Chrono-Crazy: N-24 vs. DSPS

Found HERE

November 24th is
N-24 Awareness Day
Let’s take a closer look at
Sleep TIMING

© Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
from the Sleep Series

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!
I hope everybody was awake for it.

Even as I typed the words above, I figured that many of you would think I was kidding – while others of you, sadly, weren’t “on phase” enough to be awake and alert for a joyful celebration.

Classroom Clipart – Found HERE

Some of you may even have snoozed-on well past the time you were supposed to arrive for that Thanksgiving luncheon. And I’ll bet at least one of you reading slept the day away.

And I ALSO bet you catch a lot of flak from your “sleep normal” friends and loved ones about your screwy sleep schedule — even if you have been formerly diagnosed with one of the Chronorhythm Sleep Disorders and have attempted to explain your challenges with sleep a number of times.

At least that’s been true for me for most of my life.

What’s going on here?  (Sleep TIMING glitches!)

I’ve written quite a few prior articles about sleep timing, some linked in the Related Content section at the bottom of this article, with links to all of the articles available from my Sleep Linklist: Everything you ever wanted to know about Sleep.

As I previously explained in articles about CRSD (ChronoRhythm Sleep Disorders) and N-24 (Non-24 Hour Sleep/Wake Syndrome), there is a part of everybody’s brain that regulates body rhythms, especially sleep – the suprachiasmatic nucleus.

SEE: When Your Sleep Clock is Broken

That’s what makes some people Morning Larks and some people Night Owls – most of them only slightly skewed to one end or the other.

Even though many can adapt to the sleep timing expectations of their circumstances, they are only sharpest when their body clock tells them they are supposed to be awake and alert and when they are supposed to be drowsy.

And that’s why many of us struggle to fall asleep at “standard” hours — early enough to be fully rested before we have to get up to start the next day. Many of those strugglers suspect insomnia, but it has never been troubling enough to pursue a formal diagnosis.

Then there are those whom others consider “extreme larks” and “extreme owls” – most of whom, whether they realize it or not, are probably diagnostic for one of the disorders of sleep TIMING.

Some of those individuals have been MIS-diagnosed with insomnia when what’s really going on is that their brain’s clock isn’t set to support standard sleep timing!

Disorders of Sleep TIMING

Even though today is N-24 Awareness Day, this particular article is going to distinguish between N-24 (where a person’s body clock insists that the day is longer than the 24 hours that is relatively standard here on earth) and another disorder that is frequently confused with it: Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome [DSPS] or Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder [DSPD].

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N-24 – Non-24 Hour Sleep/Wake Struggles

Found HERE

With N-24 (hypernychthemeral syndrome), the body-clock’s insistence that the day is LONGER than earth’s 24 hours (or so!) means that those individuals’ brains have been set to facilitate their falling asleep a bit later every single day — and awaken correspondingly later every single day.

In the absence of  chronic upheavals due to the expectations of the sleep-normal world, most of us can eventually track the length of our own individual “day.” That is important because it allows us to PREDICT when we will be awake or asleep, so that we can be reliable when we plan our schedules and set appointments.

• But it usually doesn’t happen that one or another of what I call the “Sleep-Nazis” will leave many of us alone long enough to figure it out. Induced sleep-debt dominoes, and our schedules careen from one dysregulated day to the next.
• Because, no matter how hard most of us try, we can’t do a lot to change our proclivities.  We struggle mightily to stabilize our sleep patterns, most successful with relatively strict mid-day wake-up times.

What that usually means is that most of us must live with mounting sleep-debt during periods of every single month, since we finally succumb to sleep at an increasingly later time every night.

Check out: You don’t Wanna’ Pay the Interest on Sleep-Debt

• We are destabilized every single time somebody insists that we must awaken earlier because something is important to them that they insist simply must happen in the before-noon daylight hours – quite often those “breakfast meeting” ones!
• Since I don’t awaken reliably to sound, that usually means I must stay up all night to make sure I don’t miss an early morning appointment. It can take me up to three solid weeks to restabilize – every single time.

