It’s only 11:45?

My sleep pattern has been totally messed up the past couple of weeks — more than I can attribute to shortening daylight hours, switching to Standard Time or straddling time zones.

My typical routine is to turn in at about 10:30, wake up about four hours later to pee, then sleep another four hours. And I usually nap for about an hour in the afternoon.

But now I go to bed an hour earlier, toss and turn for a while, eventually fall into some type of asleep, then wake up feeling like I’ve slept several hours. But it’s still before midnight — a couple of times it was before 11:00. So I struggle to sleep again, imagine I’ve slept for many hours, but wake up only a couple of hours later. I try to go back to sleep again but can’t, so I throw in the towel and get up. Then I go back to bed just as the sky is starting to lighten and sleep another hour or two. 

I have no urge to nap during the day, and when I try to, hoping to compensate for poor sleep the night before, the best I can do is deep relaxation.

Last week I tried knocking myself out with Benadryl. That has always worked before. Not this time.

I wondered whether this was just part of aging. I had heard it said older people sleep less. So I put artificial intelligence on the job of gathering and summarizing info on the matter. Here’s what it reported:

Older adults often get less sleep than they need. This can be due to various factors: 

• Difficulty falling asleep: A study found that 13% of men and 36% of women over 65 take more than 30 minutes to fall asleep.
• Less deep sleep: Older adults tend to spend more time in lighter stages of sleep and less time in deep sleep.
• More frequent awakenings: They often wake up more throughout the night.

While sleep duration might not necessarily decrease, sleep quality can change:

• Fragmented sleep: Older adults may experience more disrupted sleep patterns.
• Earlier sleep-wake cycles: There's often a shift towards getting sleepy earlier in the evening and waking up earlier in the morning.
• Daytime napping: Due to nighttime sleep disruptions, older adults may nap more during the day.

Several factors can influence sleep in older adults:

• Circadian rhythm changes: The body's internal clock tends to shift, causing phase advances in sleep timing.
• Medical conditions: Health issues more common in older age can affect sleep.
• Medications: Many medications taken by older adults can have side effects that impact sleep.
• Reduced melatonin production: Older adults may produce and secrete less of this sleep-promoting hormone

So, reasons. I hope this is a temporary phase with me, because if this is my life from here on, that totally sucks.

It’s noon right now and I’m feeling a little tired. I’ll see if I can nap this time. I’ll report back.

UPDATE: I slept more like my old pattern last night. Much better. I need to see if it holds.