Fatigue + Too Much Sleep + Sedentary Life= Harmful?

[imapumpkin]

So I keep reading articles about how getting too much sleep and leading a sedentary life is more harmful to your health than getting not enough sleep. To some extent I just feel like this is another health and wellness scare hysteria that might be being overexaggerated, although of course I am concerned that my need for lots of sleep is increasing my risk of poor health (unrelated to POTS obviously).

The way I deal with my fatigue is, if my body is telling me I need the sleep, I sleep. Mostly I get about 9 hours a night, but sometimes 30-60 minutes for or less. I don't see the point in peeling myself out of bed after 7-8 hours of sleep just to feel miserably exhausted all day as opposed to just very very tired.

Overall I'm concerned that the severe restrictions on my physical activity (can't really exercise, sitting for a big part of the day, lots of sleep) from my POTS is going to cause other problems later on. How are we supposed to stay otherwise healthy when we're stuck with a sedentary life?

[gjensen]

I think that some of us would need more sleep than the average person. I would not worry about that, but I also feel that we should get what exercise that we can. We certainly need to be as active as we can be.

[xRobin]

I'm concerned about being sedentary as well!

The thing is that being sedentary typically goes along with a host of other bad things. My doctor says that his "healthy" sedentary patients usually have a lot of overlapping health issues - obesity, metabolic syndrome or diabetes, high blood pressure, they might smoke or drink excessively, or have very poor eating habits. While I'm sure lack of exercise isn't a good thing, it's probably difficult to control for in some of the big longitudinal studies. It's just one of many risk factors for poor health outcomes.

So, the best thing to do is probably be as active as your body can handle, and try to work on things you can control like being a healthy weight or eating a healthful diet of whole foods.

I didn't know about 9 hours of sleep being bad! I think it's probably better than getting too little, after having periods of insomnia I welcome long sleeps.

[Nymph]

I sleep at least 9 hours a night, often 10. I can sleep 12-13 hours a few times a month. If I sleep much less for several days in a row I feel terrible, and my autoimmune symptoms start to flare. However, I am not sedentary. I exercise moderately almost every day. I don't know how healthy this is long-term but it keeps me functional for daily life. We have to work with what we've got. For me, sleep is the glue that holds the rest of me together.

[Jan]

Articles written for "normal" people just don't apply to us. There are tons of articles on how to reduce salt in your diet, lower your blood pressure etc. that simply don't apply to us. I think the same is true about sleep. What is "average" or healthy for other people isn't the same as for us. I need 10 hours a night and I wish I could get by with less, but I just don't feel good all day if I get less. Before POTS, I needed 9 hours all my life. For every one person who gets by on 6 hours of sleep, there has to be one us us who needs 10 hours if the average is 8.