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Can you elaborate on 'treatment'? I'm pretty sure I have delayed phase sleep syndrome or something like it. I also have fibromyalgia syndrome. I feel like I'm

Can you elaborate on 'treatment'? I'm pretty sure I have delayed phase sleep syndrome or something like it. I also have fibromyalgia syndrome. I feel like I'm constantly fighting my body's natural cycle. When I had school/a job that required a specific schedule, I used an alarm clock to get up, and had constant fms flareups and frequent insomnia. When I switched to my current job (at a startup, and no longer required to stick to a specific schedule as long as I'm getting my stuff done), I ditched the alarm clock, and my fibromyalgia pain has vastly improved, just from not trying to force my sleep schedule. But the problem with that, is left to my body's own devices, I tend to want to be awake for about 20 hours, then sleep around 7. Then I start feeling guilty about coming in later and later every day, and there's still a limit to how many hours straight you can work and be productive, and even as flexible as my schedule is, there's still a bit of pressure to work 5 days a week for 8+ hours, not 4 days a week for 10+ hours. And coming into to work between 10pm-4am just never feels right. Once I get to the point where I'm waking up at 8-9pm, I usually have to waste a weekend forcing myself to stay up 24hrs or more to "flip" my schedule back to something reasonable. I hate doing that, because then my entire weekend is spent feeling like a zombie and then it's straight back to work again. So if you've got some more details on how melatonin and a lightbox worked for you, even just a blog post you could point me at, I'd be really appreciative.

th0ma5 15y ago
what you describe sounds a little more like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep-wake_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep-wake_syndrome but i am not a doctor!! i can tell you though the "flipping" thing was something that I would go through like once a month or so, i would basically stay up all like friday night, but then go to bed like 2am sunday morning. so, my thing was like my boss was like "you're just getting insane with your schedule" so I started googling around and came across DPSS, which sounded like me, so I had a visit with my GP, who sent me to a sleep clinic.. their first advice was to do sort of like you and just give into whatever happens naturally, and i wound up doing like a 2~4 am to 10am~12noon thing most of the time, and I felt, well, better rested, and it seemed safer to drive. i work an on-call job for a fortune 500, so they had to go back and forth with the doctors to figure out something that would work in regards to making sure i could sleep uninterrupted. this was an ADA thing. once that was figured out, i started the treatment which was to take melatonin in a small dose at like 11pm and then go to sleep when it felt like i could (and generally practice a whole litany of sleep hygiene practices like avoiding naps unless absolutely necessary, watching caffeine and nicotine in the evening, keeping a journal of it all) ... and then set the alarm for like 8am, and ASAP be in front of a 10k lux light box at the rated distance for a half hour. there are a lot of caveats to all of this, so i would recommend to you or anyone else reading to consult a doctor about all of this. I may be missing sometime important here, so just FYI. I started this on a Friday night into a Saturday as that's when I got the box delivered, and the correct low dosage of the pill. I would say I felt like a million bucks every since then, which was like well, a month ago. Over thanksgiving I was travelling and had two days without the box, and I could definitely feel the afternoon and evening dragging on, and a little more awake at midnight than I had been. That's about all I could say for now. I've pushed this back an hour to see if I can get in a little earlier to work, but that was just yesterday, so we'll see how that goes. I go back for a follow up in February.
- cowpewter 15y ago
  Thank you! Yeah, I mentioned the 20hr/7hr thing because that's what it feels like my body is trying to do. It's hard to say for sure because I've never just completely let myself go natural and journaled it for any length of time - I always get caught up in schedule guilt. I'll also randomly have nights where I sleep 12-18 hours straight, then easily stay up with no fatigue for 24-26hrs, then sleep 4, then stay up only 15-16 then sleep 7-8 again and... It just feels like chaos sometimes. I can definitely relate to the boss saying "your schedule is getting insane." That's where the guilt starts to come in, and boy, all I can say is it's a good thing I'm good at my job and it's worth it to the company to let my schedule fall where I'm most productive. (EDIT: By which I mean, I feel unbelievably grateful and lucky to have such a flexible job.)
  - th0ma5 15y ago
    i recommend talking to a doctor, and making sure you don't drive while sleep deprived. keeping a log of any kind of it may help, but again, i'm not a doctor! :P anyway, bust of luck to you, and for me at least, the "getting away" with something because i was "good" got to be old, and i realized i wasn't getting away with anything or something, i dunno... i guess my point is I felt that way too, and my perspective on it has changed some. best of luck!!!!!
o1iver 15y ago
Just thought I would add my two cents. My situation is a little bit like yours (shifting of start-/end-times, flipping (I do it on a Sunday night usually)). I am a still a student so I guess I don't have the problem of having to match other peoples' schedules, nevertheless I have been trying to fix this for a few months now and two things help a lot: 1). F.lux: it seems like now the computer doesn't keep me awake until 4am anymore. I feel naturally tired at around 11pm. 2). Mental preparation just before falling asleep. Irrespective of what time it is I try to always get up at the same time (that has kinda forced me into a pretty natural rhythm). The only way I manage to do that is by spending at least 5 mins imagining the next morning (kinda like watching yourself in a movie and seeing things step-by-step: I hear the alarm, I blink my eyes, I stretch, I get-up, I go to bathroom, I put the kettle on, I take a shower, ...). That helps a lot (I used to never even hear the alarm-clocks and now I sometimes wake up seconds before it goes off :-)

