Insomnia

I suffer from Insomnia, particularly a form in which I cannot fall asleep willingly.  I've had this since I was a child, I have tried changing my diet every way I know how.  I have tried going to bed earlier and so on but I just won't sleep no matter how hard I try.  This isn't constant however and goes through cycles, periods where I have 'normal' sleep and periods where I have exhaustive sleep.

When I was in school I would go to bed every night at around half 9 or 10 and I wouldn't fall asleep until 3 or 4 o'clock.  This would be the pattern for several days then I would sleep for about 14 to 16 hours.  You may find that abnormal but that's only the beginning.  As I have grown older the condition has in some ways got worse.  This is by no means through any attempt to stay awake, I can lie in bed for hours not doing anything at all I just will not fall asleep.

I've adapted to this as I have got older though and I no longer lay in bed during that time, I do other things to occupy my times and hopefully tire myself out so that I can sleep.  If I am ever sick however the reverse seems to apply, in that I feel incredibly tired all the time.  The last major sickness I had was around January and I believed it was swine flu given many of the conditions.  While sick I slept for 26 hours straight, completely missing an entire day.  I went to sleep Wednesday night at around 8pm and woke up on Thursday at 10pm, I hadn't realized until Mum pointed it out, I thought I had slept 2 hours, and felt like I had only slept 2 hours.

There are many things I do to occupy my time, although I do like to watch Movies or listen to music while lying in bed as it offer me the option of falling asleep if it decides to come.

Some people in halls at Uni noticed my odd sleep pattern, one even said to me "if you're up this late anyway you'd be as well going out", it was an idea but one I never acted upon.  Although I am awake I am by no means lively and energetic, it's been suggested that I was too tired to sleep.

It is a major inconvenience but one I have learned to work around.  My family are not surprised by my sleep patterns, even my mum sometimes makes meals for me during the day and leaves them in the fridge for me to reheat in the middle of the night when my sleep pattern is so off that I'm asleep during the day.  There is a 2 to 3 week stretch about once every month and a half that I have a normal sleep pattern now, that slowly rotates around the clock until I'm completely off and sleeping during the day and awake at night.

I read on a forum relating to Nystagmus that many people with the condition find themselves very tired and have odd sleeping patterns, after reading that I tried paying attention more to my sleep patterns and what I found was that:

For most people they are awake for 16 hours and sleep 8 hours a day.  Ratio 2:1
I am awake for the same amount of time roughly 15 hours sometimes 16 but when I sleep I sleep between 10 and 12 hours on average.  Ratio 4:3 [approx]

In essence this would mean my body is working to a 26 or 28 hour "day".  Which accounts for the 'cycle' and the movement of my sleep pattern compared to normal people.  I know the immediate reaction to this is to reduce the amount of waking hours to make it fit into 24 hours but as discussed above I can't control how long I stay awake, without being sick with some illness I'm always awake 16ish hours until I'm exhausted and practically pass-out.  Likewise extending my waking hours isn't really an option as staying awake longer is very difficult, I get very drowsy to the point where I can hardly walk.