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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2014 23:44:15 GMT
Just finished half watching a BBC Four program on sleep in animals and it got me thinking about the importance of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep in humans and whether ADHD has a part to play. So just thinking to myself and what I know about REM sleep, which is probably limited, I do know that there appears to be direct correlation between memory and quality of REM sleep. Doing just a bit of research offers a rich variety of memory types to consider, not least spatial, procedural and declarative. Anyway, it's late and I haven't got time to develop this now but there does appear to be some information on this. A quick search has uncovered this appraisal at insideadhd.org which suggests that in children with ADHD, they may get as much sleep as NT children but not as much REM sleep. This is interesting given that many scientists have for years concluded that REM sleep has been instrumental in people consolidating many forms of memory. An obvious link for further investigation me thinks
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Post by shapes on Mar 6, 2014 23:56:42 GMT
Is memory in ADHD actually bad though?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 7, 2014 7:24:41 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Mar 7, 2014 10:06:54 GMT
Is memory in ADHD actually bad though? In two ways. Poor short term memory. Reduced ability to access long term memories. They don't know what you have already memorised but they can (and do) test short term memory as a diagnostic tool. Analogy time
Computers - think of short term memory as RAM. An ADHDer would be short of RAM so handling current data would be restricted by that. Clock speed is fine but bottle necks and overloading are distinctly possible.
Long term memory is more like a hard drive. The information on it is safe but the file handling is damaged so retrieval is unreliable.
Remember that that's an analogy so not 100% accurate (before you start pulling it to pieces )
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Post by twix on Mar 10, 2014 21:51:50 GMT
I don't think I get enough Rem sleep, I am always tired and I dream too much. On that note, I'm off to bed. Night all.
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Post by twix on Mar 10, 2014 21:52:04 GMT
I don't think I get enough Rem sleep, I am always tired and I dream too much. On that note, I'm off to bed. Night all.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2014 22:39:25 GMT
I've certainly not had enough REM sleep. Am seeing double
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Post by mighty on Mar 10, 2014 22:40:00 GMT
It's believable that those with ADHD get more REM sleep because of vivid imaginations and dreaming a lot - I know I dream a lot anyway! (Perhaps it's the quality of REM sleep that counts more..)
I don't know much about it...
But, I think I mentioned EMDR before, which is a treatment for PTSD. Basically patients recall their traumas while moving their eyes to a light or marker. According to the research, it works - but nobody is quite sure how. The hypothesis goes that people process and deal with traumatic memories of experiences (along with trials and tribulations of everyday life) via REM sleep. Accordingly, those suffering with PTSD never got to process their traumas in this way, and still suffer from the same raw feelings they had at the time. The treatment is thought to help because the eye movements kind of kickstart this process and the PTSD unravels.
So... apparently we need REM to stop our memories from getting jumbled up, unprocessed, or in the way of our waking lives. IF those with ADHD do get less quality REM sleep then, perhaps their memories are not processed as effectively as those without. They probably said this kind of stuff in the documentary I guess.
Not my area of expertise, but just some of my semi-naïve thoughts!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2014 10:05:19 GMT
It's believable that those with ADHD get more REM sleep because of vivid imaginations and dreaming a lot - I know I dream a lot anyway! ( Perhaps it's the quality of REM sleep that counts more..) Subtleties abound with each layer-upon-layer in this field of study me thinks. Interesting response Mighty, many thanks. It'll be great for a new generation of humanoids who finally get to grips with what's really happening in our complex brains. Watch this space The HR........
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Post by mighty on Mar 11, 2014 19:44:06 GMT
I don't know what quality entails though, or if there is such a thing! Surely if you're getting 'enough' REM sleep, it's still REM sleep!
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Post by twix on Mar 11, 2014 21:30:50 GMT
I thought that dream sleep wasn't rem sleep? Confused...
