Anyone Else Have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome?

[Parsifal]

post 16755 F.lux doesn't actually get rid of all the blue light. It will decrease the computer screen to 3400 kelvins, which still has some blue light. In addition to f.lux You need to manually set your monitor to R:100 G:60: B:0 or something similar to get the best results.

Any improvements from your delayed sleep phase syndrome?

Sleeping with light makes no sense to me as we don't find that in nature and as several frequencies have different effects on biology and circadian rythms. I believe that we may need some hormetic stress from darkness for our biology and circadian rythms.

 

[Kasper]

They did a study where they put all subjects on a camping without any artificial light. This cured all the people with delayed sleep phase syndrome within a week. And it made all evening people behave like morning people.

the theory was that blue lights specifically inhibit melatonin, and that delayed melatonin causes the syndrome

In my experience any iPad, phones, converter screens at night, **** up my rythm

 

[burtlancast]

They did a study where they put all subjects on a camping without any artificial light. This cured all the people with delayed sleep phase syndrome within a week. And it made all evening people behave like morning people.

the theory was that blue lights specifically inhibit melatonin, and that delayed melatonin causes the syndrome

Do you have a link to the study's summary ?

 

[Kasper]

I couldn't find the study again that was talking directly about delayed sleep phase syndrome.

I found an older study (from 2013) however that shows something very similar:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 2213007641

 

[burtlancast]

One treatment that was thought to work for DSPS was Vit B12.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1759094

Two adolescent patients suffering from persistent sleep-wake schedule disorders appear to have responded to treatment with vitamin B12 (methylcobalamin). A 15-year-old girl with delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS) and a 17-year-old boy with hypernychthemeral syndrome complained of not being able to attend school despite many trials of medication. The improvement of the sleep-wake rhythm disorders appeared immediately after the administration of high doses (3,000 micrograms/day) of methylcobalamin. Neither patient showed any laboratory or clinical evidence of vitamin B12 deficiency or hypothyroidism (which can cause B12 deficiency). Serum concentrations of vitamin B12 during treatment were in the high range of normal or above normal. The duration of the sleep period of the DSPS patient decreased gradually from 10 hours to 7 hours, and the time of sleep onset advanced from 2 a.m. to midnight. The period of the sleep-wake cycle of the hypernychthemeral patient was 24.6 hours before treatment and 24.0 hours after treatment. The relationship between the circadian basis of these disorders and vitamin B12 and its metabolites is discussed.

or: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2305167

Vitamin B12 (VB12) was administered to two patients suffering for many years from different sleep-wake rhythm disorders. One patient was a 15-year-old blind girl suffering from a free-running sleep-wake rhythm (hypernychthemeral syndrome) with a period of about 25 h. In spite of repeated trials to entrain her sleep-wake cycle to the environmental 24-h rhythm, her free-running rhythm persisted for about 13 years. When she was 14 years old, administration of VB12 per os was started at the daily dose of 1.5 mg t.i.d. Shortly thereafter, her sleep-wake rhythm was entrained to the environmental 24-h rhythm, and her 24-h sleep-wake rhythm was maintained while she was on the medication. Within 2 months of the withholding of VB12, her free-running sleep-wake rhythm reappeared. The VB12 level in the serum was within the normal range both before and after treatment. The other patient was a 55-year-old man suffering from delayed sleep phase syndrome since 18 years of age. After administration of VB12 at the daily doses of 1.5 mg, his sleep-wake rhythm disorder was improved. The good therapeutic effect lasted for more than 6 months while he was on the medication.

And, guess what: Vit B12 deficiency is very common (50%) in hypothroidism.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18655403

 

[NathanK]

Ive never heard of this. Fascinating. Ive dealt with this for 20 years and starting to believe id be plagued for the rest of my life with it. Mine began in high school. With this, you just cannot sleep normal consistent hours. Working a 9-5 is a miserable existence so I had to start my own 10 years ago.

I did B12 therapy (self administered shots) last year to try and It had zero effect on me. The biggest help was when I replaced all my "blue" lights with red LEDs last year.

The hardest problem with people like me is what the Wiki said: consistency. One hiccup in the schedule a late night of drinking, celebration, emergency, or even a harmless daytime nap, and our bodies revert right back to the old circadian rhythm.

