Sunrise, Sunset

Recently I have been having trouble falling asleep before 3-4am.  This is nothing new to me.  I have always been someone who would rather stay awake until sunrise and sleep during the day.  (No I am not a vampire, do not be alarmed). Beside naturally being a night person, a lot of my health conditions are worse at night which makes it harder to fall asleep.  Now, I am used to this and do have medication to help.  The problem is that it does not always work and even when it does, it leaves me feeling like a zombie in the morning.  I just hate that feeling. 

For a while back in 2005, I was awake literally all night long, and would only fall asleep after sunrise.  This was also the same time that my doctor told me that working was no longer an option for me and my general health was horrible because of multiple chronic conditions.

I had told my doctor that the combinations of medication all my specialist had me on  made me feel horrible and I wanted to come off anything I could.  Don't get me wrong, I did not turn in to some new age lunatic who wanted to treat everything with tree bark or some such nonsense.  I am a severe asthmatic and know that there are certain medications that I need to keep breathing.  I also have severe allergies so I carry an epi pen.  And when I am in pain, I want pain medication.  I just wanted to be on the lowest level of medications I needed to keep my health stable without overloading my system with too many drugs.

Thankfully I had recently switched to a new doctor that believes in mixing traditional medicine with more natural solutions.  So when I told her I was have such trouble sleeping, instead of just upping my sleeping medication, she told me that I likely a circadian rhythm problem causing a sleep phase disorder and would I consider trying a sunrise lamp.

Huh?  Yup that was my response.  A very simplistic explanation of your circadian rhythm is your natural body clock that tells you when to sleep and when to be awake.  She explained that people like me, sometimes get their rhythms off kilter from side effects of medications like prednisone or just having trouble sleeping due to health problems.  So my circadian rhythm needed to be reset.  I needed to learn to wake up to sunrise and fall asleep to the sunset.

That's where the sunrise lamp came in.  It is basically an alarm clock that simulates sunrise and sunset.  You can program it to go off at the time you want to sleep and the time you want to get up.  It sounded a little out there but at that point I was willing to try anything to get some sleep at night.  So I ordered the lamp and started using it.  And imagine how shocked I was when it worked!  In less than a year I was able to stop taking the sleeping medication unless I was having a night where severe pain was keeping me awake.  Then I used both the lamp and the medication to get the sleep I needed.

After a while, my circadian rhythm was reset and when we moved into a new house, I decided to stop using the lamp.  (OK, truthfully, I packed it in a box while we were moving and promptly forgot it existed).

Recently, I had a very severe flare up of my asthma and spent a few weeks on prednisone.  I was back to not falling asleep until almost sunrise and struggling to get through the day.  After being annoyed and cranky for a while, I remembered the sunrise lamp and dug it out of storage to give it a shot again. 

For some reason, I was skeptical that it would help.  I know, I know, it helped before, but I was so much sicker then and I figured it was just a placebo effect.  Oh well, whether it is a placebo effect or not, it is working for me again.  I am slowly starting to fall asleep earlier.  But more importantly, the quality of sleep that I am getting is better than without the sunrise lamp.  How do I know?  Well, last night was the first day in the last month that I have forgotten to set the sunrise lamp and I have felt horrible all day.  And based on how my family has been avoiding me, I suspect I have not been the most cheerful person to be around either.  ;o)

So, if you are having trouble sleeping and are willing to gamble some money (the lamps are not cheap) a sunrise lamp might be the thing for you.  And yes, I know it still sounds like a bunch a new age garbage, but it works for me.

The lamp I use is made by sunrise systems.  I have the lamp and alarm all in one unit.  There is one that can be plugged into a regular table lamp which I have never used so I can not say how good it is. 

A word of caution: I believe this is a European based company.  The link above takes you to a photo that most closely matches my current lamp, but it is the European model.  If you decide to purchase a lamp like this, make sure it  will work with U.S. style plugs if that is what you need.  I believe the U.S. style lamps are available on amazon.com. 

And since it is now close to my bedtime, it is time to set my sunset and get some sleep.

Happy Sleeping Everyone!