LONGECITY

i have trouble getting to sleep at a godly hour, it's been going on for as long as i can remember. at around midnight i become hyperactive, my thoughts are extremely lucid and i generally am very productive. my natural sleep time is ~2am and i sleep for ~8 or so hours. i'm pretty sure what i have is delayed phase sleep onset disorder, my sleep is fine but is completely out of sync with normal folk. this wouldn't really be a problem if the world revolved around my sleep patterns. unfortunately they don't so i was wondering if anyone knew of possible treatments? i've tried melatonin, but i consistently wake up 4 hours later and have trouble getting back to bed. maybe something to deal with cortisol?

All you can really do is just deal with the fatigue as you adjust to a new waking time by consistently waking at a set time.
This could take a few days. The quickest way to reset would be to wake up at your desired time, pull an all nighter and stay up through the next day, finally going to sleep at ur desired bedtime a full 24 hrs late. Then just be consistent with your waking time.

It is much easier to set your wake time than it is your sleep time.

I've had a similar situation most of my life. I don't know if it's from some aspect of biology, or the simple fact that I love the look and feel the world takes on at night. For whatever reason though, I always seem to drift back into a nocturnal schedule when the opportunity presents itself. It takes a bit of creative planning, but for the most part I've been able to simply roll with it. I'd even go so far as to say that it's proven to be more of an advantage for me than a detriment in the long run.

Same here (hence the 1:44 AM posting). I've had periods where I've had a really regular schedule, going to bed at 11pm or so and getting up at 6 or 7. I did it by avoiding caffiene in the late afternoon/evening and having a set bed time. It takes a couple weeks or so of struggling before my body finally starts to settle into the routine, but it works eventually. The only other suggestion I can think of is to eat foods with tryptophan (e.g. carbs), which induces sleep.

There are two reliable ways to advance your biological clock, according to Dr. Dement, the father of modern sleep medicine:

1) Use melatonin (physiological dose, 300-500mcg) at the time of day when you would like to fall asleep.

2) Expose yourself to bright light at the time of day you would like to awaken.

If melatonin didn't work well for you initially, try the light exposure. Both in combination would be even better. Be consistent with your schedule, and don't be discouraged if you don't get immediate results.

Take care to avoid television, the computer, and other sources of bright light in the evening as they will interfere with melatonin production and contribute to insomnia.

Just roll with it. Go to sleep when you are tired and wake up when you need to. It will all take care of itself.

Wisdom from the "ignore the problem until it goes away" system of medicine.

thanks for the replies guys. part of me really doesn't see a problem, i.e. if my body is wired a specific way, then maybe it's not too bad and i should just work around my sleep schedule. but after taking a galaxy of sleeping pills over the last few months i'm looking for something that can be sustained over the long-term without causing addiction. i'll definitely be giving lower doses of melatonin a go and have a look a more consistent sleep schedule.

I would wake up frequently around 3:15am. I would feel wide awake and I think it might be related to my cortisol levels rising somehow in the middle of the night. That was so frustrating - waking up and just knowing I was going to be a wake for several hours.

Actually I think it is related to cortisol levels because I tried a small dose of hydrocortisone for fatiuge according to William Jeffries use of maintenance doses of cortisol. If I took a dose of even 2.5 mg. of hydrocortisone after 9am I would wake up that night. (Taking that same dose before 9am would not cause any problems. I believe that my cortisol levels must peak before 9am.) Any type of stress during the day would also cause me to wake up at night. Any spike in cortisol would cause me to wake up at night.

This problem stopped for me when I started supplementing zinc. There was one time when I woke up in the middle of the night after supplementing zinc and I could feel that I wan't as wide awake as I usually was. That happened just that once and hasn't happened since. The body needs zinc to make melatonin.