A Vicious Circle Of Sleep Phases Often Leads To A Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome

Delayed sleep phase syndrome also known as DSPS is a type of syndrome that affects the usual sleep cycle of your body. It is often described as the tendency to wake up late or in other words there is a gradual shift of sleep timings. As a result of this, our body clock mechanism finds it difficult to adjust and we often feel sleepy at mornings and active at nights.

How Does DSPS Affect You?

Delayed sleep phase syndrome is noted among various people because of the different work shifts. It hampers your day scheduling and also you often find yourself with less energy to work and your productivity suffers. It does not only hamper your work but also gives a constraint on your work. Usually we are so careless in our sleep timings that we hardly ever notice its importance. This attitude often leads to most of the sleep disorders. It is often noticed that people have shorter sleep timing and are mostly awake. They are usually termed as the “owl people” who are often awake whole night and usually goes to bed after 2am.

Students Are Often Victim Of DSPS

There have been studies that show that delayed sleep phase syndrome is most common between teenagers and college students. It has been seen that students don’t follow a fixed schedule for fulfilling their sleep needs. They often are awake all night for studying and deprive their sleeping hours. So this behavior often brings changes in the sleeping mechanism of our body. Staying awake for a longer time often results in bad mood, depression, low activity. It all happens because your body is not able to secrete enough hormonal activity because of the randomness in sleep.

How To Diagnose Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome?

There are many factors that contribute to DSPS but here are few which are most common.

• Not able to sleep within the early hours of night. For example, you often fall to bed at 10pm but eventually you sleep at 4am.
• The above situation remains acute for more than six months.
• Inability to wake up at desired time
• Depression

These are few symptoms that are mostly related with DSPS. Though they are not certain things that you might need to look after but if they are persistent for a period longer than six months then you surly need to consult a doctor about it.

Sleeping Pills Is Not A Treatment For DSPS

People have made a visionary concept that taking sleeping pills at night would help them to get better with their delayed sleep cycle. But this is not a good point of view. These drugs just becomes a sort of habit and they do not help you overcome anything but put you to more chronic diseases at later stages of life. It is more of a vicious cycle and you just keep on accumulating sleep debt and often find yourself sleepier in day time. So the best practice is to meditate, exercise and rescheduling your everyday life.