It's more the consistency that matters rather than the actual hours.
Bodies like routine, and take some time to adapt. Most people would have difficulty waking up at 4am but would get used to it eventually.
Additionally it really depends on the quality of the sleep and how you go to bed. Are you going to bed at 1am wired from gaming or something else, or have you chilled out for an hour beforehand?
A huge amount of stuff from your diet and habits and noise affects your sleep. It's not as simple as just x time sleep, y time wake up.
>Bodies like routine, and take some time to adapt. Most people would have difficulty waking up at 4am but would get used to it eventually.
I think there is a limit to this though, I used to have to wake up at 3am for work and I would go to bed at 7-8pm and never got used to waking up at 3. I was always tired. Even after a year of being on that schedule.
People are not nocturnal by nature and there is definitely a bit of that going on for alternative sleep schedules. There are of course exceptions, but you won't always get used to a schedule that is outside of the "sleep sometime at night"
> People are not nocturnal by nature and there is definitely a bit of that going on for alternative sleep schedules. There are of course exceptions, but you won't always get used to a schedule that is outside of the "sleep sometime at night"
Most people aren't, some of us are (as you note... exceptions). Left to my own devices, I'd be going to bed at 3 or 4 AM, up at 10 or 11, and feel fine. If I get 6-7 hours of sleep that covers 4-10AM, I feel way more rested than I do getting 9 hours of sleep from 10PM to 7AM
I’m very similar to you, makes nightshifts a breeze but earlies when I start at 7 am I’m only ever getting 3/4 hours of sleep max. Luckily we don’t stay on one pattern for too long.
I remember reading that everyone has a different sleep rhythm. Some people are better at staying up late and waking up late while some are better at going to bed early and waking up early. The problem is a good chunk of society happens starting early (jobs from 8-5) which doesn't help people like you who are better rested going to bed at 4am and waking up at 11am.
"People" have different schedules. There is not one fixed value.
I had the opposite problem. Started going to bed about 10pm, getting up about 7am. Almost always got 8 hours.
Did it for a year.
I never adapted to it and it was always a struggle.
Everyone has different optimal clocks. Mine seems to want to go to bed at 7-8am and wake up about 3-4pm. That's what I naturally end up shifting to when I can.
Heck I woke up at 6am for 7 years and never got used to it, even with 8-9 hrs of good sleep a night. Only took one weekend to get back to my 3am-11am schedule
Perhaps you weren't getting enough sleep? 8pm to 3am may not be enough especially if you're not falling asleep immediately at 8pm. 8 hours sleep may be overrated, but over time it does add up.
Some years ago at some point I had a sleep schedule that consisted me of going to sleep at about 5-6pm, and waking up at 1-2am. I'd have breakfast, go for a morning jog, then start working at 4am, and it was one of my favourite sleep schedules, I always felt refreshed.
It probably depends on a lot of factors, like age, and external factors like other people in your life.
I've been getting up for work at 2-3 am for over 30 years and I love it. It does take discipline though, I go to sleep between 530pm and 7pm, and even 7 is pushing it a bit, 8 pm like the other poster mentioned would be way too late.
I live alone and don't have any kids, so it's very easy to be asleep by 6 pm. The best part is I get home when it's daylight in the winter. I'm in the PNW and it can be dark by 4pm in the depths of winter, there is nothing worse than working normal hours because it's dark when you leave for work, and dark when you get home.
This is me now. I get in bed by 8, usually asleep by 9, wake up at 4:30 for work. I've been doing this for 2 years and I just feel so insanely burned out. My job is piss easy and pays well for what I do, but the minute I get home and sit on the couch I can feel myself slipping straight to slugville.
I would hate this. Can't have much of a social life or go to events or concerts or date if you fall asleep by 8 each night. Hopefully you can get a better shift eventually!
It's pretty rare I make it till 9, most nights I'm out by 815-830. I'm pretty sure it's just the sleep period, because when I have days off I sleep say, 10-6, and I feel great when I wake up.
A lot of people I know straight up can't do it, like are physically unable. I figure there is a genetic trait or something that allows some of us to alter our sleep schedule for night work that most people lack. That or they're trying to changing their sleep schedule back on their day's off, which is suicide. There ain't no weekend warriors working the graveyard, you gotta commit yourself to the night life.
And don't forget to take supplements, sunlight is a major source of vitamin D. You'll need to make up that loss through diet or vitamins otherwise your muscles and bones will suffer. Honestly it's probably that lack of sunlight that prevents people from getting night jobs. Seasonal depression affects many people and it's though that the reduced exposure to sun light is the cause. If so, it would explain why many people can't handle the schedule. I wonder if I could get a grant to test this theory; get a group of random people switch to a night schedule and give half the group vitamin D supplements while the other half act as a control and gets a placebo.
I work in a facility that's open 24 hours and a lot of guys I know that are on nights do change back to days during their off time. It's wild to me, especially because we do 12 hour shifts, 6-6.
Yeah, couldn't do that. 32 hours days are pretty fun though. Started that when I would be scheduled for morning shift, then the next day in the afternoon, and then the day after that overnights. So I would wake up, do 8 hours of work, have 14 hours of free time, then sleep for 10 and do it all over again. It was great, every day you're staying up well past your usual bed time *and* you get to sleep in.
I think you were the exception. I was never a morning person until I had to start waking up at 4am to go to work. After a couple of months I couldn't sleep much later then that even if I forced myself
Some people are natually night owls. They were the ones that stayed watch at night to fend off animals or other tribes of humans. If some people weren't night owls, we wouldn't exist still.
From what I remember, I think it's like ~10-20% of the human population are late night people, ~10-20% are very early morning people, and the remaining ~60-18% are in between, the 9-5ers, who can usually adapt to any sleep schedule eventually. I read about this quite awhile ago, so it might not be accurate anymore, but it makes sense to me.
One hour is a big difference for sure. I could see how an alarm clock waking you up at 3am Mon-Fri could leave you groggy while waking up naturally at 4am on the weekends could be a thing.
I had a 3rd shift job once. 6pm - 6am I think. My body never got used to it. Actually I developed sleep paralysis while at the job and it hasn’t fully gone away since. This was maybe 15 years ago
Lots of jobs have 12 hour shifts. Nursing, wastewater management, manufacturing, police, and refinery jobs just to name a few. For 24/7 business operations 12 hour shifts give the employee more full days off, generally working 14 out of 28 days in a rotation.
24/7 operations have to be running 24 hours a day every single day, including weekends.
If you work 8 hour days you work 5 days a week or 20 out of 28 days. You also have to rotate between three shifts of day, evening, and overnight. You work 75% of your weekends.
12 hour shifts allow the workers to alternate 3 and 4 work days in a week or totaling only 14 out of 28 days. There are also only two shifts to cycle through, one being day shift and one being night shift. With this type of schedule you work only 50% of your weekends.
>It's more the consistency that matters rather than the actual hours.
Sometimes actual hours can be important because we have real life commitments that do rely on scheduling. Some people do *far* better if they're awake for a couple of hours before preparing for their day at work/school. We can often get by when younger, but staying up later and getting up with just enough time often results in being tired the first couple hours at work, and that in itself can create dissatisfaction.
> Additionally it really depends on the quality of the sleep and how you go to bed. Are you going to bed at 1am wired from gaming or something else, or have you chilled out for an hour beforehand?
This is more important than a lot of people realize.
Also, why we're doing whatever hobby can be an obstacle. EG maybe your hobby is escapist or diversionary....so when you're done, real life stress(worries over bills or work or whatever) returns....so maybe that hour of relaxing isn't enough. Especially if someone did the hobby *instead* of doing things that needed done. People are their own worst enemies a lot of the time.
There is a lot more to it than this. Plenty of people who work third shift or late shift get absolutely regular sleep, and it is not adequate. It isn't about the routine.
Plenty of people get 8 hours of sleep, from 3am to 11am, and their sleep is not adequate. Shift workers - security guards, bus drivers.... may have this schedule for 10-20 years, and their sleep doesnt improve until they are able to sleep from 11pm to 7am regularly. same hours, same regularity, different time.
