Hi, I cannot breath and wake up with deep breath with my mouth while falling asleep ( not in ongoing sleep just in transition ). Also, I experience adrenalin rush in my body and hypnic jerks. This problem comes out of blue and I am struggling with this problem for a week each night again and again. Some nights I cannot sleep before 4 - 5 am. I wake up after 3 or 4 hours. Is anyone here who has experienced these kind of problems or any suggestions? Can it be a kind of sleep apnoea? I am very scared.
I am no expert, but I do have similar symptoms occasionally. I observed that these symptoms are much pronounced when I am anxious. Relaxing for sometime before sleep, meditation before sleep(headspace is great) are some things which worked for me. Please try them, hope you feel better soon.
Thank you..
But I am thinking if this happens again what if I cant fall asleep ever? what if my brain lost ability to breathe automatically?. That thoughts makes it worse.
happens to me almost every night.
Hi James,
This is a scary and nasty thing. I had it, too.
It was confirmed in the sleeping lab that my oxygen levels made a sudden drop in my sleep onset phase. It kept me awake because I didn’t get enough air and it was accompanied by a painful hypnic jerk.
Now the solution:
Although my estrogen levels were within the normal range, I was prescribed an estrogen blocking drug as the jerks worsened under the contraception pill.
Ok, this helped a lot. The drug that I started to take is a so-called aromatase inhibitor. Thus when my estrogen levels dropped, it became better.
It must have to do with serotonin as this weird thing that I had also aggravated under a serotonin agonist used for migraines. But the doctors aren’t sure why this happened to my body.
At least, it’s gone and I can sleep again.
Hope it helps 