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Posted by Gilligan on March 01, 2001 at 23:42:04:I have had some temporary success relieving my sleeping problems and feel that I am on the right track to solving my problems. I'm a 26 year old male. I had never heard of delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS) before last night when I was searching around for sleep information, but I think that is what I have. Although I can relate with some of the postings of people with narcolepsy without cataplexy. Hopefully someone could give me some input. I'll tell you about my situation.
-I've been told that I snore and that I sometimes talk in my sleep.
-My body clock easily gravitates toward super night owl status. It is a complete battle to make my body conform to a "normal" 8-5 schedule, and if I go out on the weekend or stay up late one night, it becomes impossible to go to sleep until late at night.
-My body has always required more sleep than anyone I knew. I naturally sleep 11 hours consistently. (If I didn't get much sleep the night before, I can sleep 14 hours easily), I can get by on 10, 9 is pushing it, and anything less than that I am not a happy camper (constantly tired, thinking of sleep all day long, tired heavy eyes, irritable, unable to concentrate, etc.)
-If I set my alarm for anything less than 11 hours, I'm super slow to get out of bed. I usually sleep through the alarm on full blast, or get up and turn it off, waking up hours later not being able to remember turning off the alarm. I tell people the hardest thing for me to do is get up in the morning and they look at me funny, because they can't comprehend it. My body just feels like a ton of bricks and is not ready to get up. My internal dialogue in the morning is super persuasive. I always convince myself to stay in bed..
"Just 15 more minutes,"
"This is a great song, I'll get up after this one," or
"I'll just lie here until a good song comes on, then I'll get up"
"Breakfast is overated, you're more tired than hungry"
"It feels so comfortable and warm in your bed. We can't get up. You'll be to cold,"
I can look out my window and see the most beautiful day outside and my body just won't motivate. "It'll be just as nice in a few hours. I'm to tired to get up right now."-The perception by family and friends is that I am lazy or depressed. Friends and doctors have told me if you had something you were excited to get up for, you would not have this problem... (implying that I bring this on myself.) I want to tell them F_ YOU, you don't know how I feel. They are coming from the perception of having normal sleep patterns. They cannot see the world through my experience. When my body does not want to get up, it will literally fight me to stay in bed, and if I do force myself up, it will battle me the rest of the day with fatigue. It is not a normal state. My BODY enjoys sleeping, for whatever reason, but I don't. I can't stand wasting half the day sleeping or forcing myself to get up at a normal time and feeling absolutely exhausted the entire day. It is ruining the quality of my life. I would love to be able to live like some of my friends. To wake up rejuvinated and awake on 6-8 hours of sleep. That would be awesome. That is a luxury that most people take for granted.
-I have always been most mentally alert and productive late at night. In college I was able to schedule my classes in the afternoon. I never started before 11:00. But after college when I had to conform to society, the hardest part was not the work, but adapting my body clock to get up at 6:30am-7am. It was a daily struggle for 2 years that I could never win. (I have quit my job for a few months now.) I usually couldn't fall asleep until midnight no matter what time I went to bed. To make it 5 days against my body's will wore me down. I was exhausted all the time.
After a year of work, I knew there had to be something structurally wrong with my body but I did not know what. I have an HMO so they sent me around from dept to dept. Each dept passing the buck to the next, saying, "we don't know what the problem is but we can refer you to a different dept if you'd like."
They ran all of the blood tests, tested for food allergies, sent me to a heart specialist (because my heart rate was lower than the average person), chronic disease specialist, therapist etc. They finally sent me to a sleep study (I'm not sure what type of testing was done. All I know was that they were specifically testing for sleep apnea. When they told me that you had to wake up like 30 times an hour to to test positive, I told them that if that was all they were testing for, they were wasting their time. When I sleep, I sleep like a log.) They told me the test result was negative. They didn't even have me speak with a sleep specialist or anything. After about 6 months of the HMO runaround, I went outside of my HMO I tried any alternative method of healing I had heard of like seeing a nutritionist, cranial sacral therapist, massage therapy, acupuncture. Nothing really worked. I was beyond frustrated.As I was struggling through my second year of work, I realized I needed to do something. One of my friends who was in med school told me that by physical symptoms alone, I met 3 of the 9 major indicators of depression (daily hypersomnia, daily fatigue, inability to concentrate nearly every day.) Although I didn't meet the other 6, she thought that antidepressants might help my situation. (The other symptoms are depressed mood most of the day, diminished interest in almost all activities most of the day, significant weight loss or gain without dieting, psychomotor agitation or retardation nearly everyday, feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt, and recurrent thoughts of suicide.) I was initially opposed to taking or relying on any kind of drug, but at this point I would try anything. I felt like my life was being wasted by fatigue.
I started taking a minimal dose of Prozac (which takes 4-6 weeks to kick in.) At week 5, I noticed a huge difference. I was popping up before my alarm wired, eyes wide awake like I had never felt before. That heaviness I normally feel all day in my eyes was gone. The mental haze was gone. It was so easy to get out of bed. I was like this is what it should feel like in the morning..finally. My body clock also adopted my weekly schedule much easier and it was much more flexible. I would get really tired at 10-11pm and pop up with no alarm 6-8 hours later feeling rested. And when I would go out really late at night, I could get up the next day relatively early without the overwhelming fatigue. For the first time in as long as I could remember I did not go through the day preoccupied with sleep. It was not even a thought that crossed my mind.
Unfortunately over time, the drug became less effective. I think my body adjusted to it. I kept having to adjust my dose a little higher. Finally the side effects began driving me nuts. I was now at the other end of the spectrum. I was a super light sleeper, waking up like every hour at times, sometimes paranoid, and having difficulty going back to sleep. I was very anxious, and would see white spites, have blurred vision and feel lightheaded when I would work out. And I felt like my sleep patterns were now somewhere in between the initial effect and my previous state, but now I had all these irritating side effects. I decided to go off the Prozac after 6 months hoping the side effects would go away and my sleep patterns would not regress back to their former state. Well slowly after a few months they did. I was back to square one. But the experience showed me what I had suspected all along, that there is some structural difference (which appears to be some sort of chemical brain imbalance) which causes us to experience a different physiological state than our peirs.
I believe that being able to adjust our brain chemistries properly will lead us to a normal life. So I am trying to find an antidepressant that will have less side effects. Now I know that everyone has different reactions to different drugs, but I'm guessing that I'm more likely to have a similar reaction to a drug with someone who suffers from DSPS, than with someone just diagnosed with depression.
1.So I am curious to hear anyone's experience with anti-depressants for treating DSPS?
2.I am also looking to find a sleep specialist who specializes in delayed sleep phase syndrome to supervise my drug treatment.
3.Or someone who specializes in brain chemistries. Has anyone used brain imaging to diagnose their problem?
I also read about a "comprehensive male hormone profile test" by Great Smokies Diagnostic Lab that
is a saliva test taken 4 times a day that looks at your levels of DHEA, cortisol, melatonin, and testosterone levels. which can be helpful in diagnosing imbalances.
- Re: Help PHILIP 22:55 3/06/01 (2)
- Re: No Help, but Thanks Snoozing my Life Away 17:51 3/04/01 (0)
- Re: Help amy 07:54 3/02/01 (0)
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