Tired in the morning and awake at night? Here is a REAL solution.
Ever since high school, I’ve had a peculiar problem.
No matter how little sleep I get the entire week, no matter how much I avoid caffeine, no matter how much exercise I do…I am wide awake in the middle of the night doing my best work!
Often my most productive hours are between midnight and 2 or 3AM, even if I’ve gotten only a few hours sleep the night before and been up for 18 hours.
It’s truly a bizarre pattern of dead tired mornings, walking around like a jet-lagged zombie, followed by a tortuous afternoon in desperate need of a nap, and finally an evening where I start to wake up.
“What could be wrong with me?” I wondered for years. Surely this was not a normal way to live!
As it turns out, I’m not alone with this small problem. Like others, I eventually managed to deal with it (taking only afternoon classes while in college, and starting my own business to set my own hours). But it always bothered me because everyone I met didn’t seem to understand my problem.
I tried every piece of advice that I heard: “Read before bed”, “Drink a glass of warm milk”, “No caffeine after noon”, but it didn’t seem to work. I even spoke to several doctors about it who didn’t have any good answers. Even if I forced myself to get in bed at a reasonable hour, sure enough, I would toss and turn until 3AM before finally falling asleep.
If this sounds like a problem you have, then I’m here to help, because you may have something called “Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome”.
It’s a well documented sleep disorder that goes undiagnosed (or misdiagnosed) by the vast majority of doctors today. You can read more about it in this excellent article
As you may recall, everyone has a biological clock, known as a circadian rhythm, that regulates when we are awake and when we feel tired. People with delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS for short) tend to have:
- A shifted circadian rhythm
- A longer than normal circadian rhythm
The second one in particular is difficult to live with because it causes you to operate on a 25 (or more) hour day. Each morning you want to sleep in a bit later, and each night you want to stay up a bit later. The world is moving too fast for your biological clock, so you are always a bit behind!
After trying everything under the sun to correct this efficiency problem in my life (since it was certainly affecting my productivity), I finally stumbled upon light therapy. It sounds bizarre, but you can actually use light to reset your biological clock. In particular, certain wave lengths of light seem to work better than others.
Thinking back to the caveman days, life was very simple getting plenty of sunlight during the day and it being pitch black at night. Our brains evolved to operated on this schedule over millions of years, but with today’s society full of artificial lights and plenty of activities to stay up for, some of our brains (mine included) have gotten confused.
Simply getting some sunlight early in the morning can help reset your biological clock, but for those who are in an office building, there are some simple light therapy devices that can help reset your biological clock. One that I’ve used and would recommend is the Apollo GoLite.
I use this for about 30 minutes each morning, shining some blue wavelength light on myself, and after about the first week of using it my entire sleep cycle had been reset. Getting up a regular hour no longer felt like I had just been awoken in the middle of the night! It was truly remarkable because after years of struggling with this problem, I finally found something that worked.
So stop trying to drink ten cups of coffee each morning, setting two alarms, and sneaking off to your car during your lunch hour to catch a nap! You might just have delayed sleep phase syndrome, and you can do something about it with light therapy!
Brian Armstrong is an authority on time management and how to quit your job to work for yourself! You can download three FREE chapters of his book and sign up for his free online course, “Successful Entrepreneurship”, by clicking here now: Start Your Own Business
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Comments
Chatsubo says on May 10th, 2007 at 10:45 am
You sir, have opened my eyes. I’ve had this most of my life. During my studies I could sleep how I wanted to, and I was very productive then. My working carreer has been vastly less productive, and I’ve often napped in my car during lunch. Thank you for finally pointing out what’s wrong with me.
Adam says on May 10th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Wow, I’ll have to look into this. I’ve had the exact symptoms you describe as long s I can remember, and it’s a problem. Thanks for the insight.
BrianArmstrong says on May 10th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
You’re welcome, and I know how you feel. My whole life I was thinking “everyone talks about how hard it is to get up in the morning, but is it really THIS hard fr them as well?”
This finally gave scientific evidence to what I was feeling for years, a great feeling. And 3 doctors I spoke with never knew what it was.
Brian
a11en says on May 10th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Thank you, sir!
I think I got my behavior very young- staying up at night to finish homework when the family finally went to bed (often 9/10pm)… same for undergrad, except add in the almost weekly projects due, and the 4am or no-sleep nights…
Do that for 8+ years or so- so far I haven’t been able to fix it! I’ll try this! Thank you very much!!
[Finally, someone else has the same problem. I'd swear it was laziness before... ]
JaBbA says on May 10th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
I’ve been on a 26 hour circadian all my life. I have known this and just dealt with the narcolepsy in the morning and wide-awake at night, but it’s affected my health something fierce.
I’ll be trying light therapy as soon as I possibly can!
a11en says on May 10th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
BTW, if anyone finds info about specific wavelengths (like Apollo’s lights), can you post it here? Making a light out of LED’s couldn’t be simpler… paying $200 on a graduate student’s budget isn’t much fun…
[DIY light therapy here I come...]
a11en says on May 10th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
470nm blue (almost completely standard blue LED’s wavelength- short bandwidth = no UV exposure)… here’s a citation:
Optimization of light and melatonin to phase-shift human circadian rhythms, J Neuroendocrinol. 2003 Apr;15(4):438-41
“The findings showed that light-induced melatonin suppression in humans was sensitive to short wavelength light (420–480 nm) a response very different to the classical scotopic and photopic visual systems.”
