Circadian rhythm sleep disorders can account for many sleep problems. Many people have an irregular body clock, but they don’t realize it. Circadian rhythm sleep disorders are caused by a mismatch in the environment’s sleep-wake cycle and your internal sleep cycle.
There are five main types of circadian rhythm disorders. These are: delayed phase, advanced phase, non hour sleep disorder, sleep wake disorder, sleep shift, and jetlag.
Delayed phase sleeping disorder is when you don’t get to sleep until late at night, usually between 1 and 6am. This happens despite all your efforts to get to sleep earlier. You feel sleepy late and are naturally motivated to go to bed until the late morning or early evening.
If you don’t have a flexible morning schedule, sleeping late can be a problem. Imagine that you need to get up at 6am to drive to work, so you don’t have the luxury of being awake at 2am. Flexible schedules allow people to sleep later, and they get 7-9 hours sleep.
This is the adolescent form of this. It is often hormonally driven and is seen in about 10% teenagers. Although it can be difficult for them to get up and go to school, they usually overcome it in the early s.
The opposite problem is experienced by people with advanced phase sleep disorder. People with advanced phase sleep disorder have difficulty keeping their eyes open in the morning and prefer to fall asleep between 6-8pm. For those who work a 9-to-5 job, this is less of a problem. Here’s where it can be problematic: You get home at 7 p.m. from work, fall asleep on your couch and wake up at 11 pm. Then, you can’t go to sleep again until 2AM and then sleep until 5am. You’ve now slept seven hours cumulatively. You don’t feel rested, however. Your sleep quality is not good and your natural sleep cycle has been disrupted.
Then we have the non-24-hour sleep wake disorder. This person’s body clock is more than 24 hours, let’s just call it 25hr. They naturally fall asleep later each night. They eventually experience complete day-night reverse. Although this sleep disorder is more common in blind people, it can also occur in sighted people. This disorder can be extremely debilitating because the individual has no consistent or reliable sleep pattern.
In later videos, I will discuss solutions for these problems. In the lifestyle interference video I will discuss shift work and jetlag. However, it is important to know that these disorders are called circadian rhythm disorders.
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