The past couple of days I have been experiencing something that I remember from the bad old days when my depression began, and it's why I believed for a while that my problem was SAD. Now that it's going on again, only just into September, it's frightening me. I've had to really do some brain work not to get into a panic.

Simply this. I start getting tired earlier than usual, and I wake up early. I usually go to bed at 10:30 or 11, but the past couple of days I've been really groggy at 9. I'm waking up at 4 a.m. and having a lot of difficulty getting back to sleep. Accompanying these problems, over time, I usually find that I start getting a brain fog, a lot of anxiety, and all the depressive symptoms generally get worse. It would appear to be my body clock going askew, and having knock-on effects.

Last summer I stopped doing light therapy because after the drug withdrawal it was sending my cortisol too high. I had this problem and tried going to bed when I felt tired. I quickly found that I would just get tired an hour or two earlier than that the next day, and wake earlier still. However, the problem then largely went away, due to (I thought) starting the Paleo diet and taking a good variety of supplements. The depression obviously isn't purely down to body clock problems, but it's certainly worse when they are a feature.

I remember my sleep becoming more disturbed again after amalgam removal mid-June this year. After two months of chelation my other removal-induced symptoms seemed to disappear, but not this one. I don't know why it seems to have suddenly got worse these past few days. Maybe because we haven't seen much sun, and it's setting earlier? Maybe because my diet hasn't been clean for the past week and a half? I just don't know. I do know that I'm feeling rough and it's twice as bad when the sun sets.

I'm putting my diet right today, will give my body a few days to get things out of my system. Then I will start chelating again. It's hard to deal with the fear factor here though. I know how this tends to get worse as winter approaches. My worst months aren't usually even until February and March, so this isn't something I want to be pulling me down in September.

Has anyone else here had body clock problems that they think may be related to mercury? I seem to remember reading that mercury can interfere with melatonin production.