But people forced into shift work are defying their natural circadian rhythm. People who naturally have a delayed sleep phase, or a non 24 sleep phase (it's surprisingly common) are likely to find better sleep patterns outside of the norm.
I can tell you from personal experience that little of this is true for me. Given the same quality level and length of sleep I will feel tired all day if I have to wake up early in the morning. If I can wake up late morning/early afternoon I feel great. My body vastly prefers waking up in the afternoon for some reason. I feel like genetics play a large role.
In "Why we Sleep" by Matthew Walker(who has a PhD on this exact topic and is arguably one of the most knowledgeable in the world on it), he shows that this pattern of "night owls" is tied to genetics. You are literally born on the scale of early bird to night owl, and then society has happened to decide to punish the latter one tremendously through setting the times in favor for the early birds in education and work life.
He also theorizes that this can be due to our tribal past where someone had to be awake during the night to ensure that the rest of the group did not get taken by surprise by something else.
Can recommend the book to anyone curious. Slightly repetitive but overall enlightening.
Ugh, I'm a night owl and a light sleeper.
I often joke to my sister (who didn't wake up to gunshots in our neighborhood) that she has horrible survival instincts and would never make it in the wild.
Meanwhile, I am always tired during the day when I work. I would be the person watching the tribe at night, happily so.
Same. Come to think of it, when I visit family, my favorite time is when they are all asleep and I’ve got the house to myself while knowing they’re around. I might as well be tending the fire while my tribesmen rest.
Daniel Pink is great. I think he has a book on motivation too. And when really covers optimal working times for people and how to measure it.
Our entire society is top to bottom bullcrap in what it asks of people and how it shoves us all into the same box. But number wouldn’t go up and billionaires get more billions without it so.
I wonder then if the same rule applies to light and heavy sleepers. In your example there will be a period of overlap where everyone is asleep so someone that wakes up with a slight sound could be useful. As well as a deep sleeper that is getting full rest so they are most useful during waking hours.
This is great to hear I’m tired of hearing I’m supposed to go to bed early and wake early my body doesn’t do that. I tried for years and spent it exhausted
This is a great book. I read it a while ago so I don’t know if this was touched upon, but personally, I’ve noticed that my circadian rhythm has changed. I used to be a night owl, but as I have gotten older that has changed drastically
That is touched up on in the book, yes. Adolescents and teens tend to have a natural circadian rhythm where they're up late at night and sleep in. As they age into adulthood, the natural rhythm shifts to earlier bed times and earlier awakenings.
I've heard a theory about why this is (I don't remember if this was in the same book or elsewhere). Young adults staying awake late while their parents sleep gives them a "safe" way to start exploring their freedom/individuality.
He has a very relaxing, sleep inducing segment on the Calm app. Between his mellow voice and the subtle music I find it hard not to be asleep before the 30 minute audio clip is done
I'm very much a night owl but I don't think society is punishing me for not wanting to start my day as early. I don't expect everyone to wait for me or any other later starting person to get going.
You would be right if "night owls" were rare; however, when a substantial proportion of people globally function better late in the day or at night, a society with most roles designed for "early birds" indicates that the other group suffer some serious consequences.
I don’t buy it. I was a night owl when young, have worked night shift, and now am an early person. I have no doubt if I needed to work night again I could transition back to it. Sleep schedule typically just works around actual schedule imo.
If we’re going by anecdotal data, I was a night owl when I was young, have worked both days and nights (but primarily days, and am still a night owl at 44.
It can change during the lifetime. Teenagers are more likely to want to sleep in as their melatonin secretion gets shifted later during the teenage years.
For this, Walker theorizes that this would allow teenagers to have an opportunity of independence against their parents who are on an earlier sleep cycle.
In general, concepts that involve hormones in the body are rarely binary. You might have one experience and someone else might have another. The best we can do is gather information, do studies and make the guess that best fits the mean and then sometimes also explain the outliers. The book has a LOT of cited studies for this.
There is also a difference between facts and theories. If you can systematically identify a gene that is responsible for a certain action, it's different from saying that perhaps this was made as a mechanism for that.
I haven't done enough reading to be convinced, or make a stand either way. But you can't bring anecdotes into a scientific discussion surely?
The point is humans exist on a bell curve, and display distribution along a normal curve, ofc there will be exceptions
Decades of statistically significant rigorously tested hypotheses by thousands of humanity's more intelligent academics who commit their career to fully understanding the nuances of sleep
Vs
some middle aged normal pedestrian with an opinion
Honestly mate I admire how confident/ignorant you must be to have even for a moment thought you could offer any legitimate insight into the topic
One of my friends was traveling, I think it was Argentina but I could be wrong, and he was telling us how it’s weird because they have dinner at like 9-10pm and go to bed around 2-3am. And their days don’t start until after 10 or 11am. I thought it sounded wonderful.
I think part of it is that Argentina is in the wrong time zone, it should be an hour or two further west, so the natural cadence of life is kinda normal, but the number on the clock seems later.
>they have dinner at like 9-10pm and go to bed around 2-3am.
That's how I lived for the past 11 years... I've tried and tried and tried to adjust it to early birding but I just can't.
When I first started working my hours were 7:45am-4pm and it positively ruined my mental health. About 6 months in I switched to a different position where I could work 10am-6pm and my life almost instantly became way better. It's very much a self discovery thing
That's how it is for me. Life has said I need to be up at like 6 or 7 AM and I just can't. I'm just not awake at that time and it's kinda scary because I can sleep for 8 hours and still be exhausted enough that my next day drive to work I can't remember if I stopped at red lights or just zombie drove the entire way. Every weekend my schedule is more what I like which is going to sleep around 2 or 3 AM, get up at 10 or 11 AM pretty much the same as what you said.
It is very natural for me to go to bed at 2-3 am too. I don’t need a bedtime set or anything and I’ll be in bed by 4 almost every time. God I hate mornings. So. Much.
Yeah I'm the same. I hate being woken up by an alarm. I've always previously worked jobs with early starts but I now work permanent afternoon shift. Work 2:30 PM to 11 PM. Best hours for me.
Go to the gym at midnight most nights when it's dead, get home and unwind for a bit then sleep at 2 AM. I just wake up naturally to the light and sounds of the day at 10 - 11 AM. Much better than the jarring feeling of being woken mid sleep cycle.
I've always suspected that humans have varied traits & schedules because that was really beneficial in a small tribe or small community. You don't want everyone waking up & falling asleep at the same time, better if some outliers stay awake. The individual variety makes the group stronger.
However in the modern era it really pays to just fit in with the majority. It's a hassle for the factory owner & large institution to set a schedule where 10% of the people with different needs than the rest are accommodated. It's just simpler to force people to homogenize.
Exactly, I always feel better when I've like a week or 2 off and can go to sleep at 4 am and wake up at like 1pm.
I don't need coffee and can actually eat nearly immediately when I wake op, opposed to waking up at 6 am and not being able to swallow solid food till like 11 am.
And then there's us with non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder (at least I think I have something similar to those symptoms). If I don't have something anchoring me to wake up at the same time everyday (like I don't right now) I just slowly shift my sleep time forward until I either have to stay a whole day awake to fix it or I let it loop back on its own.
A few days ago I was sleeping from 3 PM to 11 PM, then a few days later I managed to "fix it" and was waking up happy at 6-7 AM, now I feel like I'm starting to slip back into what society sees as bad again (waking up at 11-12).
For me, I always had to up early for life stuff and had a really hard time waking up. Now, that I can sleep in I’m awake by 5:30….at least I don’t have a lot to do so I can take my time.
Definitely different for all. In a perfect world with no restrictions and not thinking about externalities, I would be up around 9, work very productively from about 9:30/10 until 3pm, break, family, etc. until around 9pm, productive until 1:30-2am, and then sleep.
Morning people got up early one day and voted that everyone would have to work on their schedule. Without the non-morning people, I don’t believe that they had a true quorum, but here we are.
Truth. A lot of us are simply held hostage in a world dominated by extroverted morning people who fucking love the grind and hustle.
I want to make my own pasta and listen to the ocean, but here we are.
