#circadian rhythm sleep disorder

[neopronouns]

flag id: the leftmost quarter of the left flag has 4 stripes, which are golden yellow, sky blue, faded indigo, and dark blue. the second quarter has those stripes shifted down by half a stripe, with a small section of dark blue at the top. the third quarter has them shifted down again, making the top dark blue section a full stripe. the final quarter is shifted down again, with a small section of faded indigo at the top. the right flag is the same, but each shift down is a full stripe length rather than half of one. end id.

banner id: a 1500x150 teal banner with the words ‘please read my dni before interacting’ in large white text in the center. end id.

two versions of a non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder (n24swd/n24) flag for myself!

both flags use yellow and sky blue for being awake and purple and dark blue for being asleep, with both flags shifting those colors 'forward' several times to represent one's circadian rhythm being out of alignment with the typical 24-hour cycle.

tags: @mad-pride | dni link

#non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder #non-24 #n24 #n24swd #sleep disorder #circadian rhythm sleep disorder #my flags #new flag #mad pride #mad pride flag #mad flag #liom flag #liom

[ecomehdi]

Balancing Act: How to Optimize Your Circadian Rhythm for Productivity and Happiness

Optimizing Daily Routine for Productivity Do you often find yourself struggling to stay productive and motivated throughout the day? The key to unlocking your productivity potential lies in optimizing your daily routine. By aligning your activities with your natural circadian rhythm, you can maximize your energy levels, focus, and overall well-being. Creating a structured routine that caters to…

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#circadian rhythm #circadian rhythm disorder #circadian rhythm sleep disorder #circadian rhythms #Daily Routine #energy levels #Happiness Strategies #Health and well-being #Lifestyle Optimization #mood regulation #Productivity Tips #Sleep Patterns #Sleep Quality

[hellbrainspeaks]

I really hate that I have to refer to my sleep cycle as a disorder. If I can sleep with no other difficulties besides when my natural circadian rhythm decides it’s time to wake up and fall asleep, why am I considered the problem. Humans socially engineered the 9-5 schedule, that’s an artificial barrier we constructed for ourselves, and is a very recent development in history. Why is that the norm and me the problem. Evolution didn’t design us with jobs and schedules and money in mind

#hellbrain dump #mental health support #sleep disorder #circadian rhythm disorder #DSPD

[abyssbirds]

The fact that most of the tags under n24 have nothing to do with the disorder and that there's only a handful of posts under every single tag for it sure FEELS like ableism even though it might not be. But I have the time to talk about it so I might as well spread visibility.

(Info under read more)

N24, Non-24, or Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder, is a circadian rhythm disorder where your body doesn't run on a (roughly) 24-hour cycle like most people/people without the disorder itself. For example, my days run roughly 18-19 hours instead of a typical 16. My sleep gets later and later and later. I've tried melatonin, tried resetting my sleep schedule by staying up for >24 hours until a "normal" time for bed, and tried keeping ambient noise on like music or nature sounds. I've tried blue light filters. My days are just 26-27 hours instead of a normal 24, though every person with N24 is different.

It's primarily diagnosed in Blind patients, since the cause among Blind people with the disorder seems to be that not being able to see the transition from day to night makes their bodies not produce the proper sleep hormones at the right time.

Among sighted people, the cause seems to be unknown (last time I checked; just one person with the disorder should not be your only source of information!) and, since N24 among sighted people is more rare and less lucrative, it's an orphan disorder. There's not much research into how to help us sighted people with N24 because treatment is often pricey or not an actual solution, or it is aimed directly towards helping Blind people with N24.

As far as I know, there's apparently an implantable device in development. The main suggestions I see are training via sun lamps and melatonin or just trying to get on sleeping pills by lying about insomnia. There is a pill that can be taken, but if you live in the US, it is extremely expensive. So, essentially, this orphan disorder is overlooked and misdiagnosed, and those of us with it have to hope that one of the coin-toss methods of treating N24 works.

N24, even on its own, can be a very disabling disorder. You're either too-sleep deprived to do the things during the day you need to or are busy being asleep because the human body needs rest at some point. Socialization gets very difficult when your circadian rhythm is nocturnal for a couple of weeks. It's an isolating experience. It also makes it harder for people to work and make themselves money. I don't even know if N24 is something that can apply to an application for disability, though given it's not well-known, I doubt it is.

I'm not used to making informative posts like this, so I don't know how to end it, but please do some research into N24 on your own time--I am by no means a medical professional and my anecdotal explanation may contain errors. I just want people to know we exist.

