Different sleeping pattern

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Hi everybody,

I'm a 27 year old Belgian musician who just recently found out about AS. After reading extensively about it I recognized myself strongly in the symptoms, and so did my parents (recognize me, not necessarily themselves, although I wouldn't be so sure about my dad, he's probably reading about it by now, making a 'aaaah!' face...
Anyway.
One typical aspect I found out I share with the Asperger community is the sleeping disorder.
Ever since I was a child I couldn't sleep at night and had trouble waking up in the morning. In highschool I simply stayed up until I'd start hearing the birds sing and see light outside, then I'd think it's obviously time I go to bed.
Now I'm a father of a 3-year-old, things have changed. I wake up every morning and try my best to go to bed in the evening. But I see a lot of things suffering from that : I'm tired, I have less patience, and get more nervous since I can't get anything done that's going on in my head.
Yesterday I started working on something in the evening and went to bed at 7am. My daughter was at my mom's so I was able to sleep until 2.30pm. I hadn't done that in a while. I haven't felt this good, energized, ready to do anything in a long time! Plus, I got so much focus last night, it's like I found back some intellectual abilities that were - to much of my frustration - gone for a while.
Anyway.
I read here and there online about Aspies who are going through the same thing as me, but the only tips I read are about how to get yourself to sleep in the evening anyway, not about how to cope with the consequences of changing that 'natural rhythm'. If I were living alone I would definitely not bother going to bed in the evening (plus I'm a musician, I don't have a morning job to go to), but I need to be there with my family, see my (also Aspie btw) wife (who's more of a morning person). But on the other hand I don't want to give up the things I find when I follow my own rhythm.

Does anybody here have experience with that ? Is there any way to organize oneself to find a balance or something ?

Thanks a lot dear Wrongians,

Cheerios,

Antoine

I had the same problem once, not being able to fall asleep at night, like i was a nocturnal creature of some sort.
Anyway i found a method to fix this problem (at least it helped me):

By going to bed late and waking up at an early hour (aka sleeping for less hours than what's recommended/needed) - Ergo on purpose "force" yourself into developing a lack of sleep. After a few days of doing this you will experience a feeling of being tired during the day, now you just hang (stay awake) on until it's night time - then finally you go to bed at the hour you'd like to get accustomed to fall asleep on.

Hopefully after having followed through with this, you will notice that you don't have trouble getting tired at nighttime any longer, and your sleeping habits will gradually get better.

LOL, i actually have managed to fall back into that same annoying spiral - by ignoring my need for sleep over an extended time, and reversing my circadian rhythm. So i probably have to do the same thing, again


Hope you find a way to fix your problem

Yeah... My sleeping patterns are often random, I could go to bed early like 11pm and wake up at 1pm and days that I could go to bed at 4am and wake up a 9am, sometimes waking up tired or refreshed randomly. A lot of the issues stem from anxiety, audio hallucination, random thoughts and migraines.

I take a mixture of ethyl alcohol and melatonin, if I start at about 10:30 or 11pm it usually gets me to bed by 2 or 3 am.

Usually.



I'm not recommending it, but it works for me.

Hey, thanks for answering my message!

This seems like a good tip, Monolithe, but as I tried to explain what I'm looking for is not really a way to fall asleep at night but a way to find an everyday balance to still get the advantages I get when I go to bed extremely late (like better focus, energy, intellectual faculties), while still seeing my family
Or maybe I got it wrong and you imply that by doing so my "better moment" will be during the day ?

Thanks again.

Antoine

PS, PerfectlyDarkTails : I know that feeling too, plus I suffer from Restless Legs Syndrome because of all that anxiety going into my legs. Migraines I don't have but random thoughts definitely and audio hallucination, as a musician, I guess you could call 'em that but they just imply I'm composing or constructing rhythms while trying to fall asleep. I found that the best way for me to fall asleep is to actually just let those obsessive rhythmic or music-analytic ideas be and push them to their limits with my eyes closed. After a while I just end up falling asleep as I lose the sense of purpose and just let the analysis run in my head and fingers without interest for an end-result. Did you find a solution for your random patterns ?