Try explaining that to your landlord, a college admissions officer, or the courts — up to 21 days before you can be reliable again because they insist that they cannot accommodate a late afternoon appointment!

Check out MY story: Living with Jet-Lag: JetLagged for LIFE

Believe me, nobody wishes it were different more than those of us who are sufferers!  It makes life on earth extremely challenging.  It can result in a wide range of difficulties, including chronic problems with employment, school, family life, and socializing with friends.

What makes things more difficult still

“In my experience, the only difference between morning people
and evening people is that those people who get up
in the morning early are just horribly smug.”
~ Russell Foster, noted circadian neuroscientist.

The non-standard, longer-than-normal “day” of someone with N-24 inches around the standard clock.

We are able to drift off to sleep later every day, for the most part, only once our body-clock tells us our day is done.  So we come to a native state of alertness correspondingly later every day as well.

Eventually our sleep schedule inches back around the standard clock face to a time where we are “on phase” with the rest of our world.  And then what do we hear?

See, you can do it when you really try . . .
When it’s something you really want to do . . .
When it’s important to YOU!

Until we understand what’s going on, sometimes we even believe those ideas and beat ourselves up, wondering why we don’t buck up and do what we need to.

Even when we do understand and can explain it, it’s the rare individual in our lives willing to listen to our explanations with an open mind.

You’re just making excuses . . . I’d rather stay in bed too.
That’s your limiting BELIEF . . . you create your own reality.
So you don’t even try anymore?

But don’t you know those “sleep normal” know-it-alls would scream bloody murder if they were expected to accommodate a schedule that mandated “breakfast meetings” in the middle of their night just because the rest of the team had a different sleep schedule?

It’s a miracle that some of us haven’t strangled the smugness out of the folks who can’t muzzle opinions like the ones above — or at least attempted to smack some sense into them!  For the most part, according to the sleep disorder chatlists, we smile wanly and sob privately.

Delayed Sleep Phase Challenges

Another greatly disruptive chrono-disorder is DSPS [DSPD] – Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome [Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder].

DSPS/DSPD sufferers don’t have a longer “day,” as with N24, they have a delayed night. Even with the enforced pressure from the chrono-disruptive demands of a job, school, kids, etc., DSPS/D folks tend to get drowsy only well after midnight.

4 AM is a commonly reported time that the onset of sleep descends in many sufferers – with noon a commonly reported time they finally awaken naturally, left to follow their own chronorhythms.

They don’t sleep LONGER than a “sleep normal” individual – nor are they awake longer. They’re NOT sloths or slug-a-beds, their body clocks are set to sleep later – relative to the 9-to-5 “early to bed/early to rise” schedule commonly observed and too much touted as if it were practically a moral imperative.

Sufferers can and do find it relatively easy to adapt to the 24 hour clock as long as they can do it on their body’s natural rhythms.

Going to BED vs. Going to SLEEP

EVEN if someone with DSPS/DSPD goes to bed at what the sleep-normal world considers “a decent hour,” they can’t and don’t fall asleep until their body clock tells them it’s TIME for sleep.

• Imagine expecting an individual with a “sleep normal” brain to go to bed the minute they currently come home from work and are still alert (say 6 P.M.), as if simply the act of lying down would make them fall asleep.
• Now imagine that they were expected to stay asleep for a “normal” 8 hours, awakening ready for bear at 2 AM for a 4 AM school or work start.

Yeah, right!  Handle it with better “sleep hygiene”
Block out light and drink warm milk.

Mistaking one for the other

Found HERE on classroomclipart.com

Confusion between the two disorders sets in when people with DSPS/DSPD have fairly regular or even intermittent pressures to awaken in the middle of their natural sleep cycle at the insistence of “the Sleep Nazis.”

