I've experienced a lot of fainting spells, but never really knew what they were until recently. For those of you who don't know a fainting spell is like passing out for a few split seconds or longer, and then snapping to consciousness. It's not a very pleasant experience... especially when they occur one after another for hours at a time. I'm thinking that mine usually stem from lack of sleep and stress, but I've never been to a doctor to get them checked out either.

The scary thing is... most of the time... I can continue regular functions with perfect normality and astounding accuracy. I'll black out and pass to consciousness, having very little memory or awareness of what took place. The best example was probably during my college years. They were also my first experiences.

I used to tutor this kid twice a week for a full hour. For some reason, without fail, almost every tutoring session with him was one large fainting spell for me. I would pass out, snap to, pass out, snap to... for the entire hour. I felt like I was mumbling and probably acted drunk, but yet nobody ever said anything to me that would indicate odd behavior. While I really couldn't put a finger on what occurred while I was passed out, I KNEW I was tutoring him. At the end of the hour, I would always be terrified... What did I say? Did I tell him things that were correct and true? As it turned out... I ALWAYS did. Despite hardly being conscious, I was teaching him correct methods and helping him out.

How the heck did I do it?

I've gone through similar spells a lot during the past year. Even if I was typing up a document of some sort. I'd pass out, and wake up to see that I had continued to write. But yet... the writing was nearly what I would have said had I been conscious.

Has this ever happened to anyone else? I think it's a very interesting phenomenon, though certainly not healthy.

There were a few times during these spells that I was NOT able to perform tasks. In fact, I would try to pull myself out of them, only to miserably fail. It felt like being sucked into a black hole and NOT being able to pull out of it no matter how consciously I wanted to. Those were the worst fainting spells. I'd pretty much sit for hours, unable to do anything because I couldn't MAKE myself stay out of them. Luckily, I get enough sleep now to prevent those kinds.

I actually started to pass out recently. I've only been getting two hours of sleep nowadays, and that's REALLY unhealthy. My parents tell me to sleep, but I don't. Not only I'm an insomniac, but...

I'm sort of stressed about a few things I'm trying to sort out, despite my age.

Sometimes, they're secret things I'm working on in the background to benefit others. Other times, it's other stuff.

But, to get back on topic, yes. I faint for a few seconds, and wake up. Thank God no one's noticed so far except me.

Just the other day, I snoozed in math. Remember when I was talking to you from my phone? After that last comment, I fell asleep.

And the same in my science.
And robotics.
And other things.

No one but me has noticed... But if this gets worse, I'm in for a suspension.

Most times, I bet it is from a lack of oxygen. Your brain lacks oxygen, and therefore it has a hard time functioning. This is most predominant in occurrences called head rushes. You are lying down, or are still for quite a bit. During that time, your breathing starts to slow, getting less oxygen to the brain for you are not doing anything active at the moment. Then, you burst into sudden action after being so still, and the oxygen stream is interrupted. Your brain doesn't get enough oxygen for it to work properly at the moment, and you know the rest. 

Sometimes it may as well be a lack of sleep. Your body needs to regenerate, so not having enough time to do that, your body may not function to its best the next day.

Singelli : I fell into a fainting spell 4 times today in school. I think that I didn't get that much sleep yesterday (which was only 3 hours).

Usually get fainting spells due to lack of sleep.. I try to go with it so I can actually sleep but usually I snap back to normal. Kind of a lame tease when you want sleep :p

Singelli :

Cataplexy maybe? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataplexy

You should just see a doctor about this.

Brigand :  Hmmm... I don't think so. Reading through that article, it mentions that the attacks come with lack of muscle tone and strong emotion. Whenever I have these 'fainting spells', my muscles aren't relaxed and function just as they normally would, and I never experience strong emotions.  (I mean, I guess if you're talking about the ones I couldn't pull myself out of... those would be lack of muscle tone.  But those only happened for a short span of my lifetime.. maybe a few months.)

I have wondered if it was similar to narcolepsy, but I highly doubt anything was wrong with me other than lack of sleep.  I say this because while this happened to me quite regularly for almost a whole year.... it hardly happens to me any more.  I still get fainting spells, sure, but I wouldn't say the frequency is enough to warrant any extreme concern.  I think I'd want to be on a good sleeping schedule for a few months before I was willing to say something was wrong if it continued to occur.  And with how my job operates, I don't think I'll ever get several months of good sleep in a row.  LOL

So no, I haven't seen a doctor about it.

Singelli :

Some of the symptoms just sounded like the ones my friend who has cataplexy has. But if you don't go out like a light bulb if you laugh or get startled, I guess you are in the clear for that one.

Singelli :
If you're willing to have me break something else down for you, I can help add a few things. First, what do you really mean by "fainting spell"? Because medically that may mean something different than you're implying. When you have one of these episodes, is it a complete black out where you lose complete consciousness for a few seconds to minutes, then you wake up weak and confused? Or is it more you feel really tired, then all of a sudden you wake up in the middle of what you were previously doing? Does anybody else in the family have this happen to them? And finally, is there anything that triggers this than you can specifically identify (you don't sound too convinced about sleep), or is it entirely unpredictable?

What I'm trying to tease out if this is a true syncopal episode, which is the fancy medical term for passing out. With a true episode, the "blackout" occurs with the person falling. It can be a sign of multiple disease pathologies, but this is more common once you reach senior citizen ages. That said, 50% of all syncope never is never figured out what the cause is, regardless of all the medical testing available. The one thing I'm trying to ask about with these symptoms is whether it is some form of seizure activity. Most people think seizures are just where people black out and the body starts to shake for a little bit, and lose bladder function at the time. However, there are some forms of seizure that are simply the person looking like they're staring out into space and daydreaming for only a few seconds and go back to whatever they were doing like nothing happened. These are called Absent seizures (pronounced Ab-sawn, think French pronunciation) and commonly seen in school aged children, not people our age.

So in a nutshell, if you don't want to talk about personal stuff like this on a public forum, these are all things to relate to a doctor. It may not hurt to make an appointment and bring it up. They could do some studies to watch how strong your blood flow is, or track the electronic signals through your brain (called an EEG). Certainly not trying to scare here, but just trying to give you some tools to help educate yourself on whether this is something you want to have looked in to. 

Finally, cataplexy is more of a debilitation condition, which would have presented itself in social situations multiple times by now, so I really don't think is something you need to concern yourself with. It's on the same spectrum of narcolepsy, which is randomly just flat out falling asleep due to some sort of cue or stressor. Since people seem to have a rough idea of what narcolepsy is, you can try to compare your spells to that for cataplexy, which really doesn't sound likely in this instance.

Hope you could find this useful, and like always, let me know if you want more info or some clarification.

I'm going to close this thread because it is similar to this one. Although this one was open before, it seems it's been pretty well answered, thanks to mikez913, and is not as open ended as the other.