I think this condition originates with low metabolism and running on adrenaline. We may be more sensitive to blue light than others also.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

I've found DSPS to be mostly BS. If you force yourself to stay up and then fall asleep the following night at a normal time, you will then be reset.

 

[Parsifal]

That is very interesting.

They did a study where they put all subjects on a camping without any artificial light. This cured all the people with delayed sleep phase syndrome within a week. And it made all evening people behave like morning people.

the theory was that blue lights specifically inhibit melatonin, and that delayed melatonin causes the syndrome

In my experience any iPad, phones, converter screens at night, f*** up my rythm

Doesn't RP think that melatonin is "bad"?

 

[burtlancast]

post 98525 Ive never heard of this. Fascinating. Ive dealt with this for 20 years and starting to believe id be plagued for the rest of my life with it. Mine began in high school. With this, you just cannot sleep normal consistent hours. Working a 9-5 is a miserable existence so I had to start my own 10 years ago.

I did B12 therapy (self administered shots) last year to try and It had zero effect on me. The biggest help was when I replaced all my "blue" lights with red LEDs last year.

The hardest problem with people like me is what the Wiki said: consistency. One hiccup in the schedule a late night of drinking, celebration, emergency, or even a harmless daytime nap, and our bodies revert right back to the old circadian rhythm.

I think this condition originates with low metabolism and running on adrenaline. We may be more sensitive to blue light than others also.

Did you try to look at bright blue lights when you woke up ?

Dr Richard Hansler advises to combine both amber glasses before going to sleep with bright blue lights upon waking up.

Kind of a double whammy.

 

[Kasper]

I've found DSPS to be mostly BS. If you force yourself to stay up and then fall asleep the following night at a normal time, you will then be reset.

you really are stupid if you think people with delayed sleep phase syndrome haven't tried that

Doesn't RP think that melatonin is "bad"?

yes, he thinks that, the best way to inihibit melatonin at night, is make sure blue lights are on all night
I've tried that, but I felt horrible, I think he is off here

 

[Westside PUFAs]

post 98578 you really are stupid if you think people with delayed sleep phase syndrome haven't tried that

And you're not a good vocalist.

 

[Kasper]

I'm surely not a good vocalist, but let's stay on topic.

 

[Parsifal]

post 98578

I've found DSPS to be mostly BS. If you force yourself to stay up and then fall asleep the following night at a normal time, you will then be reset.

you really are stupid if you think people with delayed sleep phase syndrome haven't tried that

Doesn't RP think that melatonin is "bad"?

yes, he thinks that, the best way to inihibit melatonin at night, is make sure blue lights are on all night
I've tried that, but I felt horrible, I think he is off here

Were have you read that RP advises blue light at night? I thought he only advised infrared light as he thinks that blue light blocks the metabolism (and probably raises cortisol) :?.

 

[Kasper]

Sorry, Ray Peat doesn't say that you should blue lights on all night.
He only says that melatonin is bad.

I don't think melatonin is bad at night. And I argue that say melatonin would be bad, then it could be beneficial to put blue light on all night.
As blue light is very potent in making sure your body won't make any melatonin.

As I feel really bad if I do this, I think it may be that melatonin is not that bad after all.

 

[NathanK]

post 98532 I've found DSPS to be mostly BS. If you force yourself to stay up and then fall asleep the following night at a normal time, you will then be reset.

Ha, yeah, I do that every 2 weeks. Doesn't work. Thanks for your input though! :bigreddoublebirdie

 

[tara]

post 98622 Sorry, Ray Peat doesn't say that you should blue lights on all night.
He only says that melatonin is bad.

I agree.

post 98622 I don't think melatonin is bad at night. And I argue that say melatonin would be bad, then it could be beneficial to put blue light on all night.
As blue light is very potent in making sure your body won't make any melatonin.

I think Peat talks about blue light having other antimetabolic effects, not just suppressing melatonin.

post 98622 As I feel really bad if I do this, I think it may be that melatonin is not that bad after all.

I don't think this follows at all. I think it just shows that blue light at night does not serve you. It doesn't show melatonin to be benign.

 

[jyb]

I believe Ray would argue that a normal amount of melatonin may be useful for sleep and night time conditions (and should not be disturbed with blue light at night), but bad in higher amounts like when you are supplementing it. Presumably a healthy person produces just the amount required for sleep and other good effects, and higher amounts are more common in disease and come with less desirable effects. Same story as for serotonin and many other hormones, it seems.

