49er wrote:
Do you know off hand if you have felt any better when you go to sleep at the time you prefer vs. when you think you should go to bed? Might this be something worth tracking to see if it makes a difference?
I haven't seen any specific research on what you are asking but you might want to look on this site
http://www.circadiansleepdisorders.org/ to see if you can find any helpful information.
Thanks for checking in. I really did give an honest shot to Sludge/Muffy/deltadave/mollette's suggestion of focusing on sleep hygiene once I got done with grad school. I did it when
not on xPAP because I found the combination to be impossible. I was a walking zombie. Put another way, it probably jacked my Epworth up 4 points (e.g., made it likely that I would fall asleep at the wheel). Not functional and not good.
With that in context, I do feel better when I go to sleep later rather than when I "should" go to bed. That's probably why the doc gave me a DSPS diagnosis. What happened with an early bedtime was usually one of the following:
• Toss and turn for hours. Sometimes I'd try just lying there, and sometimes I'd try getting up (which seems to be suggested). I hoped that after a few weeks my body would take the hint, but it didn't seem to.
• When exhausted, I would be able to fall asleep but would wake up far too early. Sometimes it was just an hour and a half later, and sometimes it was at something like 4 in the morning.
• Also when exhausted, sometimes it was a toss-and-turn night. Last night was one of these, although in fairness I probably went to bed TOO early. I felt like I was awake most of the night.
Like I said earlier, being on the ASV changes the ballgame entirely. I'm a different person. It's like taking my natural moderate depression and magnifying it ten fold. I have no energy, and all I want to do is stay in bed and sleep, even though that sleep is not restorative. I've tried "negotiating" with myself—i.e., X hours on ASV and then if I wake up sleeping without it—but I can't say I feel any better or worse, and I know it's breeding a bad habit. (It wasn't my first choice.)
The only thing that makes me feel close to normal is use of stimulants such as Nuvigil, but those give me serious insomnia. In fact, when on my ASV, my latest bedtimes can all be attributed to Nuvigil...but those are also the only days I'm functional as a human being.
Hope this helps. Thanks again to you and everyone for the suggestions, comments, and ideas.
archangle wrote:
He does know his stuff, though. Especially the in depth technical stuff.
I don't think anyone ever contested that. He was quite helpful in two of my previous threads. Where I personally took issue is the suggestion that I haven't "really tried." Doctors tend to do that sort of thing too: e.g., "Oh, your numbers look great on ASV, so you must not really be trying." There's only one person in my bedroom, (which sucks for my sex life, but that's a separate topic ), so only I really know what's up. Nothing's more frustrating than beating your head against the metaphorical wall and being told that you still aren't trying hard enough.