#n24 #non24 #non-24 #non-24 sleep-wake disorder #non 24 sleep wake disorder #non24 sleep wake disorder #n24swd #disability #disability rights #disabled #disability pride #informative post #circadian rhythm #circadian rhythm disorder #disability advocacy #orphan disorders #orphaned disorders #poli #interesting #abysswords #long post

[teleportzz]

fucking bullshit that i got diagnosed with "sometimes-lives-like-a-vampire" disease and it isn't even fun. it's actually kind of a nightmare

#audrey talks sometimes #n24 #n24swd #non24 #non 24 #non-24 #non-24 sleep-wake disorder #circadian rhythm disorder #sleep disorder

[444meat]

this post is a bit long but please read it if you do not have a sleep disorder, more specifically if you don't have a circadian rhythm disorder, i need y'all to understand something

i never thought i would have to write this, but yes, sleep disorders can be incredibly disabling. my sleep disorder is a disability.

i had to drop out of highschool as soon as i was legally able to do so. i had health issues my entire life, both physical and mental, but the brunt of my physical health issues started when i was fourteen. i had to repeat grades and certain classes due to frequent absences. by the time i was sixteen, i could not attend school without a manual wheelchair. as a young adult now, i can't leave my house without a powerchair if i'll be expected to walk more than five minutes, and even then, it's much better for me to just use one unless it's totally impossible. on top of that, i experience flu-like symptoms that make leaving my house extraordinarily difficult. by the time i dropped out, these symptoms were disabling enough to keep me home, though they were not as bad as they are now.

i bring this up to point out that i am otherwise physically disabled, and to carry on to say that these symptoms were not the driving factor to me dropping out. living in a major city, there is a significant chance that i could have found a school to attend which could accommodate me. it would not be easy and i would still have a much harder time than other students, but it would be an avenue worth exploring. i would be able to try it. considering my financial situation, i would have been able to afford a private school. i could do online schooling. there were options.

because of my sleep disorder, we literally could not even look.

my waking hours vary wildly from day to day. sometimes for weeks at a time i will wake up after sunset and fall asleep after the sun has risen. i've had weeks where my sleep schedule more closely resembled friends i had made on the other side of the world than people i knew in person. even then, i cannot properly adjust to being awake at night, because there are also times when i'm awake on a seemingly normal schedule.

i briefly attended an asynchronous online school before dropping out. it was the best one i could access. it was awful. the lessons were bad, the teachers were bad, the work was bad... not even only in quality. there was a lot of ableism and other bigotries that demoralised me. because i couldn't attend the virtual classes due to my sleep schedule, i also fell behind academically, and because of my other health issues, i didn't have the energy to catch up.

making doctors appointments is terrifying because i never know what my sleep schedule will be like when the time comes. most doctors in my area are extremely booked. i've missed a rheumatology appointment and had to reschedule for six months in the future, and because i had to stop taking my pain meds from GI side effects and my allergy meds stopped working, i had to go without any medication that entire time. i physically cannot force myself to wake up without getting enough sleep because my body is fragile and i will start experiencing severe & unbearable symptoms of my other disorders. these cannot be pushed through. i cannot even try.

the "best doctor" for circadian rhythm issues in my area — a major city, might i remind you — only takes patients during early morning hours. this is not a joke. despite the most common circadian rhythm disorder causing people to wake up late and fall asleep late, the guy who is the "best" for treating them doesn't see people after 11 am. it is easier for me to maintain a 'wake up at 3pm, fall asleep at 6am' schedule than a 'wake up at 3am, fall asleep at 6pm' schedule. i cannot see this doctor. when i briefly managed one appointment with his secretary, she just told me to set an alarm and fall asleep at the same time every day. that was all of her advice. like i have not tried that.

as far as i'm aware, there is a single medicine approved to treat the condition i have. last time i checked, it costs something like three thousand US dollars a month. 6 times as much as my old heart meds, which were already very difficult to get covered, even with really good health insurance. the meds supposedly take months to even start working.

i had a delayed sleep wake rhythm my entire life and ran on very little sleep to get to school, to the point that i started uncontrollably falling asleep at school after my health issues started and necessitated more energy than my body had. my sleep cycle started moving forwards as it does now when i was sixteen. before i stopped attending, i would frequently attend school on 0 hours of sleep, get home, and fall asleep immediately.

the world is not built for people with circadian rhythm disorders. my sleep disorder makes functioning on a normative level impossible.