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Post by Deleted on Mar 11, 2014 23:53:44 GMT
quick look at wikipedia: "REM sleep is physiologically different from the other phases of sleep, which are collectively referred to as non-REM sleep (NREM sleep). Subjects' vividly recalled dreams mostly occur during REM sleep." Just about to read: " Selective REM sleep deprivation in humans: effects on sleep and sleep EEG." Should be interesting bedtime reading. Either that or "Cowboys and Aliens" on Netflix
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Post by clubby on Jul 28, 2015 8:56:00 GMT
I believe it is REM sleep that is dreaming sleep. I dream every night and it doesn't matter when I wake up; I have always been dreaming. In the
morning I find it hard to stop the dreams - my brain gets locked into the dream whether exciting or scary. My feeling is that I dream too much
and that it is exhausting.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2015 21:43:33 GMT
Hey Journeyman and others. A recent friend of mine was convinced that I had narcolespy because I have what he called 'micro sleeps' when sat on the couch and at night I go straight into REM sleep. I can start dreaming as I'm falling asleep and while I am still aware of it, plus since a child I am usually aware that I'm dreaming and asleep even though I'm not aware of what's going on in reality. I did a bit of on-line research after his thoughts because other friends and boyfriends have made the same observations over the years, albeit without a medical term attached. I decided not to go into it any further as the treatment for ADHD (which I've been diagnosed with) is the same for narcelopsy. Also, there seems to be a cross over in symptoms and confusion in diagnosis, as in - tired narcoleptics (is that a word?) tend to get more hyperactive in response to lack of sleep and ADHD folk tend to get knackered easily with the day-to-day extra energy they're expelling / trying to expel / trying not to expel (delete as appropriate). Doh! I've forgotten my point as was looking up how to spell the damn thing but hey - is food for thought. I guess the answ..zzzzzzzzz Only joking. Ho ho HO,mmm - nah - not up there with my best jokes that one. Anyhow - I've well and truly lost my point now! I guess that I meant to say that the wired brain is easily intrigued and that I'm still practising the art of not attaching too much to one train of thought or of jumping to conclusions (any day now, I swear it!). I just wonder in amongst all the overlap etc. whether one can cause the other or whether the two are individual and just happen to share some symptoms.
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Post by clubby on Jul 31, 2015 9:18:59 GMT
Hi attemptno5. I don't know very much about narcolepsy but I do know what you mean when you say you can be in REM sleep and awake at the same
time. I have experienced this many times. I have been having more of these recently since I have been experimenting with slowing down my racing
mind at night. This sounds crazy but I can sense a brain activity tempo and can slow it down. It must relate to self hypnosis and is very
effective at bringing on sleep.
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Post by marionk on Jul 23, 2016 16:23:35 GMT
Apologies for bumping an old thread, but it's got a lot of just what I've been looking for, and quite a few posters who might notice and add some more.
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Post by shiningbright on Jul 23, 2016 23:18:12 GMT
Talking about sleep and ADHD - I don't know if this s relivent, but I kinda trained my body (more my mind really) to dream even when awake. So if I can't sleep (which is very often, every night even), then I kinda daydream until I start the day again (doesn't help with the tiredness side but does help with the lack of stress that comes tryng trying to sleep when one can't). And, more often then not, t'll lead me into being asleep without my even knowing it. I do have to be very careful what I daydream about because my imagination is almost scary vivid and I've scared myself a few times. I find the 'generic superhero' day dreams most fun and less morally troublesome. I used dolls (barbie not baby lol) right up until I was about 22 to help me sleep, which was when I was able to get better self control of my imagnation, and would use the dolls to act out what it was as was keeping me awake. Lots of soul searching under the guide of what looked to tohers like a frecky game. It's weird but it helped me. I have other techniques I've built over the years also but I have to vary them often so I don't get desensitised to one method. Also, daydream flying rocks! lol (I totally sound wacked out now lol )
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Post by marionk on Jul 24, 2016 8:56:04 GMT
Talking about sleep and ADHD - I don't know if this s relivent, but I kinda trained my body (more my mind really) to dream even when awake. So if I can't sleep (which is very often, every night even), then I kinda daydream until I start the day again (doesn't help with the tiredness side but does help with the lack of stress that comes tryng trying to sleep when one can't). And, more often then not, t'll lead me into being asleep without my even knowing it.
