"From what I understand, circadian rhythms persist, in spite of individual daily variations.  So, it doesn’t matter if you are an adult going to bed at midnight and sleeping 6 hours a night; or an infant going to bed at 8 pm sleeping 10 hours a night; or if your schedule varies from day to day---ACTH will still start to rise at ~3am, and peak at ~8 am." 

 Well unless he has done studies on this in normal people who wake and go to sleep at different time, to be honest Carol, he cannot actually say it doesn’t vary.  What of people that turn their circadian rythyms around by moving to another country aborad with different times or even people who work nights for long months on end. 

It is complete common sense to me that these shift as our habits shift where sleep is concerned.  Not right away obviously, but nevertheless they would do.  Let’s face it, if they did not, when I moved to New Zealand, my body would have continued wanting to sleep in the day and wake in the night.  This only took one week to shift.  That is all it takes.  So over time, if your habits changed on a permanent basis Sue, yes it would make complete sense to shift your med’s.

Who would advocate having a child that wakes at 6am for example continues taking their morning med at 7am.  This would be a little silly given that the minute you rise--cortisol HAS to be peaking there for you to be able to get up and have the energy.  Even if a child had a nightmare at 1am and started screeming, they would have an adequate response where cortisol rising is concerned.  let’s face it. there is more stress involved in a body getting up and moving around and one that is in deep state of sleep, or one that has gone from a deep sleep to a very distressed sleep.  To say no to the first question therefore I feel would be a little naive given that we all know what such stress and rising does to the cortisol levels.