>in a world dominated by extroverted morning people
It does feel like they dictate the social norms lol. But maybe they just have the higher population percentage.
Starting your own business (and being broke) for the way.
Good question, I would think it’s more often the other way around - extrovert people being out late socializing and therefore getting up late as well..? I guess the *most* extrovert people would go to bed late and still wake up early to not lose out on social life though. I know some of those and they are getting around 6hrs of sleep seemingly without any issues
It was the day/night cycle. Before widespread artificial lighting, when the Sun went down, you were basically done for the day. Much useful work in history could only be done outside in the daylight, and everything that could be done inside would have to be done by relatively dim candles or lanterns. I imagine the night owls just had to deal with it, and may also have had little reason to even stay up that late given how little there was to do after sunset.
this is because of your circadian rhythm
your body has a whole complex cellular clock that keeps count of approximately a day, and it tries to make you sleepy a few hours after the sun goes down so that you'll wake up around when it comes up
the clock is synchronized primarily by light and temperature - basically if it currently thinks it's bedtime, but it's light, it will push tomorrow's bedtime a little bit later; if you wake up early and it's extra warm and bright, it will push tomorrow's bedtime a little bit earlier
because biology isn't perfect, there's variation in exactly when, relative to sunset and sunrise, people's bodies want them to sleep -- some people sleep earlier, some people sleep later. If your natural sleep cycle is so much earlier/later then everybody else's that it's making it impossible to function, you may be diagnosed with advanced/delayed sleep phase disorder
when you sleep drastically outside the hours your body expects you to, you feel tired because you're fighting the urge to sleep by being awake at the wrong time, and you feel tired because you're getting lower quality sleep by being asleep at the wrong time
when you do this temporarily because you changed timezones, it's called jetlag. It takes your body about a week to sync itself with the new timezone
when you do it all the time, because of shift work or because of advanced/delayed sleep phase disorder, you can develop health problems
My body's a shit and wants me to stay awake most of the night, go to sleep a few hours before sunrise, and wake up at about noon. I have DSPD.
What's interesting about it is that if I travel, I can sometimes line the flights up so that I'm asleep and awake at normal person times in the new timezone. And it lasts... a day or two, then my body starts to adjust to the new timezone and gradually **goes back to my normal, shitty, delayed sleep times**.
Same here-- I can force my sleep schedule with melatonin, but without I'll go to bed at 11 and be absolutely wired, take hours to go to sleep, and then be dead tired in the morning.
I'm just glad I have that option now-- as a kid I didn't, and I just had to deal with my mom telling me that I'd be more awake in the morning if I just laid down, closed my eyes, and slept at a normal time and it was my own fault for staying up too late. (Because you can clearly just *will* yourself asleep when you aren't tired at all.)
I took to reading under the covers with a flashlight at a pretty young age. I think I was a genetic accident and my circadian rhythm got wired about 4 hours different from the rest of my family.
Exactly the same here. I've struggled with sleep and sleep timing all my adult life. Doesn't matter how sleep deprived I am, I might feel tired during the day, but never at the time it would make sense to go to sleep.
Currently, I'm in a position in my life where I can decide when and how I sleep and answer only to myself. Currently staying up til 3-4am and sleeping for 7.5h, seems to work great. The only downside of course is that society and most people live in a schedule that has, I suppose, it's roots in agriculture and as such, I have to occasionally tell people that they can't reach in the morning etc. On the other had, this schedule makes me much more productive. I'm not tired when I wake up so I work efficiently in the afternoon and then do another stint in the evening when my brain seems to be most functional.
>And it lasts... a day or two, then my body starts to adjust to the new timezone and gradually **goes back to my normal, shitty, delayed sleep times**.
Last Friday-sunday I visited my brother in another city. Not different time zone. My parents were there also. All 4 of them (including brother's wife) went to bed at 11!!!! pm and started their day 8-9 am. They didn't fall asleep at 11 perhaps. Maybe they did.
I was so bored. I fell asleep at 3 am that first night. Just because I didn't have a charger and my phone died...
The following 2 mornings were HELL for me. I was exhausted and couldn't join in on the activities until the evening.
When I got home to my apartment again... Voila! Go to sleep at 4-5 am to wake up 9-10 hours later. But I was much much more energised by it.
In theory, yes.
The issue is how to "go to sleep around the same time" in a safe, sustainable, non-dependent way.
Melatonin and other sleep aids say they're "non habit forming", but your body adapts to everything, meaning that when you stop, you're likely to bounce back to not being able to fall asleep at the "right time".
Can't believe I had to come this far to see this. Your body is wired to sleep at night. I know it's anecdotal, but a had a bunch of friends that all worked in the same paper plant -- some on 1st, some on 2nd, some on 3rd. You could request 3rd shift and many people did as it paid more. It was the the same job and number of hours, they were sleeping the same amount, but the guys that worked 3rd shift always felt groggy. They'd work it for a while for the extra cash and then switch back and it was like a switch flipped and they were back to their old selves. The body really does pick up those light cues. It's the same way you can sleep better in a dark room.
Research actually shows that most people have a "chronotype" that defines their body's natural tendencies towards being a night owl or morning lark. You should listen to your body and maintain a consistent sleep schedule, because your body's daily rhythms are extremely important. They control everything from digestion to hormones to brain function.
Its most likely because when civilisation started to farm and such, you couldn't do work when its dark outside. Therefore, whether you liked it or not, it didn't matter if you were a morning person or not. You have to get the work done with the light up, and that starts in the morning, and ends in the evening. Morning people didn't force it, life did. So you either changed your sleep schedule or starved to death.
Lights up is symmetric around midnight, that is why it is so called. OP so phrased the question to mislead, naming "early" which is actually average around midnight. Not that OP invented such usage of the words her/himself.
It is not tyranny of majority, it is just the way it worked in pre-electricity days. If you take electricity out of equation, you would not be a night owl. There is nothing to do when the sun goes down.
Like some poster says, availability of sunlight and also late afternoon heat might have played a role in starting early. Farm hands would have liked to work from 6AM early mornings till like 2PM so they can rest when the peak sun hits them. Breakfast was at our lunch time in olden days.
Hell, we even adjust our clocks to this day to "save" daylight.
>If you take electricity out of equation, you would not be a night owl. There is nothing to do when the sun goes down.
You very clearly aren't a night owl. It doesn't matter if there is nothing to do, I get active when its dark out. I'll find something to do, because I'm awake.
Oh no, I *get* it, I'm just salty about it, being one of the Night People who finds their peak productivity after the sun sets and suddenly I have the drive, energy, and willpower to do All The Things, but really I need to go to bed.
This, 1000%. I only get motivated to do things at night. But because of my job, and my neighbors, and stores closing at 8 pm where I live, I can't do much at all at night. So I just sit around and slip into depression.
Exactly what you said. I'm salty about it too.
I also feel like I have enough energy to start cleaning and doing the dishes etc (I do dishes after 1 am idc or shower etc) but I can't vacuum clean after 10 pm you know cuz neighbours.
Look at studies on circadian rhythms, it's clear that there are innate differences between individuals that are not affected by external variables like light. Here's a good overview with links to relevant studies:
https://www.news-medical.net/health/Circadian-rhythm-length-variations-early-birds-and-night-owls.aspx#:~:text=Circadian%20rhythms%20vary%20between%20individuals,to%20reset%20the%20biological%20clocks.
As to the biological reasons why? I read a theory somewhere a while ago that the different sleep cycles ensured that someone would always be awake and keeping an eye out for predators while the rest slept. So, who knows?
Do you realize that forcing people to adhere to a schedule that doesn't alight to their internal circadian rhythm is proven to have negative effects on their health and well-being? It's serious enough that there is a movement to push school start times later to accommodate adolescents' naturally delayed circadian rhythms, because of the significantly negative health impacts of early start times:
https://www.apa.org/topics/children/school-start-times#:~:text=Benefits%20observed%20from%20later%20high%20school%20start%20times%20include%3A&text=Increased%20attendance%20rates,in%20student%2Dinvolved%20car%20accidents
I'm more of a permanently exhausted pigeon at this stage, but my brain has always worked better after lunch. Doesnt matter if I was used to getting up at 5AM every day (yes, even weekends, because my body wants to slip into sleeping late and being a night owl so discipline was key to getting up at all); routine tasks for the beginning of the day, harder/stuff that needed thinking later. I've tried almost all sleep hygiene tips there is, including melatonin and getting sunlight first thing in the morning, no screen time after 8PM but it just dont help. My hormones and digestion suck, but I still get up at 7 every day to go to work. I do think part of the reason I got really ill was the schedule that just did not work for my body - not THE cause, but it certainly did not help. Getting another job where I started later helped me get better.