It sounds similar to delayed sleep phase disorder (wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder

I think you should check for a hospital with a specialised sleep disorder department (there is not much awareness of sleep disorders in general practitioners I found). I googled a bit and in Belgium it seems that Universitair Ziekenhuis Gent has specialists in this area. I found this on their website:

Vertraagde slaapfase-syndroom

Bij het vertraagde slaapfase-syndroom komt de intrede van de slaap veel later dan gewenst en is het volstrekt onmogelijk om te ontwaken op een normaal ochtenduur. Het inslapen verloopt gewoonlijk steeds op hetzelfde tijdstip (na middernacht). De slaap verloopt verder ongestoord. De volledige slaapepisode is dus te laat 'geprogrammeerd' in de maatschappelijke 24 uurscyclus. De belangrijkste klachten zijn slapeloosheid in het begin van de nacht of slaperigheid in de ochtend. Het onderscheid met insomnia is echter dat het bemoeilijkte inslapen gevolgd wordt door een normale hoeveelheid ongestoorde slaap. Alle pogingen van het individu om de slaaptijd naar een vroeger tijdstip te verplaatsen zijn futiel. Niet zelden gebruiken deze patiënten slaapmiddelen (of alcohol) om vroeger te kunnen inslapen. Het vertraagde slaapfase-syndroom is een obstakel om ochtendlijke sociale of professionele verplichtingen na te komen. In ernstige gevallen kan dat zelfs leiden tot ontslag.

You can get strange sleep patterns from working in shifts or having jet lag, but in your case it has been a problem since you were a child. This is often caused by delayed production of melatonin (sleep hormone). Production of melatonin increases when it is dark and decreases when it is light. It causes people to get sleepy in the evening, but in some people it apparantly takes more time to kick in. Melatonin can be measured in saliva. If melatonin is the cause it could be treatable by taking melatonin pills in the early evening, but you should only do this when prescribed by a real doctor (not random internet people like me). Taking melatonin at the wrong time or the wrong dosage can make things worse.

I can relate to the restless legs especially when trying to go to bed with too much energy. I haven't found a solution yet, I don't take sleeping aides either as there's little effect with them and could make the Tourette's worse. I've tried a structured scheduled sleeping without success, but I have imaginary friends to help try and kick out some of the audio hallucinations such as voices and as well as using the imaginary friends as a distraction to minimise migraine pain.

Thank you random internet troll cat man!
This sounds indeed very similar to what I have! I'll ask my wife to give them a call for me
I usually avoid medication because I 1/ don't trust it 2/ don't like it 3/ don't trust myself to have the needed regularity to make it efficient and not just disturbing for my system.
But my wife also suggested I take melatonin so maybe that's a solution.

But the real question is : would that extreme productivity I have at night then be shifted to daytime ?

Thanks, cheers,

Antoine

PS, PerfectlyDarkTails : Have you tried meditation ? It has helped me enormously with my legs and with falling asleep, but not really with feeling tired in the morning.

Have'nt tried that no... With meditation though I'm a bit skeptical, but I should look into it, maybe even getting involved with it.

In my experience it's very helpful though, focussing on every activity in your body helps with the connection to said body, grounding, and gives a lot of clarity while I'm often everywhere at the same time thus nowhere really.

From what I understand a tiny amount of melatonin kickstarts the production of your own melatonin, so the cycle starts earlier (there is some sort of positive feedback loop if I remember correctly). This would also cause melatonin levels to decrease earlier so your natural wake-up moment would be earlier.
I would not take melatonin before seeing an expert because it could affect their measurements. They can chart melatonin levels by having the patient chew on cotton swabs every hour for 24 hours (you have to be sitting at home for 24 hours straight, but not otherwise unpleasant)



My guess is yes, it would change the time of your peak effiency, but I'm not certain. This would be a good question to ask the professional.
Here's a biological clock chart (human average I guess) I found on wikipedia. In my personal experience appetite is also very dependant on this.





I think the feeling of being tired in the morning is because your melatonin levels have not yet decreased as they would have with "normal" people, because your melatonin cycle has started up too late. There used to be graphs on wikipedia but I can't find them anymore. From what I remember melatonin levels would increase from 20:00 to somewhere during the night, and drop sharply in the morning. If they don't drop, you will feel drowsy even when awake.

Incredible! Thank you! I will definitely come in contact with the specialists in Ghent and have that checked! That could help so much... And this makes a lot of sense. Although I can't help but wonder... this is the answer to the "how" my body works but not "why" it works like that. I wonder if there's any 'natural' way. It feels at the same time great and at the same time like changing my very nature

There we go, it's 1:33am, I finished getting all the info I could get on high-end noise reducing headphones, now the next thing on my list was making a clear documenting of every expense of our home so I can make a plan (implying charts and iOS technology). Oh yeah Aspies of the world let's play!