Wasielewski Et Al Florida Gulf Coast University

• Respond to 2 other students’ posts. Your responses have no specific length requirements, but you need to refer to something in the student’s post, showing that you read it (something like “I agree” or “Interesting!” is not enough for the points). If you respond to a student that initially responded to you, that also counts as one of your responses (the idea is obviously to generate discussion here) 

1. I have been experiencing insomnia for about 6 years, which is a sleep disorder characterized by the inability to fall asleep or remain asleep (Hockenbury et al., 2016). My onset started in 7th grade which is when my sleep patterns were at their worst. There were many times where I couldn’t fall asleep and would stay awake for 2-3 days straight. Every time, on the third day, I would have visual hallucinations, mainly consisting of tall shadows climbing up the walls. This was when my school performance started declining, as I was constantly sleep deprived. I turned to taking melatonin supplements, which are pills that contain the natural hormone that aids in sleep regulation. It was effective on the first night I tried it but all the proceeding times did not help the way I desired. While they made me go to sleep earlier, I would continuously wake up at odd hours and feel unable to go back to sleep. As a result of this, I would still only get 3-4 hours of sleep each night. I have not tried other treatment options but my sleeping patterns seemed to improve with age. Nowadays, I very rarely go 3 days without sleeping like I did when I was 13. However, I still only get about 5 hours of sleep each night. Alternative treatment options I heard of include prescription medications and light therapy.

2. The 24-hour sleep-wake cycle resembles a hoax, when you are young and thriving, sadly it becomes a routine, when you grow up. Traveling overseas has definitely taught me a lot about jetlag and trying to get over it is the trickiest part. The main side effects of long range trips for me are insomnia and overall fatigue. My last experiment to overcome the phenomenon did not quite succeeded as I planned, instead of a single hangover the effects overlapped and I felt socially handicapped for a few following days. Such inconvenience is easily avoidable, moreover the research shows limited success in connecting alcohol and circadian rhythm, which means consumption of alcohol is unlikely to change your sleep-wake cycle (Wasielewski et al., 2001). The other sleep damaging event that I clearly remember was working graveyard shifts from home. Although it seems like an easy transition, the temptation to go to bed is peaking all night. My first few weeks were followed by microsleep strikes and a number of them had unfortunately resulted in me oversleeping the majority of the shift.  Later adjustment of my routine allowed me to sleep during the day and stay awake and productive at night. The only noticeable difference appeared that my sleep cycle got shorter to approximately 6 hours. Transition back happened much faster and with less struggle and daytime naps became a guilty pleasure.