worse throughout the day. During PEM its the opposite.

Edit, it also highly depends on whether I went to sleep and woke up at natural times or not. I need to go sleep the second I feel sleepy and wake up naturally to feel the best in the morning.
 
I sleep pretty well.

I usually wake up a couple of times every night, but usually re-falls asleep quickly again. I don't know if that is related to ME/CFS.

I wake up feeling refreshed. Sometimes I feel healthy and energetic for 30-60 minutes. Then the fatigue returns and gets progressiveness worse during the day.

When I have over-exerted myself it's usually harder for me to get to sleep and I wake up more often.

I seem to have some odd variant of ME/CFS where my only clear symptoms so far are exertion exacerbated fatigue and POTS.
 
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Not sure how to answer the poll. I'd pick "it depends" if it were a choice. Also agree "unrefreshing" is not at all adequate on its own to describe my sleep experience. Along with PEM, Sleep is the ongoing major nightmare of this condition for me, and just having a short description of "unrefreshing sleep" absolutely minimizes it. I probably on average wake up feeling worse but a different version of worse than I went to bed with.

My sleep was even more horrendous in the first ~2-3 years of this. Was a form of torture, hours feeling (no words for the experience) before I could finally drop asleep. I used to always be able to nap in the afternoon in my past life. Completely lost the ability to nap.

This year I've experienced:
1. Waking up in a zombie state feeling absolutely awful, usually after not enough sleep (<8hrs) and that state continuing all day. (Frequent)
2. Waking up feeling reasonably ok after not enough sleep. (Occasional)
3. Waking up feeling ok but exhaustion descending a while later - also the reverse.
4. Waking up feeling fully refreshed after a 9 or 10 hr sleep (rare, ~2 or 3 nights a month) - often happens as an exhaustion sleep after days of minimal sleep.
5. Waking up feeling okish, but an extremely unpleasant overwhelming drowsiness descending a few hours later and unable to stay awake & not being able to sleep either. That state lasted several months this year. Thankfully hasn't returned for ages.
6. Waking up for hours in the middle of the night unable to get back to sleep. If I eventually get back to sleep, usually those hours of sleeping till late morning seem to be particularly refreshing.
7. PEM disaster sleep... associated with zombie state, unable to sleep / insomnia & more.
 
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AliceLily said:
not a sleep problem causing ME symptoms.
Click to expand...

Ohhhh it is for me! If I don't sleep at all due to severe PEM, I feel okay (for the first couple of sleep-free days at least).

The more I sleep, the worse my function is when I wake up and the longer it will take me to recover.

ME/CFS-sleep is an activity that makes me more exhausted than almost any of the activities I do when awake. I need to rest and recover for two or three hours after it.
 
Regardless of how well or badly I sleep, I feel crap on waking. It's not about being tired, it's feeling ill and unable to function. I need several hours from waking to being able to do anything useful.

In PEM I get tired but wired nights and lose a lot of sleep, especially on the first night. I wake up feeling crap and unable to function and that continues all day.

I'm more likely to fall asleep sometime during the day if I've lost a lot of sleep or am in PEM.
 
Much worse regardless of how much sleep I get. Sometimes after a disturbed night I actually feel better in the morning but it depends on what the disurbance was. As an example a car or house alarm or a loud party makes me feel worse.

This morning feeling though is there in other members of my family. My brother has the expresson 'crack of noon' for our ideal waking time.

I hate going to bed feeling my best of all that day and knowing how awful I will feel until around 2pm the following day. It's a daze of nausea and confusion plus more.
 
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