Comments | niki_chan: First-year Psychology - What Mental Disorder Are You?

niki_chan

First-year Psychology - What Mental Disorder Are You?

Mar 31, 2003 04:41

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unsworn_nomore March 30 2003, 18:02:18 UTC

Just by sheer coincidence while reading the age online, I stumbled upon a thing called delayed sleep phase syndrome. It's a syndrome, mostly genetic (seems to run in families) where people find it hard to go to sleep before about 2am and generally wake up in the late morning or early afternoon. It's distinct from insomnia in that people who have it have no trouble sleeping; actually, they usually sleep a lot, especially on weekends.

Damn, does this sound familiar.

I have an alternate theory, though. In my case, it has to do with the day being a little shorter than my body clock thinks it should be. I cycle through periods of going to sleep later and later until I decide to stay up for about 30 hours, aiming to wake up at about 7 one morning after 12-16 hours sleep. Then the cycle repeats itself. I do not class this as Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. Rather, I think I am a Martian. The Martian day is approximately 40 minutes longer than the Terran day, and this seems to fit my circumstances rather well.

I was amused to note that many freelance writers have this disorder. It comes as no surprise :)

niki_chan March 30 2003, 22:34:29 UTC

Actually, the human body clock's natural rate is 25 hours, not 24. It's just that the sun usually overrides our urge to wake up every 25 hours. I guess if your relationship with the sun isn't one of regularity, you might revert to the natural 25 hour cycle.

Actually, that was one of the arguments to suggest that human life began on Mars :)

unsworn_nomore March 31 2003, 20:32:45 UTC

I guess if your relationship with the sun isn't one of regularity, you might revert to the natural 25 hour cycle.

My relationship with the Sun, as you suggest, is no different from any other relationships of mine.

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