Totally Circadian

November 24th is... For Non-24 Awareness Day, I’m sharing interviews with two people. The first was in my last post with Yosuke. He lives in Japan and has had a diagnosis for over 20 years. This one is with a mother of a Non-24 child (Sunny, a pseudonym), who shared their family’s experience and also words from her teen.  I hope you will find these interviews informative. Since Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder is considered rare in sighted people, it’s often overlooked or dismissed as a diagnosis.  Could you share a bit about how you found out your child has Non-24?  Yes. When I received your e-mail with the question above I actually could not pinpoint the time I figured out my child had n24. Nights bled into days and days bled into nights, my mind traveled down Sunny's early childhood and marked all hints of n24 in my mind, mixing and confusing the timeline. But then we had a long-awaited appointment with a sleep neurologist Sunny saw for the first and only time at the age of 12. At th

November 24th is... Did you know? The first Non-24 Awareness Day was on November 24, 2013.  To help bring awareness to this often underdiagnosed circadian sleep disorder, I'll be sharing two interviews I've done with people who live with Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder.  My first interview is with Yosuke, who lives in Tokyo. We started following each other on Twitter/X, where I often use the hashtag #Non24.  How did you get through your school years with Non-24?  Actually these days were tough, since a lack of alternative measures like home schooling, I just had to go to junior-high/high school day by day with free-running and of course I had tons of absence. Once my home-room teacher told me, "1 day. 1 more absence and you're gonna have to repeat a school year, so if you don't want to, just come to school." so I had to drag my body to school like a zombie. While I was a student I had no idea rather than free-running so basically I had no choice.  Did you have to e

  ”Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.”    Thomas Dekker

SHINE Syndrome, also known as DLG4 Synaptopathy, is  a very rare neurological disorder that affects a small number of individuals around the world. The symptoms of this condition include developmental delays, autism, ADHD, disordered sleep, hypotonia, epilepsy, plus bone and/or brain abnormalities. Due to its rarity, SHINE Syndrome is often undiagnosed or misunderstood, leaving families searching for answers and support. Laura Palmer's youngest son, Nolan, was diagnosed with SHINE Syndrome in 2017. She is the founder and president of the SHINE Syndrome Foundation, which offers support to families and searches for opportunities to fund research. Nolan's rare genetic variant was discovered at Harvard, although he is a patient at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. The sleep lab at Cincinnati is currently creating a mouse model of her son's variant, thanks to the expertise of Dr. John Hogenesch. After years of genetic panels, they were finally accepted into a study at Harvard