article about night shift

[Insomniac]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/articles/201405/the-night-shift

What happens to your body when you are awake at night?

While this is an article aimed at healthy people who have no choice but to do a night shift and sleep during the day, it relates to me and a lot of people here.
My ME gave me reversal of the body clock, instead of being a mild night owl, like I was before. It is my 3nd worst symptom after the exhaustion and non refreshing sleep, because daytime is the only time you can go to the bank, government offices, doctors, do the hoovering in my flat and buy certain things.
I also have an elderly mother with dementia who insists on phoning me once a day - during the day.


I could relate to the description of being awake at night and looking at the bats and the silence.

Do other autoimmune diseases have reversal of the sleep cycle like CFS?

I notice that people with Chrohn's disease often have trouble with sleeping.

 

[used_to_race]

I think disturbances in circadian rhythm are very common in autoimmune/inflammatory diseases. I remember reading that they now give steroids at night for RA because cytokine production peaks in the very early morning. If the immune system is ramping up while we are still asleep, then I think that must disturb sleep. This probably affects growth hormone and the rest of the endocrine system, which affects energy and metabolism during the day, and induces a damaging cycle. I was listening to a podcast with a circadian rhythm researcher who said that eating only during an 8 hour window during the day (and stopping food consumption at least 4 hours before bedtime) can have numerous benefits in this regard. Might be a thing to try if your sleep feels poor quality.