I do have to be very careful what I daydream about because my imagination is almost scary vivid and I've scared myself a few times. I find the 'generic superhero' day dreams most fun and less morally troublesome. I used dolls (barbie not baby lol) right up until I was about 22 to help me sleep, which was when I was able to get better self control of my imagnation, and would use the dolls to act out what it was as was keeping me awake. Lots of soul searching under the guide of what looked to tohers like a frecky game. It's weird but it helped me. I have other techniques I've built over the years also but I have to vary them often so I don't get desensitised to one method. Also, daydream flying rocks! lol (I totally sound wacked out now lol ) Snap! And yeah, there can be scary things too! I'm totally pants at flying, whether in daydream state or lucid dreaming. I rarely manage to get more than a couple of feet off the ground. It's still quite fun to just tuck my feet up and float everywhere though. edit: and drat it, I had 'copied' what I wrote before, but forgot to paste it and now it's gone. Difficulty getting to sleep is very common with ADHD. It's usually reported as being caused by the inability to shut down racing thoughts, but for me that was not a problem until things started to go pear shaped around twenty years ago. My problem started (and still continues to be, along with a bunch of other sleep problems now) with simply being unable to get to sleep at the appropriate time, despite a good and consistent bedtime routine. I started to control my daydreaming, and use it to get to sleep around age ten. (Somewhere else I posted that it was in my teens, following an episode of bullying, but actually that was when I learned to invent my own scenarios.) Before that I used books (first picture books then proper reading) to go to sleep, and it wasn't really a conscious action to start a daydream, but that's how it worked. I suspect that my thumb-sucking was also a subconscious method of getting to sleep. Other than at bedtime, daydreaming was entirely involuntary, and actually, now, I'm not sure if it was daydreaming or microsleeps, going straight into REM, or if they are the same thing. I didn't suffer from daytime sleepiness back then though. :S More recently, I have frequently had the impression that I have daydreamed, dreamed and merely dozed lightly for whole nights, and this might explain my excessive daytime sleepiness. It would also explain why my eds hasn't got any worse, even though my sleep is very broken lately.
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Post by shiningbright on Jul 24, 2016 9:11:23 GMT
Oh @mariaonk that's cheered me up no end today :-) thank you
I used to only be able to fly a little bit, a few feet, but I've since been practicing and can get quite high now. Gotta be careful I'm not seen of course - last thingwe need is reports of a Muslim nikkabi flying around England lol - I'd get arrested lol!!! :-D Keeping it real lol :')
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Post by inaccessiblerail on Aug 3, 2016 16:46:36 GMT
Ahhh this is interesting.
I'm also someone who feels like I dream more than average. My dreams are always really vivid and complicated too. I've always just taken it that I'm processing the sheer amount of crap that I accumulate over the course of the day and that's why they're so involved. I've noticed the intensity of my dreams tends to correlate with the intensity of my days too. I've never really looked into it properly though. I will someday, ahaha.
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Post by marionk on Aug 4, 2016 21:23:11 GMT
The original post in this thread actually refers to an article that suggested that ADHD children have less REM than NTs. I have seen this suggested elsewhere as well, but I find it puzzling, as I have seen far more reports from ADHD people saying they dream a lot, as do I. Proper dreams usually reflect the dominant emotion of the day, but daydreams are more to do with conscious imagination and just plain thinking about things. Most people are usually totally unaware of the contents of their dreams, it's (usually) only when something wakes you up from REM that you remember what you were dreaming about. I was poking around via google, looking into connections between narcolepsy and insomnia, as I have both, and fell down a google rabbit hole and popped out again back with an ADHD connection link
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Post by nigel2 on Aug 5, 2016 9:08:57 GMT
I dream a lot and very vividly (and have ADHD of course). There is something that has been puzzling me for some time and may have relevance here. I had a sleep study done in hospital not that long ago where I had to take naps and had my brain monitored whilst doing so. I know for a fact that I dreamt during some of those naps, at the time I could even have recounted the dreams. Nevertheless, the scan and computer printout emphatically showed that I did not. I wonder if dreaming in people with ADHD is done in other ways as well as in REM sleep? E.g. similar to experiencing waking dreams? I don't know the answer but if true it could explain the findings of the survey mentioned earlier where children with ADHD had less dream sleep (according to the scans)?