Of course there are many more things to check now- intensity of light, duration, pulsed or continuous, etc…
These little suckers (led’s) range in price from around $0.45 to $0.70 or so at various places… Will let you guys know how I get on with the project.
Adam says on May 10th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
I’ve known I’ve had this for a while now, but I have to be very careful about how I go about it. I’ve been bipolar since I was about eight years old (now twenty-five), so not only does it make the consequences worse, but also exacerbates the problem itself. Light does work with me, but I still end up back in the nights. I’ve just kind of adapted around it through by scheduling everything in the afternoons and working for myself.
mike says on May 10th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
I’ve had these exact symptoms for as long as I can remember and as a 17 year old student it has been absolutely killing me. Thank you so much for the article!
smallsushi says on May 10th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
D: no wonder why I’m jobless, what do you people do? D:
Gill says on May 10th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Wow, just wow, I’ve been living with those symptoms since I was in high school and everyone always just called me lazy. I remember trying so hard to wake up and trying to change my sleeping patterns, practicing getting up as soon as the alarm sounded, and a few other things just to end up in the same place I started. I am defiantly going to be looking deeper into this. Thank you again
Tico says on May 10th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
That’s incredible! It confirms my theory against my brother’s: I’m not crazy!..
bucketgirl says on May 11th, 2007 at 2:47 am
I’ve known about DSPS for awhile but it seems like everyone I tell seems to think I’m making up some story to excuse how I find it impossible to wake up in the morning.
Thank you so much for venerating the concept and presenting a solution!
Dan says on May 11th, 2007 at 5:13 am
Interesting article! I’ve been reading a lot of praise about alarm clocks that wake you up with natural light, and maybe it’s time to try it out seeing this works so well for you. Being tired in the evenings and falling asleep isn’t a problem for me anymore. Getting a baby took care of that nicely!
Also, where did you get that nice picture? I’m 99 % sure it’s from the subway in Stockholm, Sweden, so I was a bit surprised to see it here!
BrianArmstrong says on May 14th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Hey Everyone,
I’m excited about the response and how many people it helped. Regarding the cost, yes the $200 price tag is high. I got my apollo go lite off ebay for about $100 I think. My friend who is a mechanical engineer also balked at the price and decided to build one for himself with blue LED’s, but I don’t believe he ever finished it.
To me the cost was worth it. I mean, how can you put a price tag on getting an extra hour every day and being alert? Over a life time, that could be worth millions.
Good luck!
Brian
oluxxx says on May 22nd, 2007 at 5:28 pm
wow, i’m very happy to hear about this. but i don’t have the money for it. still i think this would be the first thing I need right now. Can enybody tell how you can build tomething like the Golite by oneself?
jedge says on August 23rd, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Wow, I’m 15 and you pretty much described my life
Now I just need to get my hands on $200…
Ted says on September 14th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Wow, I’ve had this for years. My dad had it and his mother had it, but not nearly as bad as I do. They just described it as being a “night owl”. I can get 12 hours of sleep and I still wont be fully awake in the morning. I may not be tired, but my mind isn’t alert until it is dark outside.
Haha… two alarm clocks, I’ve done that. It gets kind of confusing when you wake up at 8 a.m. and have to fumble with both of them. I remember giving up once and unplugging both, only to plop back down in bed and miss school.
Thanks for the info, now I just have to see if light will work for me.
Spiff says on November 6th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Amazing post. I’ve been struggling with the same problem for years (I’m 32). Waking up is almost always painful. I’m dead sleepy, pretty much a zombie. Often feel more tired than when I went to bed. I want to sleep in the morning and have energy at night..usually go to bed at 2am when I’m sleepy or so and get up at 8am with the alarm clock blaring in the darkness.
Curiously, I’ve been looking into Dawn Simulator controllers and lights to see if that helps me wake up feeling energized for once in my life… it was interesting to find this post while googling for “wake up tired” tho.
svelter says on November 28th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Thanks for posting this. I was trying to find lifehacks for going to bed earlier, as I just can’t seem to go to bed before 1 or 2 am. Since I’m supposed to be at work at 8, this is becoming a problem. I’ve been showing up later and later to work - sometimes as much as 3 hours late. It’s a terrible cycle.
I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve begun to feel hopeless - that I’m lazy and deserve whatever criticism is coming my way. Because it’s a problem that’s plagued me for so long, I remain a little bit skeptical. But I am hopeful that, once I can scrape together the funds to try this out, perhaps it will help me to obtain a more “normal” daily schedule.
Thank you for the resources and for helping us to know that it’s more than just laziness that’s keeping us in bed in the mornings.
GrimRC says on January 25th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Vitamin D and optimise TSH.
Daniel Burgess says on February 2nd, 2008 at 12:56 am
Been trying to find out why i am still awake at 5 am and feeling really tired and just generally awful in the morning. Training to be a Primary School Teacher and having to get up early feeling full of energy has been impossible… i am seriously going to concider using this.
Thank You
sara says on March 26th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Just get a bunch of full-spectrum light bulbs and some lamps - maybe a multi bulb lamp. Get about 5 of the high intensity bulbs that emit about 1,500 lumens a piece and use those for 30 minutes in the am.