[Lala]

I am a 62-year-old woman and have been researching my rather unusual sleep pattern. I’ve asked a variety of doctors and received differing opinions.

Here is the typical scenario. I am tired by 5 pm and fall asleep soon after (usually watch some youtube in bed). I awake between 11 pm and 1 and can’t go back to sleep and I’m usually up for a couple of hours. I usually return to sleep at some point for a couple of hours.

I’m not overly tired during the day but sometimes I take a short nap. I am generally in good health (healthy weight, blood work is good, blood pressure controlled with a low dose of medicine, use an elliptical every day). Since I’m retired this has developed even more and I fear it might be a circadian rhythm disorder now. If so, am I at greater risk for health problems?

I got a Garmin fitness watch as a gift and it appears to show a lot of heart rate spikes over a 100 during the day when not exercising. I got a checkup and EKG which was normal and have no other symptoms.

 

[Martin Reed]

Hello Lala and welcome to the forum. If you are tired and falling asleep at 5:00 PM, it’s not very surprising that you wake between 11:00 PM and 1:00 AM (after between six and eight hours of sleep) and can’t fall back to sleep — because you have got all the sleep you need!

So, it seems as though your issue isn’t really to do with sleep drive, it’s more of a sleep scheduling (ie circadian rhythm) issue. In other words, right now you have an advanced sleep schedule (you are going to bed early, and waking from sleep early).

You should be able to get your sleep back on a more appropriate schedule by gradually delaying your bedtime from 5:00 PM.

So, for example, tomorrow you would try to stay awake until around 5:30 PM. The day after, you’d try to stay awake until around 6:00 PM. Then, around 6:30 PM, and so on until you reach an appropriate bedtime.

Have you tried something like this?

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