Twitch, shallow breathing 'brain zap' pressure in head as crossing into sleep

I've had this for about 8 months now. I got better after stopping taking my meds about 3 months ago but it's getting bad again and I can't find the cause.

I can usually tell when I will end up not being able to sleep as my body will feel almost cotton and I will feel an excessive need to stretch a random part of my body.

My head feels full and has a lot of pressure.

I will get this constantly for hours straight, my head will be too heavy to get out of bed, so I'll drift off again and it repeats. It's worse the more tired I feel.

Ive since gone to bed 5 hours ago, and decided to force myself out of bed to sit downstairs and write this.

When I wake up suddenly my breathing feels like it stops, and sometimes it will be combined with a twitch, my brain will feel a 'zap' and/or my chest will feel tight for a second. I will sometimes twitch and speak during sleeping and my partner says my breathing patterns are strange, in that I will breathe out, pause, and then push out more air. I've only woken up once breathing out like this and feeling like I have no air and subsequently woke up shocked gasping for a breath.

I'm stuck between sleep apnea and hypnic jerks. I need to go back to my doctors for tests but I wondered if anyone could shine light on what this could be?

These tend to go on for hours and I don't fall asleep for atleast 4 hours.

Im usually excessively tired a few hours into the day even on nights without the issues with my sleep.

I sometimes regularly get up in the night for the toilet too so I don't know if this is also waking me up and I'm not realising.

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