i NEED people without sleep disorders to stop treating this like it's some funky and low stakes thing to deal with. i am so tired of having people tell me they 'wish they could be nocturnal' or that they 'love staying up all night' when i tell them about my sleep disorder. you DO NOT want this, and this is VERY DIFFERENT from occasionally staying up late for fun. yes, being awake during nighttime hours can be freeing. it stops being freeing when you have no choice on the matter, have to be socially isolated for weeks on end, cannot reliably schedule doctors appointments, cannot attend school or work any job with specific hours, cannot maintain an eating schedule or a schedule for taking medication because you're never awake at normal times, etc etc etc.

and it's not as simple as taking melatonin. when i take melatonin it stops working after two uses and the times it does work i get at most 3 hours of non-restorative sleep and my sleep schedule either goes back to what it was before the next day or gets significantly worse much faster than it normally would. it's not as simple as not using screens. i've been in settings without screens for months and still had it happen. i've lied down for 8 hours trying to sleep and failed. there is no easy fix. this is how my body works.

yes it's a disability. no you don't want it. it's not a quirky character trait. think before you speak please.

a note: this is not intended to state that being otherwise disabled is not also a valid or genuine reason for dropping out of school. there's a good chance i would've had to drop out anyways, and i can't attend school now with how my symptoms have progressed, regardless of the sleep schedule. i wanted to illustrate how the combination of a sleep disorder and other chronic illness makes my life significantly more difficult and how it reduces my access to accommodations and care.

#n24 #n24swd #circadian rhythm #circadian rhythm disorder #sleep disorder #disability #✂️ #words

[mynameis-a]

god my sleeping schedule is so messed up

how am i awake from 3pm to 7am thats not how this works

#wake up at around 2 or 3pm stay awake until 7 something in the morning i have issues #♡⊱a talks #sleep disorder #circadian rhythm #its fucked up #delayed sleep phase disorder

[databent]

[pained wailing emoji]

#.pdf #rd #THE REST OF THIS IS JSUT ME WHINING. FEEL FREE TO IGNORE #i dont wanna go to work ‼️‼️‼️ i feel like i am nearing a breaking point i am sofucking burnt out #every time i go to work. my brain gets Scary at me. stresses me out. dont like it ☹️ #im supposedto be going in tonigjt but im dreading it sososo much #my work hour options have changed from “fully flexible” to “7am-9pm only” whcih yeah i know that doesnt sound that bad. but i have non-24 #(circadian rhythm disorder that makes me sleep progressively later every day circling fully around the clock over ~3 weeks or so) #and bcos of it often i have to force myself out of bed in what my body thinks may as well be the middle of the night just to get to work #and then i dont ever get enough time to recover from that to actually let my sleep fall back into its natural schedule wjich is the only #time i feel properly rested. so essentially im chronically sleep deprived which is making me chronically stressed and way less productive #i just reslly really want to fucking save up a little money and just Not work for a week or two. bjt. with my sleep bullshit i cant really #work enough to be able to put anything aside. at all #so. kind of an unrealistic desire i guess. lol #ive been feeling like this ever since like early january when i was told i ahve to stick to a more normal schedule. & its only getting worse #idont know i just wishthere was something i could do that was fully flexible on timing but also doesnt havw the kind of workload that would- #-stress me out like basically anything with longer-term projects so ykmow Most flexible schedule jobs. #i do have one thing in mind i could do on my own but its dumb and probably wouldnt make much money and has startup costs i cant afford rn..

[somecunttookmyurl]

ive had 3.5h sleep bc we are now at the part of the year where sunrise is after my usual bedtime happy almost solstice

thoughts and prayers

#it started coming up at 3:45 ish #fully risen at 4:30 #my adhd circadian rhythm disordered ass naturally sleeps from 4-11 so you see the problem #blackout curtains do not help it's too late i've already seen the sun

[noster-tempus]

Something I want to ask my sleep psychologist when I get the chance

The advice is always "only use your bed for sleep and sex."

What's so special about sex? Is it just because that's the only place in many people's houses where they can comfortably do it? Is there an actual reason why sex specifically doesn't cause you to not associate your bed with sleep? Why can't it be sleep and conlanging?

#sleep disorder #insomnia #dspd #circadian rhythm disorder #delayed sleep phase disorder #zzzzzaaaaaah #orig

[whoselabelisitanyway]

Hello i couldn't help but notice that u offered urself up as a resource for info abt N24 (sorry if i got that wrong, feel free to ignore this.) So as someone who very recently found out abt it and also probably has it, do u have any resources? Links or articles or anything for me to look at? Anything you could/want to share abt it??

