Is that a generally accepted explanation of why alpha waves appear during sleep,
@WillowJ?
If so, then perhaps the focus here should be on what causes these instances of brief waking moments during sleep.
One obvious possibility is that noises during the night (such as cars driving by) may momentarily wake you. ME/CFS patients generally have a much greater sensitivity to sounds (ie, even during the day, ordinary sounds can be very disturbing and overstimulating to the mind if you have ME/CFS), so I imagine this greater sensitivity to sounds may make ME/CFS patients more easily aroused and thus momentarily awoken from sleep when there are noises during the night.
I have not had any sleep studies done on myself, but I know that I used to get woken up many times during the night because of noises like cars driving by.
My solution is to wear ear plugs while I sleep. This has greatly increased the quality and depth of my sleep.
The best ear plus I have ever found are
Mack's Ear Seals. These are so good, that even when there was a pneumatic drill (jackhammer) just outside my bedroom, breaking up the tarmac on the road in the early morning, I put in these Mack's Ear Seals, and that extremely loud noise outside my house just faded into the distance, and I was able to get back to sleep, and sleep right through all the pneumatic drilling.
The Mack's Ear Seals ear plug actually fits into the ear canal. However, because of this, I don't find Mack's Ear Seals all that comfortable, so I only use them when there are roadworks or similar loud noises outside when I need to sleep.
But on most nights, I just use regular foam-type ear plugs that insert into the outer ear.