 

[Giraffe]

Ray Peat about melatonin (from THE THYROID, 1996 Gary Null radio)

post 64335 Okay, you mentioned the hormones estrogen and how it relates to melatonin. With increasing age, people have made a big thing of the fact that melatonin, which peaks about 3AM in everyone, that this peak is a little bit smaller in old age. But it happens that...with aging, as the thyroid decreases, the melatonin decreases, because when thyroid is active, your melatonin comes up as an antioxidant defense against that the high metabolic rate that thyroid can stimulate. So when your thyroid is low, the melatonin is low, when your thyroid is high, the melatonin is high, in a logical adaptation -- because it is an antioxidant.

But the function of melatonin all by itself, when it isn't surrounded by the appropriate other conditions, melatonin, in studies done in pig tissue, by a man named (Sirotkin?), pigs are relatively close to humans in having daytime habits, nighttime sleep and so on, which is very important for melatonin because it's a nighttime dominant hormone -- in pigs, he found that melatonin suppresses progesterone and raises estrogen, and this happens to be the same thing that low thyroid does.

So if the melatonin rises in proportion to your thyroid, it doesn't matter that it is having these pro-estrogen, anti-progesterone effects, because the thyroid is doing exactly the opposite to those hormones and is taking care of the situation, because thyroid gets rid of the excess estrogen while...being totally responsible for producing progesterone. But if you take melatonin out of context, as he did in the pig study, you're going to get an exactly anti-thyroid effect, deranging those hormones in the direction of stress and aging.

Some of the current publicity that is used to promote the fact that melatonin is used to make you go to sleep, it happens to be also a thing that goes up during hibernation, and its function is to lower the body temperature, and remember the hospitalized patients -- the ones who had the lowest temperatures were the least likely to survive, because as the thyroid goes down and your body temperature falls, you lose a lot of your immune functions and tissue repair capacity. So lowering your body temperature does make you hibernate and it does make you sleep, but you don't want to use something out of context to force that.

 

[Kasper]

Ah very interesting!! So that could explain why people with higher thyroid sleep better, melatonin rises with higher thyroid.

 

[burtlancast]

post 99387 Ray Peat about melatonin (from THE THYROID, 1996 Gary Null radio)
in pigs, he found that melatonin suppresses progesterone and raises estrogen

Well, maybe is this an area Ray is wrong about ?
It could be that pigs fed melatonin react in a different way than humans do.
Just like rabbits fed cholesterol get atherosclerosis, while humans don't ( as Ray pointed out)

I've looked at the Wikipedia page about melatonin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin), and many medical effects are incompatible with an increased estrogen mechanism:

- While it is known that melatonin interacts with the immune system,[53][54] the details of those interactions are unclear. Antiinflammatory effect seems to be the most relevant and most documented in the literature.
Some studies also suggest that melatonin might be useful fighting infectious disease[57] including viral, such as HIV, and bacterial infections,

- Several clinical studies indicate that supplementation with melatonin is an effective preventive treatment for migraines and cluster headaches.

- A systematic review of unblinded clinical trials involving a total of 643 cancer patients using melatonin found a reduced incidence of death

- Both animal[97] and human[98][99] studies have shown melatonin to be potentially radioprotective. Moreover, it is a more efficient protector than amifostine,[100] a commonly used agent for this purpose. The mechanism of melatonin in protection against ionizing radiation is thought to involve scavenging of free radicals.[48] It is estimated that nearly 70% of biological damage caused by ionizing radiation is attributable to the free radical, especially the hydroxyl radical that attacks DNA, proteins, and cellular membranes. Melatonin has been suggested as a radioprotective agent, with the proposed advantages of being broadly protective, readily available, orally self-administered, and without major known side effects.[101]

As far as side-effects:
Melatonin appears to cause very few side-effects as tested in the short term, up to three months, at low doses. Two systematic reviews in 2005 and 2006 showed that there were no adverse effects of exogenous melatonin in several clinical trials and that comparative trials found that the adverse effects headaches, dizziness, nausea and drowsiness were reported about equally for both melatonin and placebo.[115][116] Prolonged-release melatonin is safe with long-term use of up to 12 months.[117]