Monday, August 23, 2010
My Sleeping Problem
I've learned many things when I started working on my paper about sleep deprivation. I thought I knew all about it but as I continued my research I found out that it hurts the body more than I thought. It affects your body all over, including the heart. I'm sure many people have experienced some sort of sleeping problems. I have 2 different problems. I tend to get too much sleep or too little sleep. Since I work nights(10-6), I sleep right when I get home and try to get up about 2pm. Some days I feel so exhausted, all I want to do is sleep the whole day. I have no energy and no desire to get up for anything. It's hard to work night shift. No one knows until they have worked it how hard it is to try and sleep during the day with all the chaos going on during the day time. I have been on nights for 2 years now and I'm still not use to it. My sleeping patterns are messed up, and I wake up not knowing a clue what day it is. People ask me if I don't like it why do I work those hours? Well, my answer to that is because when I first started that's the only shift they were hiring. Second of all my school schedule fit in well. And last but not least I felt like it was the best choice for me at the time. Little did I know, it was going to take a toll on me. I am not sure how long I will be working nights. I'm hoping I can find a day time job around my town working in a hospital setting that works with my school and life schedule. I deal with working nights shifts by making a routine everyday. I set my alarm to get up, shower, and get ready for the evening. When I am off for a night, I got to bed at a decent time around midnight or so and then sleep in the next day to get prepared for the next night at work. I never have a problem, getting to sleep. It's over sleeping or do not have the time to sleep enough. Afterall, I live one day at a time. I try to get everything I need done in one day but if I can't I know I have help from friends and family.
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Hello Chelsey,
ReplyDeleteI know quite a bit about sleep deprivation because my mother has had issues with it for years. Her doctor has a constant struggle with trying to get her to sleep soundly.
I myself wake up several times a night and one thing I have noticed in myself is that when I do not give myself proper time to cool down after school work I cannot even get to sleep. When sleep deprivation is the issue you need to be aware of what has happened before you go to bed. In my case I do not give myself enough time to settle down with relaxing music or television show.
One thing I would like to ad is when I was a child and could not sleep my grandfather would take hot water and add some milk to it. This really calms you down even tastes great. But best of all lets those little happy dorphins as my sister calls them go to work at calming your system down.
Try that sometimes or chamomile tea and ginger. But getting too much sleep is also a problem because I remember as a child I did not ever get too much sleep and was always wound up for work because we were farmers and hard working at that. However our closest neighbor was the type to sleep until noon in the summer and her parents did not make her do any chores where I did several hours worth of work every day all year round. My neighbor we will call Roxie was always tired and underweight and had blood issues where she would actually get such bad nose bleeds she would be bed ridden sometimes for days at a time. So her health was effected by her own oversleeping habits.
Anyway your paper is good because I have read it. Also you will notice that when you work overnights that you will not get the same restful sleep you get as when your shift is during the day. The reason for that is because your internal clock kicks in for rest time at night and your awake clock happens in the day time. I have worked overnights and i noticed my health starting to go downhill during that time and got better afterwards when I was able to get onto another shift.
Anyway hang in there! You are doing fine please, Just watch your own health during these night shift times. Sorry I sound like a mother lol!
See you in the threads.
Well, although I am not scheduled to work the night shift, and pretty much make my own schedule, I can relate to the night shift issues because I have suffered this in the past. I remember working a hospital night shift and becoming addicted to valium for sleeping and speed for working. Yuk, fortunately that did not last long because I realized what a mess that was and corrected the situation.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I never have trouble going to sleep because by the time I decide to lay it down, I am so tired I go right out. Last night I was up till 3:30 am working on drafts for my classes to meet the Sunday night deadline with drafts that were submitted on time and also post weekly grades on time. By the time I got to blogs, I realized all I could do was look to see if people posted and save comments till later!
It sounds like you are dealing with your situation as best you can. I have developed the philosophy that I cannot possibly get everything on my list done in any one day, so I do what I can, get some rest and move on, trying to keep my priorities in line with my heart.
Stay strong!
Awesome comments! Thank you guys so much! I will have to try those helpful tips and thank you very much again for reading my paper. My grandma always tells me she is afraid that I might get depressed because I don't see the sun much. Few times I have. It's hard but I do deal with it the best I can!
ReplyDeleteThank you!