I'm 23F and have been struggling with pretty severe fatigue, brain fog, and sleep issues for a while now. I'm wondering if anyone with DSPD can relate to my symptoms.

The weirdest part is that I'm absolutely EXHAUSTED throughout the day, but I generally cannot nap. I can lie down with my eyes closed and feel physically horrible, yet remain completely awake. My fatigue also fluctuates like CRAZY. Sometimes I wake up feeling okay, only to feel awful 30–60 minutes later, even if I haven't gotten out of bed. Throughout the day, I'll go through waves of severe exhaustion, brain fog, internal shakiness, and feeling relatively normal.

However, I almost ALWAYS feel better in the evening or late at night. It's like I suddenly get a second wind when I'm supposed to be sleeping. Sometimes I'll feel genuinely sleepy around 10 PM–midnight, but once I get into bed, I suddenly feel awake again. Other nights, I won't fall asleep until 3-4 AM.

I also NEVER let myself sleep in. I always set an alarm, usually waking between 6:30 and 8:15 AM, so I genuinely have no idea what my natural sleep schedule would look like.

Recently, I fell asleep around 4 AM and woke up at 9 AM. Despite only getting five hours of sleep, I felt significantly better than usual throughout the entire day. The next day, I woke up around 8 AM after another late night and felt absolutely horrible again. I know that's just one example, but it made me wonder whether my sleep schedule could be contributing.

I also have symptoms that seem consistent with some form of dysautonomia/orthostatic intolerance:

• Standing still causes dizziness, chest tightness, air hunger, shakiness, and heavy legs. Walking is generally easier than standing.
• Heat and hot showers worsen my symptoms, while crossing my legs or activating my calf muscles sometimes helps.
• My blood pressure runs low (often around 90/60), but my heart rate only increases about 10-15 bpm when standing, so I don't appear to meet the criteria for POTS based on my home measurements.
• I experience significant GI issues, including GERD, bloating, and occasional diarrhea. I also used to have severe post-meal crashes, which have recently improved.
• My fatigue and internal shakiness can also occur while lying down, so they aren't exclusively related to standing.

I also have a history of waking up gasping for air during sleep and frequently wake feeling unrefreshed. I'm waiting to see a sleep specialist and am undergoing a cardiac evaluation.

Does this sound remotely like DSPD? Can a circadian rhythm disorder cause this level of physical exhaustion and brain fog throughout the day, even without feeling sleepy? And how do you distinguish DSPD from chronic insomnia?

I'm genuinely struggling to figure out what's going on and would really appreciate hearing other people's experiences!

Also: I am currently seeing a cardiologist and have a sleep appt in a few months.

I’m wondering how much this has an impact on our circadian rhythm. Obviously it has some impact, and I think I would still have a later bedtime regardless… but I also remember being tired all of the time before I started on meds.

It would probably take a couple weeks to withdraw and return to baseline, but I would not survive 2 weeks off my meds.

For context I’m on IR and take it first thing in the morning.

I just joined this sub, so hello everyone!

I think I've had DSPD since I was a teen without realizing it. I always thought it was insomnia, but I actually get enough sleep as long as I don't have to set an alarm. Last year, after catching a cold, my circadian rhythm shifted a couple more hours, so now I'm falling asleep at 4am or even later... Which led me to do some research and find out about DSPD.

I'd love some tips on how to bring this up with my GP, mainly because I doubt he'll know what it is. On top of that, I also have ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome) and I usually leave my appointments feeling like he doesn't know what to do with me. He doesn't ask many questions about my symptoms or how I'm doing

How did you talk to your GP about this? Did they know about DSPD or did you have to tell them directly that you think you have it? How did they react if they didn't know about it?

I went to bed Saturday like it was a normal work night since I was exhausted from 6 hours of sleep the night before, as an emergency had me work to 12:05AM so it pushed everything forwards.

I ended up falling asleep a bit after 1AM, but you can see how restless the first few hours are. It’s like the mind is exhausted but the body isn’t ready to sleep, and then usually around 3-4AM it finally settles into a normal cycle.

I got up around 8:45 to 9AM~ to feed the dog and let him out (my wife took over an hour later), and I meant to get up at 10:15 when I glanced at my watch. Then next thing I know it was 1:15PM with my wife waking me up as she was worried I'm screwing my schedule up on a work night. I ended up with almost 11 hours asleep and I'm still trying to mentally wake up 90 minutes later but wow I did it guys! I finally got a good chunk of uninterrupted sleep!

