I slept about 12-15 hours the night before last and had the worst day of my life yesterday. I sleep for 5 hours last night and I feel better than yesterday.

I'm confused. I thought rest/sleep was supposed to make you feel better? It seems to be the opposite with me. Every time I sleep for less than 8 hours, I wake up feeling somewhat refreshed.

I had been having episodes like what you are describing. I have been getting 5 hours a night and sometimes I have 6-7 hours when I am super drowsy. With PCS, it seems my sleep has ups and downs. 5 hours of sleep usually makes me feel better too. I suffer from insomnia frequently, sometimes only getting 5 hours of sleep and never going back to sleep, forcing me to stare at the walls until the sun comes up. Gotta love winter, right?

These kinds of sleep irregularities are not uncommon. If you get 12 hours of restless sleep, you will not see the benefit. If you get 5 hours of good sleep with good REM periods, etc. the benefits will usually be more noticeable.

I have these weird situations from time to time.

My best to you all.

Was it a "medicated" 12 hours of sleep vs 5 hours of non medicated? I will take the latter everytime.

No sleep meds for me. They knock me out but make me feel like **** the next day.

I've had a really long stretch of bad functioning days. So, I thought my brain just needed to rest. I turned the heater on in my room and slept like a bear. Woke up feeling like my head was trampled by elephants and couldn't put a freakin sentence together.

Sleep for 5 last night and hey...my brain is working.

About 3-4 hours later...CRASH...and I'm back to feeling like crap.

Brain injuries are weird =P.

Probably a dumb question on my part but how does one know if they're getting REM sleep?

I've had these weird episodes lately too, and a friend suggested taking melatonin. Anyone have any experience with this and advice?

Good question about the REM sleep! I have no idea, but do know that I don't sleep well at all. After a very busy day when I think I am handling things quite well, I will not sleep at all.

The neuro-pyschologist I saw said that 5 or 6 is good enough...as long as you get the rem sleep!

I think it tends to happen early in the sleep cycle...the first few hours are very important. I have also read many different places that getting to bed earlier than midnight is very important. That is something that is difficult for owls, brain injury or not!

I have tried melatonin....different brands work differently for me. I don't like the groggy feeling the next day, but it certainly is worth a try. Maybe it was someone here or in another context that said you need to take it a few hours before your bedtime.

Good luck!

I honestly did not like melantonin. It made me feel totally worse then what I usually do in the mornings.

If you dream, you've definitely had REM sleep. If you don't remember dreaming, it's still possible that you've had REM sleep but forgotten it.

For me, my bad sleep is usually when I am not breathing well. I also need to have some complex carbs in my system to keep my blood sugar up. If either breathing or blood sugar are out of whack, I have stressful dreams, will toss and turn, and wake up feeling miserable.

Magnesium can help with sleep.

I have found that I need to sleep in cotton because it has a consistent feeling of warmth. If I have any odd sensations, like cold feet or an itch, I will not sleep well. I cut off all tags and loose or itchy threads.

But that is my quirkiness. I hope you all can do better.