rapidboson
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I'm questioning the claim that altered sleep pattern is the cause of unrefreshing sleep. Unrefreshing sleep is a hallmark/universal symptom (ME/CFS patients are constantly unrefreshed, after all) whereas altered sleep pattern is not. My take on it would be that it is one of plethora of anomalies in ME/CFS. One still could inquire why that is happening of course, just as one would about any other symptoms. And treating sleep difficulties may help just as it would in healthy people. But I just don't see it leading to refreshing sleep in ME/CFS. If it does, we may have found a solution to ME/CFS.
I don't follow your logic here to be honest, sorry. Hope you can help me understand you!
(1) What makes you believe that different sleep architectures between pwME and healthy controls are not "universal"? All the data I have seen these past days point towards a consistent difference. Moreover, the studies I quoted were able to differentiate clearly between the architecture in different diseases such as sleep apnea, the architecture in ME and healthy controls (three different patterns/groups here). Think "sleep fingerprint". It's not like there's one fingerprint that's healthy and only one other fingerprint that's unhealthy. Even within the group of ME, I'm sure different studies found different fingerprints (different measuring methods, patient stratification etc), but there's always a different fingerprint between ME and healthy from what I have read so far.
(2) Yes, we agree, it's likely one of many anomalies, I am not expecting this to be the main cause of ME symptoms at all. Personally, I (so far) see unrefreshing sleep (likely due to altered sleep architecture) as a symptom that's caused by something upstream.
(3) Which is why normalizing sleep architecture could in my view potentially improve quality of life but not be a solution to ME. It might still make people feel better.
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