Sleep Issue

Post Reply New Topic

Due to changing circumstances (good) in my life (that I am unable to change) I have found it necessary to change my sleep schedule. Typically I would go to bed around four in the morning and sleep until one in the afternoon. Now however I find it necessary to be awake at seven in the morning. I am not a night owl by nature. However, I purposefully made my self a night owl in 1999. I had the oppertunity to make two friends. Both of these friends were night owls. In order to get together, telephone or IM it had to be after seven or eight in the evening. Not wanting to pass on an oppertunity to make friends I gradually adjusted my schedule.

Now however both friends have had to become day people. One took a job position that required days. The other had to tend to his wife as she become unable to do much for herself due to an accident. Now night has become quite a lonely time for me. I have tried everything I can think of to reset my circadia (sleep) pattern. I styed up 48 hours straight recently. I fell asleep at eleven that night and woke up at about six the next morning. However the following night, 1 AM came and went and not only was I awake but not even tired yet. My doctor prescibed a sleep aid but that had me out of it for about two days. He suggested half a dose. That still had me in la-la land for a few days. If I just lay in bed not tired I toss and turn and proceed to get a bad headache.

It is important that I make the adjustment back to days as soon as possible. Any advise would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

I have a constant problem of my sleeping pattern shifting forward. It we be hard
for someone (me) who has such a major problems to give addvice but I will anyway.

1. In general it takes 1 day to adjust to each hour of change.
2. Sunlight will help reset your clock.
3. Try caffiene to stay awake
4. Maybe try meletonin(follow bottle as how to take)
5. I get massive headache trying to change sleep pattern so take pain medicine
6. Try exercise a few hours before the time you need to sleep.
7. Get your body temp up then as it comes down you feel sleepy(bath, exercise)

TheMachine1,

Thanks.

I will try some of these things. I assume you mean by '1 day to adjust' you are inferring I should try to go to bed one hour earlier each night until I reach my desired time?

Well maybe , I think what I mean is your body will reject any faster rate of change.
In my life I have never been able to shift backwards Its much easier to stay up one more hour than it is to sleep one hour eariler.

I have a very nocturnal schedule - if I am diurnal too long, I feel like I'm going to have a nervous breakdown (too much noise, too many people, etc).

I've found it necessary, of course, to adjust my rhythms at times for various purposes. In my experience, pulling an all-nighter does not really work well at all. If I lengthen my day I find it throws me right off a 24 hour cycle altogether, and I overshoot the correction. I usually plan to do this over the course of 2 full days.

The best thing to do, I find, is to just go to bed at my usual time, and make myself get up in about 4-5 hours, or whatever the minimum amount of time is necessary for me to be able to get through that day without taking a nap, which could be disastrous. You may have to experiment some to determine how much sleep is the minimum for you.

I plan for a day where I can avoid any mental strain (for me, this means a day where I don't have to be around anyone or out in public). But, I place some physical strain on myself - cleaning out closets or tackling some other project. At the end of they day, I want to feel exhausted from both exertion and a lack of sleep. It should be a hard, nasty day - the kind where I can't wait for it to end.

I want to actually be going to bed earlier on that day than my target bedtime. So, if I want to be sleeping 11pm to 6 or 7 am, I want it so that I will be straining to stay awake by 8pm on the first day, so that it will take a real feat of willpower to stay up to 9pm. This is because there is a good chance I will sleep more than 8 hours that night.

The next day, I usually feel better than the previous one but I'll still be drained and tired and out-of-sorts. If everything's gone as described so far, I take it easy on this day. I relax, but I make sure I don't do the sorts of things that I get wrapped up in, things that cause me to lose sense of time. I take a shower just before I go to bed. I make sure I've had proper meals that day.

This usually works for me very well (although, over a period of about 2 weeks, my rhythym gravitates back to a nocturnal state because I can no longer tolerate being deprived of the peaceful quiet space I get at night). The only problem is, that it takes a couple of days during which I'm functioning at a very reduced level.

as of me typing this post it is 03.31am here in the uk, i cant sleep

i'm happy i don't have trouble sleeping i can drink coffee before bed, and do all the time and i sleep with my T.V. on volume muted. sleep just comes so natural for me, i think its because i have such an overactive mind during the day that no matter what i do i always fall alseep fast. horray for me!

Ugh, I'm having the *exact* same problem.

When I start college, I've got an 8:00'er and I want to be prepared, so I've been getting up early.

I can get up okay, but I'm just tired or grumpy for the rest of the day, regardless of how much sleep I've had. It feels terrible. I wanna go back to my old schedule!

What's especially frustrating getting used to is all the distractions. grrr

When I went to college in 1993 I took sleeping pills my first year. I took Ambien
. It was safe and effective but I think there is a number of safer sleeping pills
available today. So ask your doctor about it if its critical you get to sleep.

I've had the same problem all my life.
A few years ago i used to have a constantly shifting sleeping pattern.
After a week or two it would be me living at night and sleeping by day.
2 weeks later i would be living by day again.
It never would stop shifting because i needed to be REALLY tired to where my eyes would hurt until i could fall asleep.
Now i'm using sleeping pills and have perfect control over my sleeping patern fortunately.
I have to remember not to eat at night though, or they won't work.

It seems a lot ofus Auties have had sleep issues, I know I do myself, I have tried to set a Bedtime too (which is Ironic cause I use to hate Bedtimes).

I have concluded that if and when I have kids if any of em end up Autistic like me and they have sleep troubles im so totally gonna still let the child be awake at night if unable to sleep (sure I would ask the child to at least be quiet and not disturb others but still why would I force Child to sleep if sleep is impossible or difficult).

Lucky for me, I can drift of to sleep in my bed. Or actually anywhere. Give me a blanket and pillow and plop me anywhere and I could still drop off. Yet I suffer from mild depression.

In wintertime I often sleep well, but in summertime, like now for instance, i often have sleeping problems. I have to take 10 mg:s of diazepam (the same as in Valium) to get a good nigths sleep.

Hi,

I have a problem with getting to sleep on the right side of midnight..3 AM is my usual time. Often I will type fan fictiuon or essays, and most of them are the best work I do. Last week I had to be up early (out of the house by 8.30AM) to get my bus. So I sat and had (at 11PM a valerian tea followed (at midnight) by a double valerian tea.

It worjked. I slept, and was awake by 6AM.

Give it a try.

JulieArticuno

Problem sounds very familiar. I have pulled all-nighters before when I suddenly needed to wake up very early the next morning (generally I can pretty much determine my own working hours) - but there's a catch, for me at least. It seems that after having stayed awake for 24 hours or so, my "reserve system" kicks in, and the mission of my reserve system is to keep me awake, at all costs. Including the following night. So if I head to bed after 36 or so hours of wakefulness, I find myself being shaken awake just as I drift off, sometimes by panic attacks. Generally I won't be able to sleep until the normal 4-5 AM time.