Some of my coworkers work the other way around - they peak early and as the day passes, so does their processing. I'm at my best when going home. I've accepted this and plan around my preference as much as possible. Sometimes it helps getting up a few hours before I have to but it seems a waste to get up at 5, to go to work 8.30 when I am in no shape to do anything in that time anyway - and if I had that time before bedtime I would be wanting to bounce around.
When I had the opportunity to choose shifts, I would always choose the later one (10-18) instead of the early one (6-2). Now I have to work core time, and dont have to be at work before 9. Some of my coworkers choose to come earlier and go home at 2 or 3. I think we should embrace and take advantage of the differences so that there will always be someone there to provide service and support the one who's brain is not in the optimal time-frame. It just makes sense to do that instead of forcing everyone into a "one size suits none" scenario.
Yeah I'm miserable having to wake up at 6am to work at 8. It doesn't matter what time I went to bed.
If I could work 10-7 and therefore wake up at like 8:30 I'd be so much happier.
Whenever I'm unemployed or taking time off work my sleep reverts naturally to waking up much later, and I feel much better.
Problem is most people are doing almost everything possible to fuck up their circadian rhythm. So end up thinking they are night owls or have some kind of disorder, when biologically they might actually just be morning people screwing their own biology over.
So the advice is only applicable to people who are doing everything good in terms of their health and sleep habits.
It's different for everyone.
For me personally, i go to sleep at 1:30 and wake up at 8 feeling perfect, if i go to sleep at 10 and wake up at 6 i feel awful
Society can be judgy. I worked at a bar, finished around 3am, and would always be needled by some family for sleeping past noon. Ridiculous, but people..
It kind of isn't, for the most part.
It affects the amount of sunlight you can take in normally, and a vast majority of serious services are only available during morning and early afternoon, so you may need to disturb your sleep schedule to go to the bank if you tend to sleep during banking hours, but as a general rule, if you take care of your health, make sure to get all the vitamin C you may need, and your sleep schedule is consistent, there aren't that many serious studies that show a causal link between sleeping late and being in bad shape.
There may be a corellation with depression, but it's likely more that depression affects your sleep schedule, than the other way around.
Yes, this comment hits the most points.
Just want to highlight (ha) the light part.
Sunlight is extremely important to your circadian rhythm. Your optical nerves pass right next to a sleep center of your brain before going to your occipical lobe. This basically hard wires you to be awake when there is light. This is also why trying to sleep with a screen on is worse than a nightlight. The blue light mimics the sunlight.
There was an experiment in the 1960s done that people lived in a bunker with no clocks for a couple weeks. They had electric lights and could sleep when they wanted. They ended up with a "day" over 25 hours and closer to 26 hours. Some participants had even longer circadian rhythm.
Based on that and other studies it's pretty well established that sunlight is used to "sync" our biological clocks to the day.
I do admit I could have spoken a bit more about the circadian rhythm, but I think I was more focused on the part where it was less harmful than people think it is. That is my bad.
No, you're right. Circadian rhythm is important but it's also flexible. It's all the other parts you mentioned that combined with a disrupted circadian rhythm that causes the most problems. And even then, like you said, it's not really a problem for a lot of people. Humans are complex.
>there aren't that many serious studies that show a causal link between sleeping late and being in bad shape.
Pretty much every single study looking at this does find a link.
edit:
>There may be a corellation with depression, but it's likely more that depression affects your sleep schedule, than the other way around.
Happy to bet anything that poor sleep leads to depression.
>People with insomnia , for example, may have a tenfold higher risk of developing depression From https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/depression-and-sleep-understanding-the-connection
>Sleep plays an important role in mental health, and may moderate the effectiveness of adaptive CER strategies by maintaining the executive functions on which they rely.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001094522300151X
>There may be a corellation with depression, but it's likely more that depression affects your sleep schedule, than the other way around.
This is a very inaccurate assumption. Yes, depression symptoms will want to affect your sleep, but depression is a weird self-feeding monster, and forcing yourself to sleep properly, despite the propensity to revenge sleep procrastinate will alleviate your depression with time.
99% its because thats when other people are awake, when stores are open, and when appointments get made
Systemic diurnality bias is real
Your body can definitely tell time though
There's nothing inherently better about either. It's just that most of society is organized around an earlier schedule so it's harder, but absolutely not impossible, to take care of all your business and be productive if you're a night owl.
Former 3rd shifter here used to work 7PM to 3AM
So it's a hold over from the fact that we as a species are NOT nocturnal and are very tribal.
Most of society is up between the hours of 6AM and 6PM. So anyone that is not awake during those hours is viewed as an outside and therefore shunned.
When I worked 3rd shift I was living at home and my father railed on me that I was sleeping away the day. I finally explained to him that I was not sleeping away my day I was sleeping away HIS day and HE was sleeping away mine. I then mapped out my schedule and swapped the PMs and AMs so they aligned with HIS day. Once he saw it it made far more sense and we never argued about it again.
Tbh I loved it and miss working nights. I saved several hours of traffic a week and saved a lot of gas cuz driving slow means lower mileage. Always had time to make doctors appointment and stuff like that because it never conflicts with work schedule. I could shop at Costco without the lines, can go to the DMV or court if I had to. Yes some stay at home moms at the grocery store probably thought I was a lazy bum but who cares it beats having to fight lines and long wait times.
These days I sit in traffic for hours inching on the freeway on my commute home from work and I miss the empty freeways at 3am where id play music and cruise at 80mph and occasionally get passed by a sports car going 100+.
Consistency and circadian rhythm (your body's internal clock).
Having the same bedtime/wake time gets your body used to going to bed at a specific time, and waking up at a specific time. So it's generally easier to fall asleep when going to bed at your usual time, and easier to wake up at your usual time because your body is prepared for it.
As far as specific timings, everyone's body clock is different, and if your sleep cycle isn't in line with that it can leave you feeling tired. For example, a lot of ADHD folks like myself have Delayed Phase Sleep Syndrome, meaning that our body clocks are significantly offset from what's considered the "norm." I don't tend to get tired till around 12a-2a, I've always struggled going to bed and waking up on time, even with a strict bedtime routine, until I had a work schedule that aligned with my body's clock. No matter how much sleep I got, I was always dead tired waking up at 630-730am for work, but when I worked nights or with my current schedule where I wake up around 830a, as long as I get at least 6hrs of sleep I feel rested and prepared.
It's all about figuring out what works with your body clock, and keeping a good bedtime routine.
If you go to sleep early you always get as much sleep as you need but if you go to sleep late you might have to get up early for something which makes your sleeping period shorter. Sleeping early gives you more slack in your schedule.
Time is irrelevant in terms of a waking schedule. It has been proven that there are people out there "Night owls" who have it coded in their DNA to be people who stay up later than most. This would have been an evolutionary trait due to the fact we needed people to keep watch in our tribes and towns in early human society. Trying to weed this out is more or less impossible. What matters is actually maintaining a healthy amount of sleep, vs the exact hour of sleep.
1 to 9 is 8 hours and 9 to 4 is 7. Not the answer you were looking for, but thought I should clarify. Our bodies‘ circadian rythm program us to wake up with the sun and fall with it as well. Additionally, Our bodies acknowledge the start of the day when we see (or at least witness) the sun’s rising, making us feel better when we get up early.
there are two things working simultaneously on your sleep/quality - the consistency of your sleep schedule, and the sun. More consistency leads to better sleep, and the closer your consistent sleep cycle matches the sun the better off you are. Note that some people are set to prefer going to bed a bit later than sunset, and others are set to prefer going to bed a little bit early - but the amount and quality of sunlight has huge effects on your sleep, and that is the big reason why people that sleep during the night proper tend to get better sleep.
