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This post on the front page was SO timely for us! My son (16) was feeling very sleepy and tired the past week. On Friday he took a brief nap at 5pm, but woke up

by Jun8 4y ago

This post on the front page was SO timely for us! My son (16) was feeling very sleepy and tired the past week. On Friday he took a brief nap at 5pm, but woke up next morning, after 15 hours. This morning when I went to wake him up at 6am he just couldn’t make it so I let him stay at home. This never happened before.

sillysaurusx 4y ago
Please have him do a sleep study. It turned out that I had undiagnosed narcolepsy for decades. Sleeping 15 hours is exactly what I used to do. It's a low cost high return kind of thing. If I'd had early diagnosis, I wouldn't have been fired due to getting jobs that really, really wanted my butt in a chair at exactly 9am. (https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1392213804684038150 https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1392213804684038150) That said, the rate of narcolepsy is extremely small, so there's probably nothing to worry about. But hey, it happened to me, so maybe worry a teensy tiny bit.
- jaggederest 4y ago
  Add sleep apnea to that. I don't have it myself, but some of my friends had a night-and-day difference in their life as a result of getting their obstructive sleep apnea treated. Significant weight loss, depression gone, no headaches, doing well in life instead of struggling every day.
  - kimixa 4y ago
    One of my friends effectively dropped out of university due to sleep apnea. He just wouldn't be able to get up for lectures or engineering labs, or be so out of it he had difficulty absorbing the material. A shame as he was a sharp guy, and has struggled with things in the decade since due to various knock-on reasons. We used to laugh about how loud he snored echoing through the house - but looking back this was more a symptom of a medical issue than a joke. It's a failure of modern western society IMHO where we see people actually needing sleep as "lazy", rather than a requirement to actually be their best.
    - paulmd 4y ago
      > It's a failure of modern western society IMHO where we see people actually needing sleep as "lazy", rather than a requirement to actually be their best. another one is that we let the morning people set the rules. If your butt isn't in a chair at 8am cranking out widgets you're "lazy" but the morning people can go home and be in bed at 8pm and they're virtuous and hardworking. Our society has an implicit bias in favor of the morning people and against the evening people. And I think that amplifies a lot of the "people who need sleep" problems because it's not just needing sleep in general, your sleep patterns had better align to the prevailing social norm too. If you'd rather live 10-7 instead of 8-5... tough shit. And even remote jobs sometimes have meetings/etc that you can't avoid. One of the interesting ideas about autism is the "night owl" tendency may have been socially desirable in the past... when your life is on the line, it's good to have someone who can reliably be awake all night and focus on small details that might signal danger. But now it's maladaptive since everything runs 8-5 and we are in considerably less danger of being eaten by predators. (it is unnecessary to medicalize everything, even if it's just that some people prefer to work later, that should be enough. But there seems to be some basis to the connections between autism and sleep problems, something like 80% of asperger's diagnosees have comorbid sleep problems. That seems like the kind of link you really don't see that often or strongly.)
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    This was me in high school and early college. Sleep apnea, not even overweight (which is pretty rare, especially for a kid). It was a pure miracle that I was functional at all but yeah, slept easily 14 hours a night and looked like a zombie during the day. Principal thought I was depressed.
isk517 4y ago
This describes a lot of what my life was like between the ages of 17 to 20. I would sleep for 12+ hours at a time if I got the chance and would also take constant naps. Got tested for a few things but nothing ever came up. Eventually my sleep patterns returned to normal and these days I get by on 8-9 hours a sleep a night.
aaron695 4y ago
[dead]
cperciva 4y ago
In addition to things like sleep apnea, this could be a viral illness (mononucleosis is famous, but there are other "post-viral fatigue" culprits) or even type 1 diabetes (before I was diagnosed, the first sign I noticed was sleeping 16 hours a day). Has your son lost weight recently? There a lot of possibilities but I'd encourage you to not just write this off as "he's a teenager". He didn't just become a teenager in the last week.
chasd00 4y ago
i've had this happen a few times each semester, I go to wake up my 13 year old for school and the look on his face is just pure exhaustion. I just say "dude, go back to sleep" and around noon he gets up and comes wandering into my office. It may be growth spurts or just staying up too late after bedtime but some days i just let him sleep. There's nothing happening at school he can't handle the next day anyway.

