Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome
Some Interesting Facts About Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome
Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (DSPS) is one of the more interesting sleep disorders that may come about in childhood and is thought to be most prevalent in young men. It is extremely rare and involves an abnormal sleep cycle, where the sufferer stays up until the wee hours of the morning and has a very hard time waking up early.
Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome is much more than just being tired from lack of sleep. The characteristics of DSPS are similar to those found with jet lag or during the time change from standard time to daylight savings time and back again. The person just is not ready to fall asleep at the normally expected time.
Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome basically involves a disruption to the normal sleep-wake cycle. While most people tend to have the urge to go to bed for the night by 11 p.m., people with DSPS do not normally feel ready to go to bed until around 2 or 3 a.m. And that means that they are not ready to wake up early the following morning. A normal wake-up time for someone with DSPS would be around 10 or 11 a.m.
It is difficult to diagnose DSPS because there are virtually no medical tests to determine its presence. The best indication that a person has DSPS is that they rarely feel tired until the wee hours of the morning, and they have extreme difficulty waking up early and functioning when they have to do anything first thing in the morning. This can be a big problem for students and anyone who works a daytime job. It can even be dangerous for someone with DSPS to drive or operate machinery in the early morning.
One of the only ways to accurately diagnose DSPS is by keeping a sleep diary. This is where the sufferer would keep track of their daily sleep behavior as well as the way they feel during the day – tired, well rested, super exhausted. A pattern of not feeling tired until 3 a.m. and feeling dysfunctional at 8 a.m. can be a good indicator of DSPS.
There are a couple of treatments for DSPS, and both have good results. Chronotherapy is a type of sleep therapy that changes the circadian rhythm that is out of sync in a person with DSPS. The person stays up 3 hours later than they did the previous day: if they went to bed at 4 a.m. the first day, they go to bed at 7 a.m. the second day, 10 a.m. the third day and so on for an entire week. By the end of the week, they will be going to sleep at 10 p.m. and their sleep-wake cycle should be adjusted.
Bright light therapy is the other way to treat DSPS and it involves waking the person up early in the morning and exposing them to bright light for a prescribed length of time. This therapy has a high success rate in a relatively short time as the person gradually grows accustomed to the new waking and sleeping schedule.