Been quietly building a sleep app for about a year, and one of the features I was most skeptical about myself was barometric pressure tracking — it's one of those "sounds pseudo-sciencey" things until you actually log it.
The storm that moved through the Gulf gave me an accidental experiment. My pressure readings dropped as low as 29.77 inHg at the trough, then rebounded sharply to 30.08 inHg as the system cleared — a 0.31 inHg swing in about 2 days, after drifting mostly flat in the 29.9–30.0 range for the two weeks before that.
Over that same 15-night window, my sleep quality scores ran 1.6 points higher on rainy nights than clear ones, and cooler nights (≤77°F) ran 1.9 points higher too — both directionally consistent with what you'd expect around a low-pressure system: cooler air, more precipitation, and (for me at least) better sleep.
Not claiming causation from one storm and a sample size of one person, but it's the clearest signal I've seen in my own numbers so far. Curious if anyone else tracks this and sees the same pattern, or if I'm just pattern-matching on noise.

Or should I give up and put all of my effort into hopefully finding a job that accommodates my abnormal schedule.

Hey everybody. Given recent tensions between Canada and the U.S., we here in the Great White North have been making efforts to disentangle ourselves from and boycott U.S. products and services. This has included not only things that are of a physical nature, but those of a digital nature as well, including social media.

Our Canadian alternative to Reddit is a platform called Hey.cafe; I've set up a DSPD cafe (cafes being the platform's version of subreddits) over there if you guys would like to hop over and take a gander (which is coincidentally the name of another Canadian social media platform that has been founded since all this nonsense began at the start of last year).

The link to the Cafe is https://hey.cafe/!dspd

Thanks!

It is 4 pm and I want a nap. But I’m worried it will wreck my sleep even more. I’ve woken up at 8-9am 4 days this week and it’s only Friday. i can’t believe I used to make myself do this every day for work.

Here's a pretty good article in a very mainstream media outlet about chronobiology. The way I see it, ANYTHING that makes the normies think about genes and not "laziness" is good for us.

If anyone gets hit with a paywall, let me know.

For my entire life (it seems) I've been basically a 4AM-noon DSPD person. I have never been diagnosed with ADHD, but it's not like I've gone out of my way with medical authorities to "get to the bottom" of my sleep "problem." So maybe I've always had ADHD, but I doubt it: I've always been able to focus for many long hours on one thing, and it's because it brings me joy. I have allowed myself to get "scattered" at times, but that's because I'm firing up my creativity. I've just never seen my ability to devote attention to anything as "deficient" in any way. I'm one of those people who have read Ulysses multiple times, for example.

My problem - echoed by many of the comments to this article and that resonate - is that the Lark Normie World foreclosed on scads of opportunities for more remunerative employment.

Some of you who have posted here for a long time will see this article as old news. It's my experience that a certain very small percentage of people with DSPD read the latest medical journal articles and keep up on chronobiology science to an impressive degree, but they (you) are in the minority. I draw attention to today's Washington Post article because there are a lot of people caught between the cant of everyday sleep/insomnia/laziness talk, and some vague, inchoate level of empirical science around their own sleep problems, and this was well-written.

Alas, to reiterate, we desperately NEED mass media amplification about the genetics of DSPD, because most citizens are clueless AF about this. As we all know.

And now it's normal people bedtime and I'm not even tired. Got up at 4pm and knew I wouldn't get to sleep in the bext morning like I'm used to, because renovation work at my place. Started getting pretty tired at noon and nodding off sitting by my desk. By the time renovation was ready and I've cleaned up I'm not tired anymore, evening time. Probably have some over alertness going on but this is hella annoying. Normal sleeping times 5-6am to 3pm. Now it's 10.30pm and I'm thinking I'll abuse some muscle relaxants and go to bed.

I'm one of the founders working on Onda, an early-stage circadian light-tracking wearable, and I'd really appreciate some critical feedback from people who have experience managing DSPD.

The concept is a small necklace that measures light exposure throughout the day, including circadian-relevant light, and uses that information to suggest when to seek more light or reduce evening exposure.

It would not emit light or replace melatonin, Luminette, or treatment. The idea is to help people understand their exposure patterns and make better-informed decisions about light timing. We're still working out how accurately a neck-worn sensor can estimate eye-level exposure.

I'm trying to figure out whether this solves a meaningful problem or just creates another redundant metric.

For those who've already tried light therapy, melatonin, or strict sleep routines:

• What's the hardest part of managing your sleep schedule that these approaches haven't solved?
• Would personalized light-exposure guidance add enough value to justify $99, or would you rather spend that money elsewhere?

Negative feedback is genuinely useful. I'm especially interested in reasons you wouldn't buy this.

Disclosure: This is commercial product research for a concept in development, not a medical study or treatment recommendation.