by Jun8 4y ago

sillysaurusx 4y ago

Please have him do a sleep study. It turned out that I had undiagnosed narcolepsy for decades. Sleeping 15 hours is exactly what I used to do. It's a low cost high return kind of thing. If I'd had early diagnosis, I wouldn't have been fired due to getting jobs that really, really wanted my butt in a chair at exactly 9am. (https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1392213804684038150 https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1392213804684038150) That said, the rate of narcolepsy is extremely small, so there's probably nothing to worry about. But hey, it happened to me, so maybe worry a teensy tiny bit.

jaggederest 4y ago
Add sleep apnea to that. I don't have it myself, but some of my friends had a night-and-day difference in their life as a result of getting their obstructive sleep apnea treated. Significant weight loss, depression gone, no headaches, doing well in life instead of struggling every day.
- kimixa 4y ago
  One of my friends effectively dropped out of university due to sleep apnea. He just wouldn't be able to get up for lectures or engineering labs, or be so out of it he had difficulty absorbing the material. A shame as he was a sharp guy, and has struggled with things in the decade since due to various knock-on reasons. We used to laugh about how loud he snored echoing through the house - but looking back this was more a symptom of a medical issue than a joke. It's a failure of modern western society IMHO where we see people actually needing sleep as "lazy", rather than a requirement to actually be their best.
  - paulmd 4y ago
    > It's a failure of modern western society IMHO where we see people actually needing sleep as "lazy", rather than a requirement to actually be their best. another one is that we let the morning people set the rules. If your butt isn't in a chair at 8am cranking out widgets you're "lazy" but the morning people can go home and be in bed at 8pm and they're virtuous and hardworking. Our society has an implicit bias in favor of the morning people and against the evening people. And I think that amplifies a lot of the "people who need sleep" problems because it's not just needing sleep in general, your sleep patterns had better align to the prevailing social norm too. If you'd rather live 10-7 instead of 8-5... tough shit. And even remote jobs sometimes have meetings/etc that you can't avoid. One of the interesting ideas about autism is the "night owl" tendency may have been socially desirable in the past... when your life is on the line, it's good to have someone who can reliably be awake all night and focus on small details that might signal danger. But now it's maladaptive since everything runs 8-5 and we are in considerably less danger of being eaten by predators. (it is unnecessary to medicalize everything, even if it's just that some people prefer to work later, that should be enough. But there seems to be some basis to the connections between autism and sleep problems, something like 80% of asperger's diagnosees have comorbid sleep problems. That seems like the kind of link you really don't see that often or strongly.)
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  This was me in high school and early college. Sleep apnea, not even overweight (which is pretty rare, especially for a kid). It was a pure miracle that I was functional at all but yeah, slept easily 14 hours a night and looked like a zombie during the day. Principal thought I was depressed.

isk517 4y ago

This describes a lot of what my life was like between the ages of 17 to 20. I would sleep for 12+ hours at a time if I got the chance and would also take constant naps. Got tested for a few things but nothing ever came up. Eventually my sleep patterns returned to normal and these days I get by on 8-9 hours a sleep a night.

aaron695 4y ago

[dead]

cperciva 4y ago

In addition to things like sleep apnea, this could be a viral illness (mononucleosis is famous, but there are other "post-viral fatigue" culprits) or even type 1 diabetes (before I was diagnosed, the first sign I noticed was sleeping 16 hours a day). Has your son lost weight recently? There a lot of possibilities but I'd encourage you to not just write this off as "he's a teenager". He didn't just become a teenager in the last week.

chasd00 4y ago

i've had this happen a few times each semester, I go to wake up my 13 year old for school and the look on his face is just pure exhaustion. I just say "dude, go back to sleep" and around noon he gets up and comes wandering into my office. It may be growth spurts or just staying up too late after bedtime but some days i just let him sleep. There's nothing happening at school he can't handle the next day anyway.