For the past 15+ years of my life I’ve lived practically invincible. I drive too fast. I LOVE food and eat too much (~5-8,000 calories / day). I sleep too little (5-6 hrs / night). I work too much (currently about 80 hrs / week and never less than 60 over that time span). I rarely vacation or take time off. Most everyone I know is amazed or shocked by the lifestyle that I’ve been able to live and remain healthy. In fact, I’ve only been sick about 2 times in the past 10 years and other than a handful of speeding tickets I don’t have much to show for my hard lifestyle. I’ve never actually felt I was invincible….I’ve just lived that way because I never had a problem.

I’ve always gotten away with it just fine and it’s allowed me to be super productive. Last Friday, that all came to a screeching halt. Last week I had my first big health hiccup and it’s forced me to essentially become a different person. Some stomach problems have left me unable to hold down any food and I’m in constant discomfort. I’m hypocaloric (didn’t eat a meal for 4 days), weak, tired (sleeping up to 16 hours in one day), and generally unproductive compared to my usual self. I not only can’t eat the foods that I love (insanely spicy foods, coffee, lots of red meat, etc)…I can’t eat at all. I’ve been forced to eat foods I would never normally eat (crackers, soup broth) because it’s the only thing my stomach can bare. Consequently I’ve lost about 15 pounds in the 10 days since onset of symptoms. Driving fast is out the window too…it makes me sick.  And I’m sleeping (albeit not well) any chance I can get. Needless to say, I have to live as a practically a different person than I was just 10 days ago.

I point all this out to say that I’ve come to realize that there’s always a final straw. I had an endoscopy last week that showed significant damage to my stomach lining. The biopsy results have yet to come back but it could be a variety of things all with deep roots. The two months preceding the onset of these problems was particularly rough for work and travel. During this time span, my business has seen tremendous business growth, which is great, but it came growing pains that upped work levels and minimized the already minimal down time and sleep I’m usually able to take. I also had a crazy travel / speaking engagement schedule with 6 presentations in a row which compounded things. While I seemed to manage through this period just fine, I have no doubt that it must have compromised my immune function and ultimately lead to my current health issues.

I know the handful of faithful readers of this blog often push the limits like I do. Quick lesson – make sure you take the foot off the pedal every now and then.

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For the week following my return from China I seemed to lose what was a large part of who I am (an insomniac). For that week, I had, what was for me, really wonky sleep patterns…going to bed at 10pm and waking up at 4:30 or 5am. I did for an entire week but then on day 8 things started to shift and by day 10 I was back to my normal 3am bed time. I wrote previously that the new pattern was annoying me because I wasn’t able to get as much done. I was going to be earlier, sleeping more, AND getting less done. All I can say is that I’m glad to be back to my normal, whatever that is. So much for the myths that the ‘earlybird gets the worm’ or ‘everyone needs 8 hours of sleep.’

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If you know me, read this blog, or follow me on twitter you know that I’m a night owl and have some serious issues with insomnia. Normally I don’t care..especially since I work on my own hours and it hasn’t really hurt me. In fact, in many regards it’s made me more productive. I don’t need much sleep and it allows me to get a lot more done than many of my counterparts. It essentially gives me a 2nd work day. I’m not like many Americans who delude themselves about how much sleep they need. I DO get enough 90% of the time. It just so happens that for me enough is not very much. You see, normally I try to go to bed around 3 and 4am. I could stay awake longer with no problem but that’s around the time I’m first able to fall asleep. I then wake up around 9 or 9:30 without an alarm, wakeup call, or nudge to the side. The fact that I wake up fresh, without an alarm, and don’t feel tired throughout the day is what assures me I’m getting enough sleep. I generally don’t take caffeine after mid-day and when I do it doesn’t change anything anyhow. It likewise doesn’t change my sleep patterns at all if I don’t have ANY caffeine for the day. I exercise, eat well, and do all the other things that should promote good sleep habits. It just so happens that I’m a night owl. My dad is and so is my sister so there’s clearly some genetic component to it. As I said, I actually kinda like it. In fact, around 10:30 pm is when I become MOST productive. My brain kicks in to overdrive and I can write, think and code better during my ’2nd work day’ than I ever can during ‘normal business hours.’

The only time my insomnia becomes a problem is when I’m forced to wake up early or when I can’t fall asleep at all. The latter problem became an issue late last week. I had several consecutive days where I couldn’t fall asleep before 5-6am. Obviously this can become a problem if you want to function with the rest of society. I knew I needed to get back to my ‘normal’ 3:30 am bed time before things started getting worse. I had tried most of the usual recommendations and none worked so I turned to my last resort…melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone that is naturally produced by the body that regulates the sleep-wake cycle. I’ve used it in the past with mixed results. It helps me get to sleep earlier but it forces me to sleep more than I otherwise would and when I wake up I don’t feel nearly as fresh as I would if I hadn’t taken it at all. So I end up sleeping more but feeling less fresh. Kinda strange. On top of that I tend to get weird dreams. Freaky dreams. I never dream without melatonin (more accurately, I never remember my dreams when I don’t take melatonin). For these reasons, I really don’t like to take melatonin unless there are some special circumstances.

Given the problems I was having last week though, I decided I’d try a couple consecutive nights on melatonin to help ‘reboot’ the time I’d go to sleep. I wanted to see if I could get my bed time to 2am or at least back to my ‘normal’ 3:30 am. Initially it worked. on nights 1 & 2 I hit the sack at 3am. Problem is, I slept longer than normal (waking up at 10) but still felt groggy when I woke up. It felt like my head was in a fog. Oddly, I also felt tired during the day and had to take 2 naps over those days…something I’d never normally do. Unsatisfied with the effects, I figured I’d try a half dose so I cut my pill in half for night 3. Outcome…even worse. The following day I took an unintentional 90 minute nap during the day and then at night I accidentally fell asleep at 10pm. I can actually do this almost every night but I know better. Whenever I do, I end up waking up a couple hours later and can’t get back to sleep at all. It ends up screwing me up even worse. Last night was no different. I woke up at 1:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep until 5:40 or so. I then proceeded to sleep until almost noon. So basically I had just wasted 3 days in a melatonin-induced mental fog during the day only to return to a bed time that was actually WORSE than if I had taken melatonin in the first place.

Take home lesson…be careful screwing with your physiology even if it’s kinda screwy to begin with.

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This morning I woke up at 10am (after going to bed at 3:40am), ate a light breakfast, spent the better part of the morning dancing with my daughter (we’re getting ready for a wedding next week), did about 2 hours of work on my dissertation, answered some emails, sent out some DVDs to customers, did a hill running circuit workout with my wife (using my daughter for resistance on calisthenics) and then ate a nice lunch. Now, since I’ve met my minimum daily requirement for dissertation work and have caught up on my HPC duties I’m taking a break to do some things I want to do (blog, update facebook, finish up some updates on my website, and read my favorite RSS feeds). Sounds like a nice day huh? This is what I like about my current working situation….I can work and play on MY time. I’m not stuck to the 9-5 (actually more like 9-7 at my last job) and I’m allowed to work to my strengths and minimize the negative affects of my weaknesses. That’s my workday. At least the start of it. Now don’t get me wrong. That’s not all I plan on doing today. In fact, in about an hour or so I’ll probably be back doing some real work and will likely be doing SOMETHING productive until about 3am. I’d guess that I’m probably putting in about as much or more time than I was when I was working at West Point in the day and running HPC in the evening. The difference is now I’m able to do it on my time.

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