th0ma5 15y ago

what you describe sounds a little more like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep-wake_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep-wake_syndrome but i am not a doctor!! i can tell you though the "flipping" thing was something that I would go through like once a month or so, i would basically stay up all like friday night, but then go to bed like 2am sunday morning. so, my thing was like my boss was like "you're just getting insane with your schedule" so I started googling around and came across DPSS, which sounded like me, so I had a visit with my GP, who sent me to a sleep clinic.. their first advice was to do sort of like you and just give into whatever happens naturally, and i wound up doing like a 2~4 am to 10am~12noon thing most of the time, and I felt, well, better rested, and it seemed safer to drive. i work an on-call job for a fortune 500, so they had to go back and forth with the doctors to figure out something that would work in regards to making sure i could sleep uninterrupted. this was an ADA thing. once that was figured out, i started the treatment which was to take melatonin in a small dose at like 11pm and then go to sleep when it felt like i could (and generally practice a whole litany of sleep hygiene practices like avoiding naps unless absolutely necessary, watching caffeine and nicotine in the evening, keeping a journal of it all) ... and then set the alarm for like 8am, and ASAP be in front of a 10k lux light box at the rated distance for a half hour. there are a lot of caveats to all of this, so i would recommend to you or anyone else reading to consult a doctor about all of this. I may be missing sometime important here, so just FYI. I started this on a Friday night into a Saturday as that's when I got the box delivered, and the correct low dosage of the pill. I would say I felt like a million bucks every since then, which was like well, a month ago. Over thanksgiving I was travelling and had two days without the box, and I could definitely feel the afternoon and evening dragging on, and a little more awake at midnight than I had been. That's about all I could say for now. I've pushed this back an hour to see if I can get in a little earlier to work, but that was just yesterday, so we'll see how that goes. I go back for a follow up in February.

cowpewter 15y ago
Thank you! Yeah, I mentioned the 20hr/7hr thing because that's what it feels like my body is trying to do. It's hard to say for sure because I've never just completely let myself go natural and journaled it for any length of time - I always get caught up in schedule guilt. I'll also randomly have nights where I sleep 12-18 hours straight, then easily stay up with no fatigue for 24-26hrs, then sleep 4, then stay up only 15-16 then sleep 7-8 again and... It just feels like chaos sometimes. I can definitely relate to the boss saying "your schedule is getting insane." That's where the guilt starts to come in, and boy, all I can say is it's a good thing I'm good at my job and it's worth it to the company to let my schedule fall where I'm most productive. (EDIT: By which I mean, I feel unbelievably grateful and lucky to have such a flexible job.)
- th0ma5 15y ago
  i recommend talking to a doctor, and making sure you don't drive while sleep deprived. keeping a log of any kind of it may help, but again, i'm not a doctor! :P anyway, bust of luck to you, and for me at least, the "getting away" with something because i was "good" got to be old, and i realized i wasn't getting away with anything or something, i dunno... i guess my point is I felt that way too, and my perspective on it has changed some. best of luck!!!!!

o1iver 15y ago

Just thought I would add my two cents. My situation is a little bit like yours (shifting of start-/end-times, flipping (I do it on a Sunday night usually)). I am a still a student so I guess I don't have the problem of having to match other peoples' schedules, nevertheless I have been trying to fix this for a few months now and two things help a lot: 1). F.lux: it seems like now the computer doesn't keep me awake until 4am anymore. I feel naturally tired at around 11pm. 2). Mental preparation just before falling asleep. Irrespective of what time it is I try to always get up at the same time (that has kinda forced me into a pretty natural rhythm). The only way I manage to do that is by spending at least 5 mins imagining the next morning (kinda like watching yourself in a movie and seeing things step-by-step: I hear the alarm, I blink my eyes, I stretch, I get-up, I go to bathroom, I put the kettle on, I take a shower, ...). That helps a lot (I used to never even hear the alarm-clocks and now I sometimes wake up seconds before it goes off :-)