Can't fall asleep

[RoddersFan]

I struggle getting to sleep almost every night, but once I do I sleep ok, but then struggle to wake up. My mornings are all but gone! I seem to sleep between 04.00 and 11.00 its very disruptive. Any tips please?

[kaliska0]

Try looking up delayed sleep phase syndrome and recommendations for maintaining circadian rhythm.

[RoddersFan in reply to kaliska0]

Thank you, I’ll check those out...

[kaliska0 in reply to RoddersFan]

Sorry, I was already giving in to my own insomnia and delaying bedtime. I also don't generally keep links around that summarize these types of sleep disturbances. I could probably find some very technical, dry reading material from studies or research articles in my bookmarks but most people would probably give up before sorting the useful info out of it.

Circadian rhythm is your body's day to night reaction that wakes you up in the morning at a certain time and makes you sleep at a certain time. Many, many things are involved in this with light exposure usually being the most important. DSPS is a disorder that causes this rhythm to get shifted for various reasons. So you sleep completely normal but your feeling of when the day should start and end is around 1-4 hours different from average. Actually listing all the contributors and things to attempt to fix it makes for a very long post given how many things work together to wake you up and then to signal sleep.

With my random insomnia and my husband suffering DSPS we use light a lot instead of only sound for alarms or signaling the end of the evening. We installed extra daylight spectrum, very bright led strip lights above areas we spend our time and put it all on timers. The light comes on shortly before morning alarm clocks and goes off in the evening to signal time to stop doing stuff and take sleeping meds. We use the dimmest light necessary to do any tasks after that time.

A psychiatrist treating my insomnia said he had one patient install a massive metal halide light system over his bed to force himself to become awake and alert earlier. There are sunrise alarm clocks that slowly light up to simulate an earlier morning than might come through your windows. Sometimes light exposure is enough to help and sometimes it's not.

My husband has used modafinil to wake up and be active earlier. Since he's actually active for more hours and doesn't end up drinking a ton of coffee to function he sleeps at a more normal time that night. It's hard to get a doctor to prescribe meds for DSPS though. Most don't know about it. So he often has to go without. It's cost him a few jobs even when he was getting all his work done and frequently some things he wasn't in charge of.