Monday, May 26, 2008
Why I can't sleep
I regularly can't get to sleep. I'm writing this post at 3:32 AM for instance. So I figured it would be appropriate to educate people who know me about why I can't get to sleep. I have a condition known as Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, which you can read a good summary of in this wikipedia article
Here are a few choice quotes:
Some features of DSPS which distinguish it from other sleep disorders are:
* People with DSPS have at least a normal - and often much greater than normal - ability to sleep during the morning, and sometimes in the afternoon as well. In contrast, those with chronic insomnia do not find it much easier to sleep during the morning than at night.
* People with DSPS fall asleep at more or less the same time every night, and sleep comes quite rapidly if the person goes to bed near the time he or she usually falls asleep. Young children with DSPS resist going to bed before they are sleepy, but the bedtime struggles disappear if they are allowed to stay up until the time they usually fall asleep.
* DSPS patients can sleep well and regularly when they can follow their own sleep schedule, e.g. on weekends and during vacations.
* DSPS is a chronic condition. Symptoms must have been present for at least one month before a diagnosis of DSPS can be made.
That is me in a nutshell.
Long-term success rates of treatment have seldom been evaluated. However, experienced clinicians acknowledge that DSPS is extremely difficult to treat. One study of 61 DSPS patients with mean sleep onset and waking times of about 3 a.m. and 11: 30 a.m., respectively, showed, a year after a 6-week treatment, that over 90% had relapsed to pretreatment sleeping patterns within a year, 28.8% reporting that the relapse occurred within one week.
Not a large sample, but based on personal experience I'd fit in to that study pretty well.
Here are a few choice quotes:
Some features of DSPS which distinguish it from other sleep disorders are:
* People with DSPS have at least a normal - and often much greater than normal - ability to sleep during the morning, and sometimes in the afternoon as well. In contrast, those with chronic insomnia do not find it much easier to sleep during the morning than at night.
* People with DSPS fall asleep at more or less the same time every night, and sleep comes quite rapidly if the person goes to bed near the time he or she usually falls asleep. Young children with DSPS resist going to bed before they are sleepy, but the bedtime struggles disappear if they are allowed to stay up until the time they usually fall asleep.
* DSPS patients can sleep well and regularly when they can follow their own sleep schedule, e.g. on weekends and during vacations.
* DSPS is a chronic condition. Symptoms must have been present for at least one month before a diagnosis of DSPS can be made.
That is me in a nutshell.
Long-term success rates of treatment have seldom been evaluated. However, experienced clinicians acknowledge that DSPS is extremely difficult to treat. One study of 61 DSPS patients with mean sleep onset and waking times of about 3 a.m. and 11: 30 a.m., respectively, showed, a year after a 6-week treatment, that over 90% had relapsed to pretreatment sleeping patterns within a year, 28.8% reporting that the relapse occurred within one week.
Not a large sample, but based on personal experience I'd fit in to that study pretty well.
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