Untraining your body clock

21 Aug 2008

My brain/body is driving me maaaaadddddd!!!!!
I can't pin point when or why, but my brain keeps waking my body up after 6 hours sleep. Last night I went to sleep thoroughly knackered at around 10pm, then I wake up just gone 4am and can't get back to sleep. It is starting to have an affect, as I feel continually tired.
Why does my body do this?
How do I stop it?
Has this happened to you and how do you handle it?

21 Aug 2008

I have the same problem.. I was a cook for a year and had to be up at to get ready for work. I haven't worked there for 18 months, but my body still wakes up at - I have no idea why it does it, but it drives me mad when I don't have to get up till late!!!! I don't have to start work until 11 today, but was up at again...
Not sure what you can do hun... if it carries on, might be worth popping along to your doctor and see if they can help at all?
Hope you manage to get some sleep tonight! xx :kiss

21 Aug 2008

Quote by venus68
My brain/body is driving me maaaaadddddd!!!!!
I can't pin point when or why, but my brain keeps waking my body up after 6 hours sleep. Last night I went to sleep thoroughly knackered at around 10pm, then I wake up just gone 4am and can't get back to sleep. It is starting to have an affect, as I feel continually tired.
Why does my body do this?
How do I stop it?
Has this happened to you and how do you handle it?

May be will help you understand what is going on.
But basically what you need to do is so much untrain your body clock as get in synch with it. Some people's body clocks don't work on a 24 hour basis, for example my body seems to run on a 26 hour clock.
If you've already sussed that your body deems 6 hours to be right then you are pretty much stuck with that, what you can do though is find out which 6 hours will give you the most benefit. Try going to bed at different times (for, say, a week each) to see which gives you the most amount of benefit.
There are some medical things that can interfere too, for example I have fibromyalgia syndrome and one of its symptoms that I suffer from is what is called an alpha-delta sleep anomaly, whereby my brain waves during sleep tend to remain in the alpha wave state and only dip into the refreshing delta wave state occasionally. The end result is that I tend to wake up almost as knackered as I did when I go to sleep. This has the result of making me permanently tired, which in turn exaggerates the pain aspect of the FMS.
The other thing you could maybe benefit from is exercise before you go to sleep (wink, wink) which is said to aid sleep cycles.

21 Aug 2008

Thanks for the info Peanut.. as you know I have fibromyalgia too, and didn't realise about the sleep patterns.. will look into it further. Will also be making an appointment to see my doctor and will take this information with me.
kiss

21 Aug 2008

perhaps he's dull?
lp

21 Aug 2008

I once went through a period of waking at 3 am on the dot - this went on for weeks - I was exhausted. Eventually my body got used to it and actually woke me a little earlier one night. I lay there furious and tired and heard beep - beep - beep coming from somewhere in the room.
I hunted for it but the beeping stopped and I struggled back to sleep. The next day I cleared out all the drawers in the room. Eventually I found an old digital watch that was telling the wrong time and whose alarm was set to 12:00. That happened to coincide with 3 am.
I chucked the watch away and thought "fantastic - tonight I SLEEP". How wrong could I be. It took over 2 weeks to sleep through.
As for the sleeping for a period and then waking - I have heard that taking a drop of alcohol before bed can do that - the body drops off nice and easy, but then wakes when the alcohol is cleared. Drinking too much coffee during the day can do it too - the body wakes craving. No idea if either of these apply in this case - but worth considering if so.