[Merrikate]

Hello, everyone! I am a newbie in this forum, and so glad to have found you. Just replied to Lisa's post, but on finding so many other young people here who are struggling with this socially different syndrome, wish to repeat what I said to her for everyone to sample:

Lisa, I am 62 and have dealt with DSPS all my life. Both my adult kids have to cope with theirs, too. The good news is that you will find it easier to manage more normally as time goes by, provided you stick to a decent schedule as best you can. You may even outgrow it, or have years of normal sleep hours.

As for me, I always had to struggle with morning classes both as a student as well as in my long career as a teacher, and life was MUCH easier and more productive if my days could have a later start than most people's. When you are able to influence your own timetable, try to pick classes that start mid morning or later. In the workplace, try to find jobs that allow you to arrive and leave later than conventional hours.

Other people will always be a bit sceptical about this being a real 'disorder', but it is, simply because it makes us different from the majority. Yes, you can live a full, happy, and busy life of health and fun and responsible achievements. You will handle all of it a lot better by being cheerful and accepting, and telling folks what you need. And talk to your doctor about it to ensure he/she is aware too, as DSPS is so often linked with depression All the best to you from this senior Night Owl!

ps
As soon as I retired from teaching, my night owl tendencies reasserted themselves. Nowadays, I'm up and busy all night and asleep all morning unless using chronotherapy to establish more socially normal hours. Yikes!

pps
I wonder, does anyone else find a link between migraine attacks and trying to keep to the regular world's sleep patterns??

[mkarac]

Hello Merrikate,

I joined this forum today and u can not believe how I am happy to have read your post. Because I have DSPS and have the possibility of being a teacher too. But I was hopeless to be able to wake up at 7:00am every day for this job and thats why thinking doing night jobs such as truck driver. I would like to know how u have successed to be a teacher although DSPS?

My answer to your question about migraines is that I ve had headaches in the afternoons when I was adolescent. My grandfather always had the same problem too. Most often, the aches were at the upper sides of my ears. But I have no more this problem and have headaches very rarely, especially when I am very stressed.

Looking forward to hear from you.

[dohlink]

I'm a 62-year-old woman. I just discovered that I have DSPS as I watched the documentary "Wide Awake" on HBO. I've had it since high school, and now I can put a name to it. I work at home and am able to sleep in the morning until I have enough sleep. Sometimes I'll wake up early when my husband gets up, but I'm not rested and will go back to bed late morning or take a nap to make up the deficit. It works for my life style, but last year when I had to work in an office 8:30 - 5:30, it was a killer. Even though I tried to go to bed earlier, I never was rested and tended to have more migraines.

I get cycles of migraines, and sometimes it does seem related to lack of sleep. The past few months I've been taking NoDoz or Vivactin (both are simply Caffeine 200 mg/tab. I cut the tab in half and take 1/2 when I get up in the morning and half 12 hours later. It prevents the migraine.) Cheaper than the migraine medicine I'd been taking. And I have had very few migraines since I started this.

I've read studies that going to bed at midnight or later disrupts hormones and has a higher rate of obesity. I have rheumatoid arthritis, but that is most likely incidental. My main concern is the hormonal and obesity factor. Otherwise, it fits my lifestyle. I'd like to hear from others about their experiences.

[joey]

Hello! I am a newbie, too - and thoroughly excited to have found this forum. I was a teacher for 16 years and found it exceedingly difficult to "be on time" and do the additional am duties that they continue to add on. My mother is a night owl as well. I didn't even realize that this was "disorder" or condition or disease, but I sure know that I have been labeled lazy as a non-conformist, and it has really hurt me. I am extremely creative and find that I do my best work, have the greatest clarity of thought, and can get the most done in those wee hours of the morning. I married a definite morning person, who was raised on a farm with a dad who went to bed at 7 pm and was up at 4 am. Talk about opposites. I too had suffered migraines and headaches, especially as an adolescent. The early morning and the mid-afternoon hours are the absolute worst for me as far as feeling fatigued. I was dx with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, hypothyroid, meniere's disease (ear related dizziness). In the beginning, they always wanted to give me antidepressants, but I am not depressed, although it does stink that I am no longer as active as I used to be and can't do the things I love to do. However, I think this dspd is something that I have always had according to the criteria. I know around 10 pm, I start to feel better, then by 11 pm I start to feel more awake and continue to become more alert and creative as the hours pass straight through until 4am, after which I start to wind down. I sleep best around 6am to 10 am, with a nap in the late afternoon and early evening. Teaching elementary school full time just about killed me and most likely precipitated the above diseases. Finding this site made me feel validated as a human being. I was wondering, do any of you consider yourself to be creative? I know the creative greats were night owls as well. Thanks - Jo

[hardhatsrequired]

mkarac- I have a question about the last part of your post when you said your headaches were on the upper part of the ears. Is this related to the DSPS? This is where I get my headaches. Last night it was a killer for me and I took 1000mg of naproxen sodium and was laying on a cool pac. It finally went away. I didn't think one had anything to do with the other. Does it? Maybe I overlooked that in my research. I also noticed this seems to run in families. My dad is a truck driver. He runs at night and about 4am shuts down to sleep..... my 14yr old daughter has this also. I am home schooling her because of it. Thanks for your input.
Hardhatrequired

[willrawls]

I've known I have DSPS (had it since puberty) for about 5 years now and I've found that if I try to "over conform" to a normal sleep schedule, that I short myself sleep both at night and waking up. My theory is that after a few days of sleep deprivation or on days where I simply try to wake up in the middle of my delayed sleep phase, that I will have the most excruciating pains in my head. What's ironic, is the only treatment for the pains is to fall back in bed and sleep.

