Using Sleep To Heal Adrenals

[Gentleheart]

Celiac and other allergies have apparently done a number on my adrenals. Is it just anecdotal rumor that adrenals do most of their repairing while deep sleeping between 11 PM and 2 AM, or is there solid science to back that up? If it IS true, what if a person is a nightowl? Could that be one contributing reason for adrenal burnout? How would a nightowl go about trying to repair damaged adrenals, using sleep?

[Ursa Major]

If you are a true nightowl, then your body clock is 'set' differently. If you go against that and suddenly go to bed early and get up early, you will do more damage than good. Make sure you get enough sleep (about eight to ten hours a night with adrenal fatigue, and at least one nap during the day). My naturopathic doctor agrees with me on that.

Those rules you quote have obviously been decided on by a morning person. But not everybody is the same, and that needs to be taken into consideration.

[Gentleheart]

I fit all the descriptions of a nightowl and I usually sleep 8 hours a night, but after 1 or 2 AM. But the sleep doesn't seem to help. I wake up as tired and shaky as I went to bed.

I was just wondering if the 11-2 idea was based on a preset universal rhythmn that we can't escape, whether we are nightowls or early birds. Are there any medical professionals who would specialize in this? Would a sleep test tell me if I was actually a nightowl and on a different rhythm, or is that mostly for apnea and such things?

[Ursa Major]

Sleep clinics seem to all think that everybody is the same, and needs to go to bed before ten, and get up by eight I believe.

Check out these links about night owls:

Open Original Shared Link

Open Original Shared Link

I found reading through this site very enlightening. The early birds seem to always think they are superiour to night owls, and that everybody needs to be like them to be 'normal'. My husband does that to me, and I resent it.

Some people have tried to 'reset' the clock of nightowls. We can be made to go to bed early and to get up early, of course. But it backfires. After a while I feel terrible if having to follow that pattern. And of course true nightowls will revert to their normal pattern whenever they can, on weekends and during holidays. You absolutely cannot truly reset the inner clock of a nightowl permanently any more than being able to make true nightowls out of people that are early birds.

[tarnalberry]

In the context of this dicussion, it might be worth trying to figure out if you actually *are* a night owl or an early bird. I do better when I go to bed early and get up early, but find it very hard to do (if I don't get regular exercise) because I tend to fight sleep. So I feel better if I get into an early bird routine, but find it easy to slip into a night owl one.

(I do agree with Ursa, though, most of these things are written for the 'one size fits all' approach. There's a little bit of reality to go with it - we all operate in the same planet, so we have the same opportunity for sunlight exposure - but that's only part of the story.)