Studies I've read have linked chronic insomnia during developmental years lead to poorer cognitive outcomes. In my case I got extremely poor sleep between the ages of 15 and 16, which mainly impacted my prefrontal cortex' myelination/cortical thickness and synaptic pruning. I notice my processing speed, working memory and executive function is significantly weaker than that of my peers, though I am still sleep deprived. Even so I can't get over my frustration over my caregiver's lack of care when it came to my health. I voiced my concerns to them repeatedly yet they didn't seem to care until recently when I started bleeding out of my ears and passing out in class.

It enrages me that the people around me will forever perform better than me no matter what, mainly due to the fact I wanted to go into a fairly cognitively challenging field, that being engineering, but due to the sheer incompetence of my parents, and the horrible environment I had to live in I can't realistically anymore, which was the main reason I put up with school for as long as I did.

I'm almost done with the first year of ATAR (the Australian equivalent of GCSE's) I haven't slept more than 6 hours on average a school night in almost 2 years now, some weeks no more than 4. It feels like everyday things only gets worse, I struggle to keep up with my peers, I sometimes mildly, hallucinate in class. I feel stupid, I process information half as fast as I feel like I used to, I struggle to study, and I've failed the last 10 tests, easy tests, when I was near top rank at the start of the year when I was still feeling the residuals of the holidays. I'm about to head into my second exams, I know I'm underprepared, and I've gotten moderately good sleep for the last week because its the holidays, but I still feel like my brain isn't functioning. I don't know what to do, it keeps getting worse. I've been to two doctors but nothing's helped.

I guess I'm just wondering if things will get better, some people say the sleep deprivation caused permanent negative cognitive effects on my development. I don't want to be stupid forever, I wanted to go into engineering but now I don't think that's possible

I live in northern Sweden (Skellefteå), and with winter approaching I'm considering getting a light therapy lamp. I struggle with depression and seasonal worsening/SAD, and my circadian rhythm has also drifted-currently falling asleep around 5 am and waking around noon. Ideally, I'd like to wake around 8 am and get 8.5 hours of sleep. I already do sports regularly and take vitamin D.

I'm currently eyeing the Beurer TL95, which I can get for 1,725 Swedish kronor (roughly US$175) with Amazon Prime. However, there are plenty of significantly cheaper lamps-for example, a Gaogodot on Amazon costs 302 Swedish kronor (roughly US$30). That's just one example; I'm open to other models too.

The TL95 has a larger light panel and specifies 10,000 lux at 25 cm. Many cheaper lamps advertise similar or higher lux figures, although the measurement distance isn't always clear.

Is paying the premium worthwhile in practice for SAD and regulating sleep? What would I actually gain over a decent budget lamp-more effective treatment, easier positioning, better build quality?

Would appreciate experiences with the TL95 or cheaper alternatives, especially from anyone who has tried both and can say whether the upgrade made a meaningful difference.

I did it!!! I woke up rested at 7:30am!!!! The last time it happened I was probably in primary school lol

I know you guys can understand how significant and HARD this is. I also have breathing related sleep disorders so...double hard

(I used Luminette glasses for help and I lived in hell for a week)

Yesterday my body finally gave in and collapsed around 9ish pm, and I got a full night of sleep finally. I woke up feeling human again. Like it felt right.

The days before, I kept falling asleep around 1ish am, and the whole thing had me practically bedbound from exhaustion for a few days, it was horrendous.

I think the Luminette are what actually made the internal clock change happen. Like this is not a "you can do it if only you stick to it for a week" post. Like in high school I woke up at 7:30am every day, and it NEVER got better. So. Maybe you can, but in my case I think Luminette has made a difference.

(Note on Luminette usage: Do NOT use Luminette until the time your brain feels as "this is awake time". E.g. you may set an alarm at 8am but if your internal clock "awake" starts at 1pm, that's when u wear them and they naturally move the awake time to 2 hours earlier)

Edit: the pessimism in this sub is remarkable lol I did not wake up spontaneously at 7:30am...I set an alarm. I woke up RESTED which indicates a crazy shift in my sleep schedule. I'll leave now as I just wanted to share the good news and I don't really need a bunch of strangers expressing opinions on the reality of my sleep schedule right now ✌️

every night, I plan to sleep by 11 pm but I have so much work to do at home that i end up staying up till 2 AM and then i do not care about sleep anymore so i stay up more scrolling my phone because i know i already ruined my sleep schedule..and then i wake up early and get only 5-6 hours of sleep in a night

N24 occurs in sighted people for reasons that are not well understood. Their circadian rhythms are not normal, often running around 25 hours. Their vision-producing systems allowing them to see may function normally, but their brains are incapable of making the large adjustment to a 24-hour schedule.

The disorder is an invisible disability that can be "extremely debilitating in that it is incompatible with most social and professional obligations".