Five Things That Throw Off My Sleep Schedule

I didn’t realize how important following a sleep schedule was until it was disrupted! Today I am sharing ways my sleep schedule is often disrupted and what I do to get back on the right track.

1. Chronic flares

My life is thrown into turmoil whenever I experience a flare from psoriatic arthritis, fibromyalgia, or my evil abdominal adhesions. If I don’t immediately address the pain, it takes longer to lower when I need to go to bed or I am unable to bring it down to a comfortable level. However, if I do medicate, I lose the day to sleep and depending upon the severity of my flare, I may not be able to sleep again at night.

2. Weather

Many of us with psoriatic arthritis can feel changes in the weather heading our way. Changes in barometric pressure used to render me useless anywhere from a few hours or days prior to the weather disturbance. It always felt like it came out of nowhere. Even though most of that time was spent resting, it would take a day or more to recover and to get back into my normal routine.

3. Stress

I don’t know about you, but when I am stressed or worried I can’t sleep. It doesn’t matter how exhausted I am, as long as my mind is focused on a problem the wheels never stop turning.

4. Unexpected and expected late nights

Although I do a fairly good job of making sure I am in bed before a certain hour every night, I can’t plan every aspect of my life. Life is full of surprises, like the night my husband needed me to take him to the emergency room because of kidney stones. Some late nights are planned, like choosing to stay out later in order to have more time to visit with an out of state friend or family member. Either way, they both disrupt my sleep pattern. Like stress, late nights tend to crank up my adrenaline and it takes much longer for me to fall asleep.

5. Life

Sometimes something as simple as sitting for hours in traffic, having an appointment canceled, or my doctor running late can throw a monkey wrench into my day, which also disrupts my night. There are times that I become so rigid with my schedule that an unexpected phone conversation will completely derail me.

Back in the saddle

Paying close attention to how every muscle, joint, nerve, and bone in my body is feeling at any given moment does more than help reign in my flares; it also helps me thwart the storm that weather changes inflict on my body from brewing. The minute I feel tension in my neck or sacrum, I quickly treat it with pulsed electromagnetic field therapy and/or ice. Left unattended, this symptom will quickly overtake my back, head, shoulders, hips, legs, etc. When I ignore what may seem like minor annoyances or insignificant pains, I make them worse, and then end up crashing and burning. When life throws me a curveball I give myself a grace period to recover, practice patience with my body, and allow myself to sleep when necessary. Dealing with any problems that I am able to help keep me on track too. I don’t know about you, but I am capable of creating unnecessary stress in my life by not dealing with issues head-on. It is impossible to expect that my sleep schedule will never be disrupted, but with a little patience and attention to detail, I am able to get back in the saddle sooner than I used to.