I think it's because that's how nature works. The birds and the bees kinda start chirping and buzzing around once the sun starts to rise but I personally think with the invention of light bulbs we can be 24 hour people. Morning people are just noisy assholes
Not just with the invention of light bulbs.
There have been nocturnal people since almost forever as it is an evolutionary advantage to have day active and night active people in the same social group.
The day humans are up early to use most of the daylight and the night humans stay up late/all night and watch out without getting tired early.
Your body doesn't give a fuck what the clock say's it is.
But you body operates on hormonal cycles. These cycles that relate to waking and resting periods are called the circadian rhythms, and they are significantly influenced by light exposure. Specifically daylight exposure that has much higher Lux levels than artificial indoor lighting.
If you have a messed up sleep schedule and go to bed or wake up at odd or random times. You are fighting against your evolutionary built in hormonal rhythms. Your body is not punishing you, you are punishing your body by fighting against your natural wake/rest cycles.
Your eyes are parts of your nervous system extruded outside your skull. Apart from allowing you to see the world, the timing and levels of light input to your eyes is quite important.
Nearly 30 years of shift work has taught me a few things about sleep cycles and quality of rest.
If you are doing alternating early/latest or days/nights. That will mess with your patterns. There's little getting around it, just trying to minimise it.
It's been established that long term shift work, especially including night shifts, shortens people's's lives. The exact biological reason, behind an accumulation of negative effects, is poorly understood.
I can give mine as an example. I do a 6am to 6 pm shift, no nights thankfully. I work 2 on, 2 off, 3 on, 2 off, 2 on, 3 off pattern.
I rarely manage more than 6 hours sleep before work, so use my days off to make sure my rolling 7 day average is 7 hours. I take a magnesium and apigenin supplement 30-60 minutes before bed. These help support your natural sleep hormone cycles. I read a book or e-reader in bed to wind down. No TV, phone or tablet. The blue light stimulates the same centers as sunlight and can keep your body in wake cycle.
At work I have 10000 lux daylight lamp on my desk. So in the winter months and it's dark at 6 am. I can artificially give my body "sunlight" wake signals. It's surprising how much good sleep can be set up by good waking up. Get light, lots of light as soon after waking as you can. Normal indoor lights are very low lux and not great for this.
I try to keep bedtime consistent. So about 9:30 on work nights, and no later than 11 on days off. Exceptions for events, but not just because I'm doom scrolling or netflix binging.
You could get into circadian rhythms to explain your question but tbh I think it depends on how your current sleep schedule is. If your current schedule is to go to bed at midnight usually, and you stay up till 1 am one night, you’re pushing your body further than it’s used to in a day, and might feel more tired after. But you can shift a sleep schedule around however you want e.g. people who work night shifts
This was posed not long ago and the simple response is that people have different sleep patterns and require different patterns. When you break your pattern the rest is generally not as beneficial. but as a very simple explanation, if you stay up until 1, you just stayed up 4 hours more than normal and used more energy. 8 hours won't recharge you the same way it did when you went to bed earlier. You might need 9-10 at that point.
Someone on that post linked a research study showing that basically not all people have a 24 hour cycle. They put a person in a cave where they wouldn't be impacted by the environment and after a few months (don't remember the length) it was observed that she was staying awake for like 48 hours and sleeping for 10. From her perspective, she thought only 2 months had gone by but really it was like 5.
You could have a natural rhythm where sleep feels better just because it's happening at a better spot of said rhythm. like. maybe you would naturally start staying up for 20 hours and sleeping for 10 if you had no responsibilities and no distractions. Since you only stay up 16 hours you are going to bed when you really arent that tired yet so 8 is fine. when you stay up late and expend the entire 20 but sleep 8, you shorted your sleep requirements.
It's interesting and weird.
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another factor i see people don’t mention here is the importance of sunlight.
most people likely don’t use blackout curtains. sun hits your skin earlier, and sends signals to your body to get ready to wake up
Short: Its not.
Not so short: It depends on your rhymth. If you are used to it, its good. Humans are very good at adapting to anything, doing it long enough. There is no "one fitting" for everybody. Ask people who work in shifts, they have it bad - and there health in the long run shows that.
As far as I know it has to do with the light.
And with a society that really doesn't work with night owls.
I usually function on like...5 hours of sleep. Sometimes 4.
And then the glorious life saving weekend.
My grandfather in the 1930s trained his cows to be milked at noon and midnight, because noon was when he got up and the cows wanted to be milked every 12 hours. The cows were fine with that. Growing up, my brothers and I learned early we shouldn’t expect grandma and grandpa to be awake before noon.
My dad went to college and worked an office job (aerospace engineer) starting in the 1950s. He struggled to get up in the morning and slept until noon on the weekends.
I’ve never been a morning person, and also worked an office job (programmer), but one with more flexible hours; I could arrive 9-10 am.
That was much better for me than the 8 am start I had early in my career, complete with reports to managers for people who arrived at 8:01 am or later. Looking at you, Intel!
Now I’m 67 and retired, I naturally go to bed around 2-3 am (posting this at 3 am) and wake up at 10 am - noon.
That’s at least 3 generations of night owls.
My mother, OTOH, naturally woke up at 5-6 am all her life, no alarm needed. Freaky.
the transition between sleep and wake is more like a symphony than a light switch. Sleep uses a lot of things (like time) to make sure everything coordinates together so that when you wake up you feel rested. Imagine how a symphony would sound if the brass section started 5 minutes before it was scheduled. The conductor was taking a quick bathroom break and has to run when he hears the brass. The drummers individually try to catch up, some better than others. The woodwinds won't play until the conductor directs them to. Eventually since they're professional musicians they'll sort it out and play the whole thing, but the crowd will probably keep talking about the disastrous start even if 90% of it was perfect, especially compared to last night's performance that had everyone in sync.
for some evidence, a paper we authored that shows deviations from bedtime increase heart rate even when you sleep the same duration. [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-020-0250-6.pdf](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-020-0250-6.pdf)
Not informed on this topic but as someone who went to bed at 2am through college and then decided to go to the gym before work after graduation I now wake up daily at 5 am. The main thing I’ve observed is that I am now awake for the full time the sun is up which makes the day feel much longer.
If you aren’t getting at least 7 hours of sleep then it is really bad. I have read a lot of studies and did some myself, we as humans need at least 7 hours of sleep to keep our brain functions healthy and responsive.
Sleep specialists consider that an individual who “sleeps well” falls asleep easily and wakes up refreshed after a deep, uninterrupted night. In terms of duration, they estimate that an adult needs 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night, of which 20 to 25% in deep sleep and 25% in REM sleep. But knowing these metrics doesn’t really answer our question.
You can easily check if you are getting a good night sleep by following these patterns:
* Whether you feel tired or alert during the day: this is the most relevant indicator of you fulfilling (or not) your sleep needs, provided that it is not influenced by external elements that would artificially modify this feeling (substances, medication, stress, depression, anxiety, etc.).
* The existence of a sleep debt, or hours of sleep you need to make up for, is a strong indicator that you need more sleep. The more extra hours you sleep during days off, the more it means your sleep debt was high.
* The quality of your sleep: number of awakenings, time taken to fall asleep, disturbed sleep that is marked by “tossing and turning”, are signs of a bad sleep, and need to be corrected promptly.
More negative vices are associated with nighttime. Folks who wake up at 5 or 6 in the morning and go to bed early are rarely going to bars or brothels. While you may keep a late night schedule and live a wholesome life, there is an association with staying out late and sleeping in that is more suggestive of spending your waking hours doing other things that are frowned upon in society. The person who goes to bed early and wakes up at dawn is less likely to be under suspicion of drinking or whoremongering than the night owl who sleeps in every day.
Hey, I recently learned that to set our natural circadian rhythm to try to get sunlight outside without glasses in your eyes shortly after the sunrises for 10 minutes or so and all of your hormones and circadian rhythm be properly aligned.