I've always thought it was strange because I'd think the pain would prevent me from falling asleep but since it's related to waking up, only going to sleep helps. In fact in my case, if I try to power through the pain, the pain gets more and more intense until I give in.

I've long since given up trying to conform to a normal schedule and pretty much let my body wake up and go to sleep when it seems natural to it. The only thing I do to manage it and to prevent my DSPS from waking me up in the afternoon, is I take 300 micrograms of melatonin every night or every other night around 10pm and never after midnight. I find I wake up a bit earlier (between 9 and 10am) fairly regularly and can (with regular outside help) get up a little earlier than that, sometimes as early as 8:30. Sometimes I wake up around 11 though. But at least I'm not waking up after noon or even really really late as was happening before I was diagnosed when I was sometimes waking up after 3pm in the afternoon.

I also take a super B vitimin in the morning when I wake up. Complicating my DSPS (or perhaps as some have suggested caused by) I am also bipolar. Bipolar and sleep disorders have been linked in at least one study and the two seem common. To keep myself fairly calm and to lower my stress, I don't try to over manage my DSPS which seems to help. In other words, by generally letting my body sleep and wake when it wants (with a little melatonin to help) it seems to making coping with bipolar disorder somewhat easier.

Anyway. That's my formula right now. Luckily I have a job that's willing to roll with me. Hope this helps someone.

[Pfree]

I too have been a life long dsps. I am 54 . I do appreciate your positive attitude towards it especially for the young ones still in school and starting out. I look back on how stretched I often felt having to force myself awake for years and push myself thru a 2nd and 3rd wind to do all I wanted to do. Now I can be a bit kinder to myself and follow my own rhythm,set my own schedule.I live w/o a lot of things but it's a tradeoff I'm willing to make. Don't see many of my friends or socialize much because my/their schedule makes it hard. Sleep is very precious to me, but to the migraine connection I used to force myself awake to get to my day job and work another job into the night and as I got older and this became more difficult I noticed when I often went days and weeks pushing myself I would get a migraine.I had such severe migraines I was in bed not able to lift my head except to puke and couldn't move or open my eyes. Once I slept for 36 hrs!! I'm sure the sleep deprivation and not following my own rhythm has something to do w/ it. It still happens when I force myself to do "regular" hrs for too many days but my schedule is a bit kinder now so not as often. My friends and relatives all roll their eyes they think I'm lazy since the rest of the world gets up at 6-7am. The few times I've gone to visit friends and stayed over it was so difficult as we were up early and they would go to bed earlier so I would be left awake reading or whatever and it would take so long to recover when I'd get home. So I miss things like family vacations, retreats etc as most folks get up early. I tire of explaining myself, ya know.

[sunrisebedtime]

For me, as a musician/composer/producer, DSPS works! I am focussed and productive 11pm-3am, then I start to get a little groggy. I find it MUCH harder to focus during daylight hours.
And, whenever I start to get an earlier schedule, I just end up with a gig that gets me home at 1am, so what's the point?
My only concern is all the quotes about how sleep before midnight is so much better. that's the only issue for me. I want to know if it's true. Also, a lot of great musicians had early am practice regimens, where they would be up by 6am and practice till 10am. I love that time of day, and rarely get to see it, so have always wanted to try this regimen. When I am up at that time I am pretty focussed...it's around noon that my mind drifts, till around 9pm, it seems!!
Of course I can force myself to focus, but I'm just talking about my natural tendencies.

In my ideal world, I would Be up till 3am, then sleep till 7am, then practice till 10 am, then nap from 1pm to 5 pm, or something.

I don't know. But I am intested in maximizing my habits for productivity.

[Erika]

Hello,

I just now joined this forum and so glad also to have found it. I have never participated in a forum on the internet but this DSPS is a real challenge. I am 61 and have had it for a long, long time. When I was in education I had so much trouble getting to sleep and had to take medication to get a few hours of sleep. I was always sleep deprived except for catching up on the weekend, then the cycle would begin again, Sun. nights were very stressful. Now I am semi-retired and am a counselor/play therapist in private practice which works out quite well. The main problems for me are other people thinking I am quite strange and the loneliness I experience being up alone all night.

Erika

[Pfree]

Dear sunrisebedtime..
Your one of the luckier ones if you can force yourself to focus. I found a I got older it was increasingly difficult to "go against the grain" But we all have our more productive times. I think a lot of musicians are dsps. I was married to one way back and that night life style, gigs, rehearsals are usually all at night. The one's that have family and "day jobs" too are the hurting ones. Burning the candle at both ends can be damaging in the long run. Being able to follow your creative whims and have that artistic creative release tho is very much worth a lot of other sacrifices. I worked at Tower records for years, eves. (the bk department mostly) and the music crowd was definitely an evening crowd. Very colorful bunch I might add. Personally I'm useless before noon. I've always had more energy later on in the day. I've always envied folks who could nap. Once I'm up I'm up it's the falling asleep that eludes me. When I was young I would push myself to collapse I took dance class afterwork into the night, but now I can see the exercise would give me an endorphin kick and I'd be AWAKE till all hours...a mess in the am. Now I try to exercise early on meditate more and mindfully try to slow down earlier. Good luck.