"Had my son been waking at 6am, because I beleive this I would have dosed  him at 6am and consequently ALL of his doses thereafter would have been shifted to suit."

Does this mean, you might have moved his 3am dose earlier or later too ? I certainly believe that there exists a cortisol response to awakening or even vice versa as I read in Ferber’s book. If someone were forced to awake before their natural circadian awakening time i.e before their cortisol begins to rise, they are still very sleepy and are not energetic.  I guess the big debate is whether cortisol peak times are a constant and to optimise energy upon wakening one has to synchronise the two ! That would mean, the world over people would have to awaken at a fixed time to be at their productive best , that does not make sense.  Or alternatively, an individual’s rythm forces the HPA to come to expect to induce cortisol production at a certain time and that’s what happens when THAT individual awakens.  So someone who normally awakens at 7 am is certainly going to be very sleepy if woken up at 5am, at least until the body senses it and makes the cortisol anyway !

Where I really am not able to be convinced is that , if there can be such a huge variability in the HPA axis activity in the morning, why should it be a constant at 3-4am. Probably the 3-4am kick-in time is based on studies where all subjects awoke at a certain time say 7am, in any case "n" number of hours after the so called HPA peak. I believe that there is a big relation here, of course I haven’t found any specific abstracts to prove it. I’m still looking...

Anne Marie, I am curious to know what your dosing regime would be if Ashley’s wake up time went an hour earlier or later, I’m especially curious to know what would happen to his nighttime or early morning dose.

Thanks,

SueG