Hey! Yes, I'm happy to write about my experience with N24. (It's not fun, but it's reality for many people.) The sad thing is that I don't actually have many online resources as far as articles and such. A quick internet search showed me Non-24-Hour Sleep Wake Disorder: Definition and Causes | Sleep Foundation which seemed to be a good overview (more articles linked at the bottom of the page). It's very clear that there hasn't been enough research done in a practical sense, though. Treatment options are few, and there aren't any that are at all flexible. Which, I'll just say it, sucks.

For me personally, my N24 is pretty severe, with my days lasting about 30 hours or such, so that I'm awake for something like 20 hours at a time. None of the treatment options presented to me (melatonin and/or light therapy) were effective (I have unusual environmental factors against me, though). That doesn't mean you shouldn't try them, IMHO - but I would caution you against accepting whatever sedatives doctors are handing out these days. If that's their initial reaction/treatment advise, ask them if that medication is approved and tested effective for long term usage. (It won't be - if I'm wrong, lmk, because I'd like to be wrong.)

Lastly, I'll tell you a bit about how I got my diagnosis. The biggest factor was a comprehensive sleep diary. Sometimes they'll ask you to do a sleep study as well, to rule out other sleep disorders. A sleep diary is crucial in helping the specialist evaluate the progressive time changes in your sleep patterns. I recommend getting a low-cost sports watch (with a small profile so it's comfortable to sleep in) if you don't already have one. That was a huge help to me when I was documenting my sleep patterns.

I hope that helps! I wish I could give you better news, but I do believe it's preferable to know what you're dealing with than to not - even if it's not something with an easy fix. Let me know if you have any other questions - I am not a sleep doctor or physician, but I can speak to the realities of living with N24. If I can help others at all, I like to. Good luck!

#n24 #non 24 #chronic sleep deprivation #circadian rhythm disorder #non-24 sleep disorder #living with N24 #living with sleep disorder #sleep disorder #n24swd #N24 sleep wake disorder #answered question

[gayfornyancat]

my brain + body at 7pm after not letting me sleep more than 4 hours at night despite me fully having the capacity to do so. i am annoyed

#my sleep has been weird recently! #not even bc of my dspd i don’t think #or not inherently anyway #christmas did fuck me up though. #months of free running and finally feeling like i can be rested from sleep #and then having to wake up in the early morning 3 days straight. #was not taken well apparently #sleep disorder #circadian rhythm disorder #dspd #delayed sleep phase disorder #insomnia #lamp posts

[fandomohana]

Not me at 10:45 at night, yawning like crazy, knowing I'll hit a second wind in 20 minutes. 🥱🤣🤣🤣

#christina talks #delayed circadian rhythm #disordered sleep #adhd

[teleportzz]

man i love going through the non-24 swd tags every few months and being sad when there are no new posts and you can scroll through all of them in like 20 minutes tops and there's a bunch of unrelated stuff in the tags. like i know it's an extremely rare disorder and very little is known about it but still. i wanna commiserate with other people that have it pls

#audrey talks sometimes #n24 #n24swd #non24 #non 24 #non-24 #non-24 sleep-wake disorder #non 24 swd #circadian rhythm disorder #sleep disorder

[444meat]

awake at 8:30 am again so here's another post about having a sleep disorder. (might make these a thing)

something people don't really consider about having a circadian rhythm disorder is that having a fucked up sleep cycle makes it really difficult to have a decent eating schedule

like how do you figure out when to eat? you eat breakfast when you wake up and lunch around noon and dinner usually around like 7 pm right? that's kind of the average one, isn't it?

so i woke up yesterday at 4:30 pm. health issues mean i can't eat for a while after i wake up, but even if i could, lets say i ate breakfast 5 pm. then i guess i could eat lunch around midnight. but where it gets complicated is dinner, because ive been trying to sleep since 4 am. i should be asleep right now. i spend all night thinking about how i should be sleeping, so i stay in my bed, and then i forget to eat anything. i eat significantly less when my sleep schedule is backwards than i do when it's the right way around. which just makes it all Worse

#circadian rhythm disorder #circadian rhythm #sleep disorder #it's either n24 or delayed #i've fit n24 in the past but i got it controlled for a while #now it's back to flipping around though. it's probably n24. it's been flipping since i was 17 #🪷 #🧊 #scheduled post #words #disability

[leirathemartian]

Amazing how much better I feel just from going to bed at 11 instead of 12, which required taking melatonin at 9:30 instead of 10:30. Good to know I can actually feel awake in the morning!

#I'm pretty certain i have at least marginal delayed sleep phase disorder #without melatonin I sleep from like 2-10 lol #really trying to reset my circadian rhythm a bit #sunlight at night doesn't help even with blackout curtains