Possible explanation for aspies' insomnia

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Wow, that totally fits me. It hasn’t caused me any big problems thou until a couple of months ago when I started my new job, because I was home schooled as a kid and my mom just let me sleep whenever I wanted to.

Thanks for posting this link it’s nice to know what causes things. But at the same time this is awful I kept thinking I would be able to adjust if I just tried a little harder to sleep at the right time. Also I think I’ve got a non 24 hour cycle and I have no idea what kind of hours I’ll ever be able to adjust to.

Why should this be so comen with people who have AS?

If I did not have to get up in the morning, I would prefer to stay up most of the night and get out of bed at about 11am, if I have to get up early, I am still unable to get up go to sleep until about 3 or 4am and I feel tired all day.

Sounds familiar. If I am allowed to determine my own hours (which currently I am), I will rarely fall asleep before four o' clock.

Then again, back when I was in high school, I had no problem waking up at 6:30 every day and adjusting my sleep cycle accordingly.

about 5 or 6 hours at night and a nap during the day is the way I function

I was working night and could even deal with going to bed in the morning untill about noon and than taking a nap in the evening before going to work.

right now i could do anything I want and go to bed around midnight and get up around 5 or 6 am and after lunch take a nap

That sounds about right for my bf who we think is Aspie. He goes to bed anywhere between 2am and 6am and sleeps til afternoon.

I sleep usually between 10pm and 4am but only 4 hours. I have always slept about 4 hours even as a baby and it has always seemed ok, but then how can I compare.

I would also lie in bed for at least 2 hours, as a kid, watching the numbers on my digital clock change .

There was a post here a while back where some guy had an idea that we are descended from a nocturnal variety of human... this would not only explain the insomnia issues but the sensitivity to stimuli (since at night there is no bright light, and there is less noise).

Sounds weird, but it also makes sense.

I think it means sleeping badly is supposed to make you sleep more deeply the next night but in people with insomnia it has a reverse effect.

" Researchers expected to find only sluggish activity in the brains of healthy young people who took a simple word test after staying awake for 35 hours. They found instead that while parts of the sleep-deprived brains churned with activity during the test, another part of the brain -- the language center -- shut down."
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sleep deprivation is common in trucking, I'm not sure if it takes a toll on truck drivers after decades or if just ret*ds stay at the job for decades and anyone with half a brain moves on. It sure seemed like most of the biggest ret*ds in trucking had been at it for decades

Yep, sounds like me as well. 3 AM - 11 AM is the best time to sleep!

It might explain my problem if only my sleep pattern STAYED at 3 a.m. to 11 a.m... but it keeps drifting forward until, eventually, I'm going to sleep at 10 a.m., then 3 p.m., then very early, then very late... Of course, that's only approximate; sometimes I'm tired hours earlier or later than I should be.

I think perhaps I have a longer sleep cycle than most humans--maybe 26 hours rather than 24 hours long--and just plain irregular.

I must thank everyone for writing their tales of sleep disorder I ashamedly must say I threatened to chuck daughters boyfriend out if he didn't get this sorted out, so I now stand/ or sit with my embarrasement and say I am sorry A for being such a nag.
You see when A came to live with us I didn't know alot about Aspergers or it's related behaviour, C and A went to visit his boarding school a while ago and one of the teachers told C that one of the problems they had with A was getting him up in the mornings, she didn't tell the teacher that we still do.
A sleeps when he wants and gets up when he wants and no amount of nagging or persuading will get him up any quicker, he usually goes to bed about 4am and will get up about about 3 or 4pm, if we try to wake him before he complains that he is still tired and that he hasn't slept well, the other day he slept ten hours straight. I do try to get him up earlier but it doesn't work, he just gets irratable, I thought it was depression but now I am not so sure, if it was depression then he would be sleeping properly maybe. But he complains of disturbed sleep, last night he went to bed about 4am then woke about 7:30am, and couldn't go back to sleep so he came downstairs and took a Kalm tablet, while waiting for it to work went on the internet. went back to bed and has practically been in bed most of the day, he came down about 5:30 had his dinner and by 7:30 was on his bed napping, he did say he had been awake a few hours before but was on his computer in his room before he came down for dinner at 5:30.
Before he came to live with us he would get up at the last minute possible to get to work, come home eat and sleep or talk with C on MSN, but the weekends he mainly slept all the time.
What C and I are going to do is for three weeks write down what time he goes to sleep and what time he wakes up and just leave him to it, sort of an experiment to see what his sleep patern is like left alone. Maybe he can sort it out himself. I just feel so lost that I can't help him.

When C was little she wouldn't fall asleep untill 11 or 12 pm, her brother would have his head on the pillow by nine and be asleep the minute it hit the pillow, but C was always still awake so she would read till about 12 midnight. But she would be up and awake as her brother by 7am. B will sleep in late if he can and I do nag him as well, but he doesn't complain about not sleeping properly and he doesn't wake irratable.

That sounds right, I actually recently got diagnosed with this. I wouldn't worry about it but I have to be at school at 7:15 am, so I take Melatonin now, which helps a little, I have AS too.

In my opinion, we end up thinking a whole bunch and entertaining ourselves with our thoughts, which ends up with us taking more time to fall asleep.

Our brains are always on. You have to be near 0% energy to actually fall asleep.

i used to get really bad insomnia as a teenager. These days i've got the reverse problem, I sleep too much.