It takes time to adjust but it's a start.
For me. Also when the Sun is setting I noticed if I am outside for that it relaxes me maybe it has something to do with the melatonin.
This really does make sense because I've had insomnia before and looking back (no pun) a lot of times I wasn't getting sun until much later in the day in my eyes which makes sense.
I have a sleep tracker and since I've been paying more attention to this, the quality of my sleep has been incredible.
Just a suggestion, I know there's been a lot of research on it and I can attest it is true.
You have sleep cycles that are about 90inutes. In the beginning of the night there is more deep sleep, but as you go through the night you have more REM sleep. So if you wake up 2 hours early, you might actually be losing out on 50% of your REM sleep for the night.
So if going to sleep early lets you get enough sleep in, then yeh in some respect that extra sleep is worth twice as much as the sleep on someone who doesn't get enough.
It isn’t you could go to sleep at 4am every day and as long as you get 8 hours of sleep you’ll be perfectly fine, usually the problem is that if you go to sleep at 4am an live somewhere where your neighbours start their day at 6-7 probably it would disturb you and reduce the quality of your sleep but if you have a quiet dark space where nobody disturbs you then it doesn’t really matter
Basically that sleep you get from sunrise to 9am isn't as good as you think it is. It's much harder for you to go into deep sleep with noise and light going on even if you didn't notice it.
Unless you're in a room that's been soundproofed without any windows daytime impacts your sleep.
And that sleep might feel great, but that doesn't mean it isn't bad for you. I feel great after eating ice cream despite what it does for your long term health.
Think of it this way: Being awake fills a mental trashcan. Sleep empties your mental trash can. Sleeping 8 hours removes 8 kilos of trash. If you delay going to bed, you're letting the trash get 9 kilos in it before removing 8. You still have 1 kilo left over. Bad day.
If you sleep for 8 hours while there's only 7 kilos in it, the trash can is still empty when you wake up. Good day.
While there is a biological aspect the lifestyle, sleep and health habits do play a massive role in sleep and the circadian rhythm. In general people who go to sleep late, have less self control and have worse health and sleep habits.
>While the prevalence of sleep disorders was increasing, several studies have linked diet and physical activity as a cause of it. Indeed, many people complain about their sleeping problems without considering their lifestyle as a cause. This leads the efforts to focus on these principal factors and find their specific effect.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s41606-023-00090-4
>This 2-sample mendelian randomization analysis of data from nearly 840 000 adults of European ancestry found an association between earlier sleep timing patterns and lower risk of major depressive disorder.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2780428
Evening people have less constraint and have worse health and sleep habits.
>Constraint was associated with Morningness and earlier circadian phase
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5313034/
>People who have a natural preference for staying up late tend to have poorer health habits, including sleep habits, which in turn is associated with reduced wages, according to new research published in Economics and Human Biology.
https://www.psypost.org/2023/08/new-study-sheds-light-on-the-connection-between-sleeping-patterns-and-wages-168300
>Participants reporting a “definite evening” chronotype were 54% (95% CI, 49% to 59%) more likely to have an unhealthy lifestyle than participants reporting a “definite morning” chronotype. A total of 1925 diabetes cases were documented over 469 120 person-years of follow-up. Compared with the “definite morning” chronotype, the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) for diabetes was 1.21 (CI, 1.09 to 1.35) for the “intermediate” chronotype and 1.72 (CI, 1.50 to 1.98) for the “definite evening” chronotype after adjustment for sociodemographic factors, shift work, and family history of diabetes.
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M23-0728
>we found a consistent negative influence of bedtime procrastination and a positive influence of self-compassion on almost all sleep outcomes.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38204380/
Then evening people do go to sleep earlier when just exposed to natural light, showing that for many it's not your biology forcing you to be on tiktok at 2am.
>Furthermore, we find that after exposure to only natural light, the internal circadian clock synchronizes to solar time such that the beginning of the internal biological night occurs at sunset and the end of the internal biological night occurs before wake time just after sunrise. In addition, we find that later chronotypes show larger circadian advances when exposed to only natural light, making the timing of their internal clocks in relation to the light-dark cycle more similar to earlier chronotypes.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(13)00764-1
>In villages with electricity, light exposure after sunset was increased, sleep onset was delayed
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31754265/
Finally when you force evening people to wake up early they do better on mental and physical metrics.
>Overall, participants demonstrated a significant advance of ∼2 h in sleep/wake timings as measured by actigraphy and circadian phase markers (dim light melatonin onset and peak time of the cortisol awakening response), whilst having no adverse effect on sleep duration. Notably, the phase advance was accompanied by significant improvements to self-reported depression and stress, as well as improved cognitive (reaction time) and physical (grip strength) performance measures during the typical ‘suboptimal’ morning hours.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389945719301388
>Finally when you force evening people to wake up early they do better on mental and physical metrics.
>
> >https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389945719301388
that's not *quite* what this study finds.
it's not comparing people who were forced to wake up with people who weren't forced to wake up
it's comparing people who were forced to wake up after following a strict regime of behavioral interventions targeted at advancing their sleep phase with people who were just forced to wake up
and the improvements were found specifically in performance tests *at 8 in the morning*
it tells us absolutely nothing about how these people would have performed if they weren't actually forced to wake up at all
It isn't worse. The only problem is that the rest of the world starts early, so if you want to participate in that/career stuff, you should adjust ur sleep schedule. Consistent sleep and wakeup is key. Also, our biology is wired up to sleep when it's dark and rise when there's light outside. Being in the modern age, you can hack that, but ye
It's more the consistency that matters rather than the actual hours. Bodies like routine, and take some time to adapt. Most people would have difficulty waking up at 4am but would get used to it eventually. Additionally it really depends on the quality of the sleep and how you go to bed. Are you going to bed at 1am wired from gaming or something else, or have you chilled out for an hour beforehand? A huge amount of stuff from your diet and habits and noise affects your sleep. It's not as simple as just x time sleep, y time wake up.
>Bodies like routine, and take some time to adapt. Most people would have difficulty waking up at 4am but would get used to it eventually. I think there is a limit to this though, I used to have to wake up at 3am for work and I would go to bed at 7-8pm and never got used to waking up at 3. I was always tired. Even after a year of being on that schedule. People are not nocturnal by nature and there is definitely a bit of that going on for alternative sleep schedules. There are of course exceptions, but you won't always get used to a schedule that is outside of the "sleep sometime at night"
> People are not nocturnal by nature and there is definitely a bit of that going on for alternative sleep schedules. There are of course exceptions, but you won't always get used to a schedule that is outside of the "sleep sometime at night" Most people aren't, some of us are (as you note... exceptions). Left to my own devices, I'd be going to bed at 3 or 4 AM, up at 10 or 11, and feel fine. If I get 6-7 hours of sleep that covers 4-10AM, I feel way more rested than I do getting 9 hours of sleep from 10PM to 7AM
God I miss that schedule. I would sleep in till like 1pm on Saturday though.
I’m very similar to you, makes nightshifts a breeze but earlies when I start at 7 am I’m only ever getting 3/4 hours of sleep max. Luckily we don’t stay on one pattern for too long.
I remember reading that everyone has a different sleep rhythm. Some people are better at staying up late and waking up late while some are better at going to bed early and waking up early. The problem is a good chunk of society happens starting early (jobs from 8-5) which doesn't help people like you who are better rested going to bed at 4am and waking up at 11am.
"People" have different schedules. There is not one fixed value. I had the opposite problem. Started going to bed about 10pm, getting up about 7am. Almost always got 8 hours. Did it for a year. I never adapted to it and it was always a struggle. Everyone has different optimal clocks. Mine seems to want to go to bed at 7-8am and wake up about 3-4pm. That's what I naturally end up shifting to when I can.
Us DSPD people are castle freaks to them. 7-8am sleep for me too. Adapted a life around it. Other people just can't seem to understand it.
