Getting up early with aging… One in 100 middle-aged people suffers from sleep disorders.
Sleep phase forward syndrome is less common in children and young people and increases in frequency as they age. It is also said that about one in 100 middle-aged people have this disease.
However, even if you have sleep phase advance syndrome, there are many cases where it does not have such a bad effect on society, and only a relatively few people actually see medical institutions.
It is thought that the reason for the deviation in the sleeping time zone is related to the shortening of biorhythm with age. That’s why the disease seems to increase with age. In addition to sleep rhythm, changes in body temperature and secretion patterns of sleep hormone melatonin are often out of order. There are also rare cases of family sleep progression syndrome caused by abnormalities in the clock gene that controls biological rhythm.
Important to diagnose sleep phase advance syndrome is to check the real life pattern. It uses a “sleep diary” that tells you when to go to bed or wake up, and an “actigram” that automatically records the amount of activity by a watch-shaped sensor. For those with sleep phase forward syndrome, using the Hibari-Owl questionnaire, which determines whether it is a night type or a morning type, is considered a typical morning type.
Treatment for sleep phase advance syndrome.
Treatments for sleep phase progression syndrome at medical institutions include high-irradiance light therapy and melatonin therapy.
High-irradiation therapy uses the light from the eye to control the biological clock in the brain. If you receive a strong light of 25 to 10,000 lux before bedtime, the rhythm of sleep, wake-up, deep body temperature, melatonin secretion, etc. will shift to the later part, which will make it lighter to sleep early and wake up early.
Also, if you don’t see much light by wearing sunglasses in the early morning, you can prevent your sleeping time from getting faster.
Melatonin is also called ‘sleep hormone’ and when the concentration of it increases in the brain, it makes you sleepy. Melatonin therapy for sleep progression syndrome attempts to delay sleep time a little by taking melatonin in the morning. Melatonin and light have opposite effects, so the effects can be enhanced by combining them.
In recent years, ‘morning activity’ has become popular among young business people. It is good for health, work efficiency, and ecology, so I recommend you to go to bed early and wake up early. However, you need to be careful when you feel sleepy in the evening or when you wake up early in the morning to relieve your fatigue, no matter how late you fall asleep. If these symptoms continue, you should consult a sleep disorder specialist before you get sick.