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Post by marionk on Aug 5, 2016 17:02:32 GMT
That's very interesting, I mean really, really gobsmackingly interesting.
I am aware that there are different 'depths' of dreaming, and of daydreaming but I kind of assumed that once you were asleep, dreams would show up as REM.
And I'm wondering about the exact same things as you are.
Did anyone suggest a reason why they didn't show up?
Was it a polysomnogram or just the sleep latency test?
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Post by nigel2 on Aug 6, 2016 14:24:08 GMT
Can't remember what the scan was called but will find out and get back to you. It was the full monty, though, with dozens of EEG electrodes glued all over my head. The consultant was very dismissive of the fact that I said I had been dreaming, probably did not fit within his framework of understanding, so he certainly did not pursue it any further. He just assured me that I had not been dreaming. At that time I did not make the link to ADHD so did not pursue it further myself either as I was more interested in getting some sort of help than in arguing with the consultant.
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Post by marionk on Aug 6, 2016 21:33:12 GMT
Can't remember what the scan was called but will find out and get back to you. It was the full monty, though, with dozens of EEG electrodes glued all over my head. The consultant was very dismissive of the fact that I said I had been dreaming, probably did not fit within his framework of understanding, so he certainly did not pursue it any further. He just assured me that I had not been dreaming. At that time I did not make the link to ADHD so did not pursue it further myself either as I was more interested in getting some sort of help than in arguing with the consultant. What an arrogant and stupid thing to say!!!! It does seem like the test must have been the whole deal including monitoring eye movement, or he should have said, 'maybe you were, but it won't show'. I've been referred to a sleep clinic, but it could be a few months wait. Officially I must be seen within 16 weeks, but who knows! I hope it won't be with the same consultant!
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Post by nigel2 on Aug 8, 2016 16:08:24 GMT
Which sleep clinic are you at? I'm at Guy's now (by London Bridge) - that's not where the consultant told me I had not been dreaming btw. Have another apt in a couple of weeks time so will ask about all this then. Feel free to message me off forum if you want to chat more about the sleep clinic and what to expect. Also feel free to ask on forum if you prefer. Both the Maudsley (for ADHD) and the Sleep Clinic now recognise the link between ADHD and sleep problems. When I first went for treatment, both organisations did not! I was led to believe for some time that I had two unconnected medical issues.
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Post by marionk on Aug 9, 2016 12:25:18 GMT
And I just lost the post!! Trying again: I didn't think to ask. I was just glad they could refer me anywhere at all tbh. It will probably be somewhere more local to start with, although trying to find out where that might be, I can't find one that isn't angled towards sleep apnoea, so maybe it will be Guy's.
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Post by nigel2 on Aug 9, 2016 13:35:33 GMT
Addjourneyman,
I tried following up the link you posted that started off this thread, the one about children with ADHD getting less REM sleep. I couldn't locate the article you referred to. The link just led to the website of what appears to be a commercial company called Infexxion. Is this right? Please could you re-post the link to the article on REM sleep?
Thanks,
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lisablue
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Post by lisablue on Aug 17, 2016 13:55:12 GMT
Interesting for me as I have just been diagnosed with sleep apnea and have a CPAP machine to help with my non breathing episodes in the night.
I have mad dreams and remember them easily...sometimes I'm not sure if they are dreams or I'm awake dreaming. When I went in for the polysomography thing with the electrodes it revealed it took me over an hour to drop off and that I had a reduced sleep effeciency of 62% yet I thought I was having a right good kip!!!
I also thought REM included dream sleep as its rapid eye movement...but they reckon sleep disorders can coexist with ADHD!
Dunno about this much but what I deffo do know is I still need an afternoon kip so the machine not solved that ole problemo 😲
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Post by clubby on Aug 17, 2016 21:21:28 GMT
I dream intensely every night.
I have been experimenting with techniques for controlling the racing mind with a lot of success.
When my mind is racing it can take me an hour to remember that I can control it. Then it takes me 3 minutes to fall asleep.
It involves disturbing the rhythm of the fast thoughts until you start to see images. There is a musical term which describes the process. I have forgotten what it is called. Will look it up.
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