Reduced REM Sleep? Help

[ConfusedSleep]

Hello, im a 22 year old male suffering from chronic fatigue for roughly 4 years now.
I am constantly tired and thus often confused with memory issues. Sleep does not help me at all. While I dont have any trouble sleeping (i never consciously wake up during the night) it just doesent reduce my tiredness at all. Im tired every minute of every day immediately after waking up.

This is why i had a sleep study done. The results were that there were no noticeable issues with my sleep, except for a reduced amount of REM sleep. Then they just sent me home so I assumed that the lack of REM sleep has no negative effect on my health.

However, out of curiousity I did some research on the internet and since im not a doctor I cannot judge the results:
Apparently 25% REM-percentage are considered to be normal (decreasing to 15-20% at ages 50+), with a REM-Latency (time until your first REM phase occurs) of ~90 minutes.

My REM percentage is >5%< with a REM-Latency of 2,5 hours.

Unfortunately I couldnt find anything about this kind of situation on the internet. The only disorders I was able to find were related to the opposite: decreased REM-Latency and increased REM percentage.

Again, I dont have any medical knowledge whatsoever and I usually trust my doctors but it seems so logical to me that a significantly reduced amount of REM sleep would lead to the exact symptoms Im experiencing (especially since disturbed REM sleep seems to have a negative impact on your memory).

I'd greatly appreciate if someone could explain this to me. An explanation why a reduced amount of REM sleep cannot cause any problems would help me just as well.

[Heiferly]

John,

After "sleeping on it," I have some other thoughts for you. Have your doctors tested for hormonal and/or vitamin and mineral imbalances that could contribute to your fatigue? I'm thinking of everything from thyroid and adrenal issues, to paraneoplastic syndromes, to antinuclear antibodies for autoimmune disorders, to vitamin/mineral/electrolyte imbalances (esp B vitamins, anemia, or hypokalemia).

I think your intuition that a second sleep study could be helpful is spot-on. My first sleep study was interpreted as completely normal, which is very odd considering how obvious my narcolepsy was in my second study. I'm pretty confident the first study I had done was botched; it was done in a small-town clinic and I don't have much faith in their expertise, especially vs the nationally ranked hospital where I had my second one done. If you have another study done, will you go to the same clinic, or get a second opinion from somewhere else?

Since you so kindly said you hope there's treatment for my conditions, I wanted to mention that there's a great deal of symptomatic treatment but no cure for any of the diseases I have at this time. I have a very good support system of friends and family, and that keeps my quality of life up.  :-)  I hope you too have a strong support system.

Cheers, H.

[ConfusedSleep]

Hey, thank you very much for your reply and sorry that mine took so long:
As far as I know my deep sleep stage is normal with a percentage of 30%, due to the missing REM sleep my light-sleep is extended to 65%.

Thats why I assumed that the lack of REM sleep might be causing trouble here.

I tried a lot of different things in the past years concerning my behaviour: More activity, less activity, less stress, more sleep, less sleep, changes to my diet and various other changes regarding my sleep. Each of those changes for several months. My fatigue however remained the same. It is really a constant symptom. There are days on which more exhaustion gets added to my "base-fatigue" if I had a lot of stress or activities, but there are never any on which I feel more awake.

This lack of variation leads me to the conclusion that there has to be some kind of constant underlying problem.

It is entirely possible that the lack of REM-sleep was an isolated incident on the night in which the sleep study was performed, but I think I'd rather participate in a 2nd sleep study than buying a tracker. The advice is great, but I personally would like to avoid buying a device to investigate a problem that might not even exist. Once it is verified that my sleep-pattern is disturbed a tracker-device will become a valid option though.

At this point I just dont believe that my symptoms can be cured solely by a change of lifestyle.

By the way: Thank you for mentioning Dysautonomia. Ive never heard of it before even though I did a lot of personal research concerning health issues in the last few years. I hope there is some kind of treatment for both of your conditions.

Best regards
John

[Heiferly]

You are in luck! REM sleep is the sleep subject I have the most expertise in! This is because I have a disease that revolves around disordered REM sleep (narcolepsy with cataplexy).

So, first off, you may find it reassuring to know that REM sleep, contrary to popular misconception, is not "deep sleep." Deep sleep is actually NREM stages III and IV. These are the stages of sleep that are physically restorative to the body, and it is deficiency of these stages (due to excessive REM sleep) that causes people with narcolepsy to never feel rested, no matter how much sleep we get. However, and this is the caveat that I think is most significant in your case, REM sleep does have an important function. During REM sleep, we dream, and during this time we are "consolidating" memories and things we learned during the day. This is *possibly* one contributing source to the brain fog you're experiencing with your chronic fatigue syndrome, though it's important to note that brain fog can be a direct symptom of CFS itself, so it would be hard to separate these variables.

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that research into sleep architecture is still ongoing, so there are many things about sleep we don't know yet.

I do think it may be possible for you to improve your REM sleep. I have another condition, generalized dysautonomia, which has some overlap with CFS so I understand what you're up against here. One thing that has helped me was getting one of those "fitness tracker" wearables that tracks your sleep for you by measuring small movements of your wrist. I have the Jawbone Up24, but there are many different options that can do this for you, in varying price ranges. Unfortunately, health insurance does not cover these at this time. What these devices can do is help you identify which nights you get more REM and which you get less, and record what time you went to bed and woke up; what you ate for dinner the night before; whether you had any caffeine or alcohol the day before; how much exercise you got and what time of day you did it; any variables that you think could possibly affecting your sleep. This kind of detailed tracking can help you fine-tune your sleep habits. You can log this data right here on MedHelp from either your computer or your iPhone using this tracker:

http://www.medhelp.org/land/sleep-tracker

I hope this information is helpful to you. I understand how troublesome daytime fatigue and sleepiness can be. Let me know if there's any other information I can get for you. Cheers, H.