Cumulative and chronic sleep deprivation would then begin to mimic N-24 – sometimes even precipitating its onset (a further dysregulation that sometimes becomes permanent).

Neither disorder is amenable to will, by the way.
Thus the term DISORDER!

Don’t expect a lot of diagnostic help here, still unfortunately. MOST docs, even some who claim to be sleep professionals, are unaware of the signs and symptoms of chrono-struggles, so they are just as likely to tell you that you have narcolepsy or insomnia as a sleep timing disorder.

If you’re still struggling after you have seen one of those doctors,
seek out a second opinion from someone who
specializes in chronorhythm disorders
(and send your doc this article!)

When you’re talking sleep struggles, you need to turn the old saw on its HEAD — “When you hear hoofbeats Think Zebras NOT horses.” N24 Awareness Participation Badge 2015

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IN ANY CASE, do stay tuned.
There’s a lot to know, a lot here already, and a lot more to come – in this Series and in others.
Get it here while it’s still free for the taking.

Want to work directly with me? If you’d like some coaching help with anything that came up while you were reading this Series (one-on-one couples or group), click HERE for Brain-based Coaching with mgh, with a contact form at its end (or click the E-me link on the menubar at the top of every page). Fill out the form, submit, and an email SOS is on its way to me; we’ll schedule a call to talk about what you need. I’ll get back to you ASAP (accent on the “P”ossible!)

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You might also be interested in some of the following articles
available right now – on this site and elsewhere.

For links in context: run your cursor over the article above and the dark grey links will turn dark red;
(subtle, so they don’t pull focus while you read, but you can find them to click when you’re ready for them)
— and check out the links to other Related Content in each of the articles themselves —

COACHING LINKS at end of all posts

• Brain-based Coaching with Madelyn Griffith-Haynie
• Brain-based Coaching Fees & Formats
• The Group Coaching LinkList – explaining how this format works

Related articles on ADDandSoMuchMore.com

• N-24 Awareness Day is almost upon us (2016)
• Sleeping with the Enemy – Tink’s article about living with MY N-24
• November 24 is N-24 Awareness Day – my 2013 Post
• When Your Sleep Clock is Broken: my N-24 post for Awareness Day 2014 –
  Chronorhythm Sleep Disorders – Part II

• Sleep and Cognition
• Up all Night? Sleep Away the Day? – ABOUT Chronorhythm Sleep Disorders – Part I
• Sleep Basics affecting Sleep TIMING – Part I of a 3-part article
• Owls, Larks and Camels
• Circadian Sleep Disorders Network
  Non-Profit Supporting Fractured Sleep Clocks
• An Open Letter to Sleep Sites EVERYWHERE

Other supports for this article

A Few LinkLists by Category
(to articles by topic on ADDandSoMuchMore.com)

• The Optimal Functioning (Challenges) Series of articles
  (about the Inventory & articles from each category)
• SLEEP and Sleep Struggles LinkList

• When you are NEW to ADD (or this blog/Attentional Struggles/ADD Coaching)
• Variations on ADD-ADHD

Related Articles ’round the net

• Sad News about delayed2sleep
• N24 Awareness Day 2017: Through the Looking Glass
• Non-24 — Not Just a Disorder of the Blind, guest post on HealthLine
• N24 Awareness Day 2014: Myths and Reality
• We interrupt this program to bring you a rant
• Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder Awareness Day – The World Spins Madly On
• What is Non-24-Hour Sleep Wake Disorder? (National Sleep Foundation)
• About N24 (GREAT explanation of what it’s like)
• DSPS – Chronotherapy: balancing benefit and risk

BY THE WAY: Since ADDandSoMuchMore.com is an Evergreen site, I revisit all my content periodically to update links — when you link back, like, follow or comment, you STAY on the page. When you do not, you run a high risk of getting replaced by a site with a more generous come-from.