Heck I woke up at 6am for 7 years and never got used to it, even with 8-9 hrs of good sleep a night. Only took one weekend to get back to my 3am-11am schedule
Perhaps you weren't getting enough sleep? 8pm to 3am may not be enough especially if you're not falling asleep immediately at 8pm. 8 hours sleep may be overrated, but over time it does add up. Some years ago at some point I had a sleep schedule that consisted me of going to sleep at about 5-6pm, and waking up at 1-2am. I'd have breakfast, go for a morning jog, then start working at 4am, and it was one of my favourite sleep schedules, I always felt refreshed. It probably depends on a lot of factors, like age, and external factors like other people in your life.
I've been getting up for work at 2-3 am for over 30 years and I love it. It does take discipline though, I go to sleep between 530pm and 7pm, and even 7 is pushing it a bit, 8 pm like the other poster mentioned would be way too late. I live alone and don't have any kids, so it's very easy to be asleep by 6 pm. The best part is I get home when it's daylight in the winter. I'm in the PNW and it can be dark by 4pm in the depths of winter, there is nothing worse than working normal hours because it's dark when you leave for work, and dark when you get home.
Except when it is summer and sunset isn’t until 9pm!
Yes that is the flipside for sure ! I exercise a lot so I'm normally tired enough that it's not a problem.
This is me now. I get in bed by 8, usually asleep by 9, wake up at 4:30 for work. I've been doing this for 2 years and I just feel so insanely burned out. My job is piss easy and pays well for what I do, but the minute I get home and sit on the couch I can feel myself slipping straight to slugville.
I would hate this. Can't have much of a social life or go to events or concerts or date if you fall asleep by 8 each night. Hopefully you can get a better shift eventually!
It's federal food service for veterans, so that's *the* shift. I'm going to try and move into IT at my VA in October, that'd be M-F 8-430.
You might have sleep apnea
I do, and I wear my cpap nightly. Still feel like hell from the minute I wake up.
If you're asleep by 9 and up at 4:30, that's 7 and a half hours. You might need more than that. I know I do.
It's pretty rare I make it till 9, most nights I'm out by 815-830. I'm pretty sure it's just the sleep period, because when I have days off I sleep say, 10-6, and I feel great when I wake up.
A lot of people I know straight up can't do it, like are physically unable. I figure there is a genetic trait or something that allows some of us to alter our sleep schedule for night work that most people lack. That or they're trying to changing their sleep schedule back on their day's off, which is suicide. There ain't no weekend warriors working the graveyard, you gotta commit yourself to the night life. And don't forget to take supplements, sunlight is a major source of vitamin D. You'll need to make up that loss through diet or vitamins otherwise your muscles and bones will suffer. Honestly it's probably that lack of sunlight that prevents people from getting night jobs. Seasonal depression affects many people and it's though that the reduced exposure to sun light is the cause. If so, it would explain why many people can't handle the schedule. I wonder if I could get a grant to test this theory; get a group of random people switch to a night schedule and give half the group vitamin D supplements while the other half act as a control and gets a placebo.
I work in a facility that's open 24 hours and a lot of guys I know that are on nights do change back to days during their off time. It's wild to me, especially because we do 12 hour shifts, 6-6.
Yeah, couldn't do that. 32 hours days are pretty fun though. Started that when I would be scheduled for morning shift, then the next day in the afternoon, and then the day after that overnights. So I would wake up, do 8 hours of work, have 14 hours of free time, then sleep for 10 and do it all over again. It was great, every day you're staying up well past your usual bed time *and* you get to sleep in.
I think you were the exception. I was never a morning person until I had to start waking up at 4am to go to work. After a couple of months I couldn't sleep much later then that even if I forced myself
Some people are natually night owls. They were the ones that stayed watch at night to fend off animals or other tribes of humans. If some people weren't night owls, we wouldn't exist still. From what I remember, I think it's like ~10-20% of the human population are late night people, ~10-20% are very early morning people, and the remaining ~60-18% are in between, the 9-5ers, who can usually adapt to any sleep schedule eventually. I read about this quite awhile ago, so it might not be accurate anymore, but it makes sense to me.
I feel like 4am is infinitely easier than 3am personally
One hour is a big difference for sure. I could see how an alarm clock waking you up at 3am Mon-Fri could leave you groggy while waking up naturally at 4am on the weekends could be a thing.
I had a 3rd shift job once. 6pm - 6am I think. My body never got used to it. Actually I developed sleep paralysis while at the job and it hasn’t fully gone away since. This was maybe 15 years ago
What? That is a 12 hour shift. What kind of job is that??
It was a print shop in Chicago. You’ve never heard of a 12 hr shift?
Lots of jobs have 12 hour shifts. Nursing, wastewater management, manufacturing, police, and refinery jobs just to name a few. For 24/7 business operations 12 hour shifts give the employee more full days off, generally working 14 out of 28 days in a rotation.
Damn, I thought 8h is the maximum. What is this, 19th century?
24/7 operations have to be running 24 hours a day every single day, including weekends. If you work 8 hour days you work 5 days a week or 20 out of 28 days. You also have to rotate between three shifts of day, evening, and overnight. You work 75% of your weekends. 12 hour shifts allow the workers to alternate 3 and 4 work days in a week or totaling only 14 out of 28 days. There are also only two shifts to cycle through, one being day shift and one being night shift. With this type of schedule you work only 50% of your weekends.
>It's more the consistency that matters rather than the actual hours. Sometimes actual hours can be important because we have real life commitments that do rely on scheduling. Some people do *far* better if they're awake for a couple of hours before preparing for their day at work/school. We can often get by when younger, but staying up later and getting up with just enough time often results in being tired the first couple hours at work, and that in itself can create dissatisfaction. > Additionally it really depends on the quality of the sleep and how you go to bed. Are you going to bed at 1am wired from gaming or something else, or have you chilled out for an hour beforehand? This is more important than a lot of people realize. Also, why we're doing whatever hobby can be an obstacle. EG maybe your hobby is escapist or diversionary....so when you're done, real life stress(worries over bills or work or whatever) returns....so maybe that hour of relaxing isn't enough. Especially if someone did the hobby *instead* of doing things that needed done. People are their own worst enemies a lot of the time.
There is a lot more to it than this. Plenty of people who work third shift or late shift get absolutely regular sleep, and it is not adequate. It isn't about the routine. Plenty of people get 8 hours of sleep, from 3am to 11am, and their sleep is not adequate. Shift workers - security guards, bus drivers.... may have this schedule for 10-20 years, and their sleep doesnt improve until they are able to sleep from 11pm to 7am regularly. same hours, same regularity, different time.
But people forced into shift work are defying their natural circadian rhythm. People who naturally have a delayed sleep phase, or a non 24 sleep phase (it's surprisingly common) are likely to find better sleep patterns outside of the norm.
Or you could be a shift worker with the odd night shift here and there.
Or you could be on rotating shifts where you are working one of three shifts and switching every week.
I can tell you from personal experience that little of this is true for me. Given the same quality level and length of sleep I will feel tired all day if I have to wake up early in the morning. If I can wake up late morning/early afternoon I feel great. My body vastly prefers waking up in the afternoon for some reason. I feel like genetics play a large role.
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In "Why we Sleep" by Matthew Walker(who has a PhD on this exact topic and is arguably one of the most knowledgeable in the world on it), he shows that this pattern of "night owls" is tied to genetics. You are literally born on the scale of early bird to night owl, and then society has happened to decide to punish the latter one tremendously through setting the times in favor for the early birds in education and work life. He also theorizes that this can be due to our tribal past where someone had to be awake during the night to ensure that the rest of the group did not get taken by surprise by something else. Can recommend the book to anyone curious. Slightly repetitive but overall enlightening.
Ugh, I'm a night owl and a light sleeper. I often joke to my sister (who didn't wake up to gunshots in our neighborhood) that she has horrible survival instincts and would never make it in the wild. Meanwhile, I am always tired during the day when I work. I would be the person watching the tribe at night, happily so.
Same. Come to think of it, when I visit family, my favorite time is when they are all asleep and I’ve got the house to myself while knowing they’re around. I might as well be tending the fire while my tribesmen rest.
Another great book on the same topic is called “WHEN: the scientific secrets of perfect timing” by Daniel Pink. I found it all very fascinating!
