I’ve meditated a lot in the past to the point where I have a very strong representation of my inner mental state; and because of this it’s glaringly obvious to me when I’m even slightly mentally impaired from even minor sleep disturbances. I think some people may not notice the cognitive attenuation as acutely and for others it may not bother them much.

But if it bothers you keep investigating. As far as exercise making it worse; I’m not sure about that. One thing I do know is that the microbiome plays a key role in exercise recovery, and it’s possible that if you have impaired homeostasis in the gut it could be responsible for sleep disturbances. Maybe you could check your RHR and HRV for the hours or days after a session of exercise and see how long it takes you to return to baseline. People with ideal microbiome profiles return to baseline remarkably quickly even when they don’t have great cardiovascular fitness (from my understanding of the literature). This next point is a bit speculative but another possibility is that exercise forces more slow wave and rem sleep. These are the periods in which people are the most likely to suffer apnea events for those who are susceptible to it. If you’re one of those individuals then the increased number of those events could leave you feeling less refreshed. So that’s another thing that could be worth looking into