Wait, People Actually Live on a 26-Hour Day? Here’s the Surprising Non-24-Hour Sleep Story

Michael Reed was just a normal teenager until his sleep decided to play tricks. Back in 1992, he was an active dude into running and martial arts. Then, sleep started turning on him.

"I’d wake up in the middle of the night, tossing and turning, wondering how on earth I’d make it through the next day. Even when I did fall asleep, it was like my body was doing push-ups - waking me up every 30 minutes," he shared.

So yeah, mornings were rough. Reed felt like he’d done shots of vodka and taken sleeping pills before leaving the house. But even the doctors took forever to figure out what was up.

Turns out, Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder (N24) messes up your internal clock, making sleep times shift later and later. It’s not just about being sleepy - it’s a full-on life interrupter.

And it’s not just sleep. The Sleep Foundation says folks with N24 get mood swings, weird hunger patterns, and brain fog galore. Staying on a schedule? Ha! Good luck with that. Depression can sneak in too, since being out of sync with daylight messes with your head.

This disorder hits blind people the hardest - about half of totally blind folks deal with it because their brains don’t get the usual light cues to set the clock. But if you’re seeing the world just fine, doctors still often miss the diagnosis, thinking it’s boring old insomnia or regular sleepiness.

So lots of people suffer in silence for years, like Reed did.

After years of sleepy struggle, Reed finally found a doctor who listened. It took 27 years (!) from the first symptoms to get the official N24 diagnosis.

Better late than never, right? Now, sharing his story helps others realize they’re not alone on this crazy sleep rollercoaster!