Gmail in continuous sync. Battery draining. Help topic

This just started a couple of days ago and I honestly dont know why it started. I noticed that my battery started to drain A LOT. Discovered that the Gmail sync was in continuous sync for long stretches at a time. Like a half hour of syncing then off for two minutes then on again for 20-30 minutes then off again, this goes on till 3 hours later my battery is down to 51 percent. But this keeps going till the battery is dead. I have turned off many of the play store and google.play syncs to just keep the email on and it still does the same thing. Gmail is the second most battery user right below Screen. But screen gets turned off and the Gmail stays on even when the screen is off. I have to turn Gmail off manually and finally the "sync" circle on my notifications tab disappears. Any one has any ideas? Thanks.