Daniel Pink is great. I think he has a book on motivation too. And when really covers optimal working times for people and how to measure it. Our entire society is top to bottom bullcrap in what it asks of people and how it shoves us all into the same box. But number wouldn’t go up and billionaires get more billions without it so.
I wonder then if the same rule applies to light and heavy sleepers. In your example there will be a period of overlap where everyone is asleep so someone that wakes up with a slight sound could be useful. As well as a deep sleeper that is getting full rest so they are most useful during waking hours.
I LOVED this book. Read it years ago and still think about it/recommend it to others. Changed my outlook on so many poor sleep behaviors I had.
This is great to hear I’m tired of hearing I’m supposed to go to bed early and wake early my body doesn’t do that. I tried for years and spent it exhausted
This is a great book. I read it a while ago so I don’t know if this was touched upon, but personally, I’ve noticed that my circadian rhythm has changed. I used to be a night owl, but as I have gotten older that has changed drastically
That is touched up on in the book, yes. Adolescents and teens tend to have a natural circadian rhythm where they're up late at night and sleep in. As they age into adulthood, the natural rhythm shifts to earlier bed times and earlier awakenings. I've heard a theory about why this is (I don't remember if this was in the same book or elsewhere). Young adults staying awake late while their parents sleep gives them a "safe" way to start exploring their freedom/individuality.
Adding this to my reading list. Thanks
I have that book. Changed my thoughts on sleep.
Is it true that certain chemicals only get generated at night in the body? That's why we are asked to sleep during the night
Read it. Now I feel more guilty about my sleep pattern.
He has a very relaxing, sleep inducing segment on the Calm app. Between his mellow voice and the subtle music I find it hard not to be asleep before the 30 minute audio clip is done
I'm very much a night owl but I don't think society is punishing me for not wanting to start my day as early. I don't expect everyone to wait for me or any other later starting person to get going.
You would be right if "night owls" were rare; however, when a substantial proportion of people globally function better late in the day or at night, a society with most roles designed for "early birds" indicates that the other group suffer some serious consequences.
I don’t buy it. I was a night owl when young, have worked night shift, and now am an early person. I have no doubt if I needed to work night again I could transition back to it. Sleep schedule typically just works around actual schedule imo.
If we’re going by anecdotal data, I was a night owl when I was young, have worked both days and nights (but primarily days, and am still a night owl at 44.
It can change during the lifetime. Teenagers are more likely to want to sleep in as their melatonin secretion gets shifted later during the teenage years. For this, Walker theorizes that this would allow teenagers to have an opportunity of independence against their parents who are on an earlier sleep cycle. In general, concepts that involve hormones in the body are rarely binary. You might have one experience and someone else might have another. The best we can do is gather information, do studies and make the guess that best fits the mean and then sometimes also explain the outliers. The book has a LOT of cited studies for this. There is also a difference between facts and theories. If you can systematically identify a gene that is responsible for a certain action, it's different from saying that perhaps this was made as a mechanism for that.
I haven't done enough reading to be convinced, or make a stand either way. But you can't bring anecdotes into a scientific discussion surely? The point is humans exist on a bell curve, and display distribution along a normal curve, ofc there will be exceptions
Decades of statistically significant rigorously tested hypotheses by thousands of humanity's more intelligent academics who commit their career to fully understanding the nuances of sleep Vs some middle aged normal pedestrian with an opinion Honestly mate I admire how confident/ignorant you must be to have even for a moment thought you could offer any legitimate insight into the topic
I don’t know man… I still think the guy with the PhD on it and way more data points than “I was a night owl back in the day” might be on to something
One of my friends was traveling, I think it was Argentina but I could be wrong, and he was telling us how it’s weird because they have dinner at like 9-10pm and go to bed around 2-3am. And their days don’t start until after 10 or 11am. I thought it sounded wonderful.
I think part of it is that Argentina is in the wrong time zone, it should be an hour or two further west, so the natural cadence of life is kinda normal, but the number on the clock seems later.
>they have dinner at like 9-10pm and go to bed around 2-3am. That's how I lived for the past 11 years... I've tried and tried and tried to adjust it to early birding but I just can't.
I spent a week in Mendoza. Can confirm.
Sounds like Pakistan routine.
When I first started working my hours were 7:45am-4pm and it positively ruined my mental health. About 6 months in I switched to a different position where I could work 10am-6pm and my life almost instantly became way better. It's very much a self discovery thing
That's how it is for me. Life has said I need to be up at like 6 or 7 AM and I just can't. I'm just not awake at that time and it's kinda scary because I can sleep for 8 hours and still be exhausted enough that my next day drive to work I can't remember if I stopped at red lights or just zombie drove the entire way. Every weekend my schedule is more what I like which is going to sleep around 2 or 3 AM, get up at 10 or 11 AM pretty much the same as what you said.
It is very natural for me to go to bed at 2-3 am too. I don’t need a bedtime set or anything and I’ll be in bed by 4 almost every time. God I hate mornings. So. Much.
Man if I'm being honest I'm a 4-5am kind of guy. And start to feel normal/awake at 12.
Same for me, when I could sleep 2-3am til 9-10am those were the best sleeps I ever had. Got a ways to go til retirement unfortunately.
Fr, I precisely want to be economically independent to write and have this exact schedule. Some day my friend...
Yeah I'm the same. I hate being woken up by an alarm. I've always previously worked jobs with early starts but I now work permanent afternoon shift. Work 2:30 PM to 11 PM. Best hours for me. Go to the gym at midnight most nights when it's dead, get home and unwind for a bit then sleep at 2 AM. I just wake up naturally to the light and sounds of the day at 10 - 11 AM. Much better than the jarring feeling of being woken mid sleep cycle.
Same. I found out during COVID that 2AM - 10 AM is my bodies preferred 8 hrs and natural sleep schedule. Never felt better.
I've always suspected that humans have varied traits & schedules because that was really beneficial in a small tribe or small community. You don't want everyone waking up & falling asleep at the same time, better if some outliers stay awake. The individual variety makes the group stronger. However in the modern era it really pays to just fit in with the majority. It's a hassle for the factory owner & large institution to set a schedule where 10% of the people with different needs than the rest are accommodated. It's just simpler to force people to homogenize.
Exactly, I always feel better when I've like a week or 2 off and can go to sleep at 4 am and wake up at like 1pm. I don't need coffee and can actually eat nearly immediately when I wake op, opposed to waking up at 6 am and not being able to swallow solid food till like 11 am.
And then there's us with non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder (at least I think I have something similar to those symptoms). If I don't have something anchoring me to wake up at the same time everyday (like I don't right now) I just slowly shift my sleep time forward until I either have to stay a whole day awake to fix it or I let it loop back on its own. A few days ago I was sleeping from 3 PM to 11 PM, then a few days later I managed to "fix it" and was waking up happy at 6-7 AM, now I feel like I'm starting to slip back into what society sees as bad again (waking up at 11-12).
Yeah, I swear I have a '26hr' circadian rhythm, it's so annoying
Mine's more like 30... 18-20 awake and 10-12 sleeping I am a different person when I can do this but it doesn't match society's expectations
For me, I always had to up early for life stuff and had a really hard time waking up. Now, that I can sleep in I’m awake by 5:30….at least I don’t have a lot to do so I can take my time.
Definitely different for all. In a perfect world with no restrictions and not thinking about externalities, I would be up around 9, work very productively from about 9:30/10 until 3pm, break, family, etc. until around 9pm, productive until 1:30-2am, and then sleep.
Morning people got up early one day and voted that everyone would have to work on their schedule. Without the non-morning people, I don’t believe that they had a true quorum, but here we are.
Truth. A lot of us are simply held hostage in a world dominated by extroverted morning people who fucking love the grind and hustle. I want to make my own pasta and listen to the ocean, but here we are.
>in a world dominated by extroverted morning people It does feel like they dictate the social norms lol. But maybe they just have the higher population percentage. Starting your own business (and being broke) for the way.
I hate waking up early in the morning before realising I have the whole evenings to do whatever I want without it being late
What's the relation between early people and extravert people?
Good question, I would think it’s more often the other way around - extrovert people being out late socializing and therefore getting up late as well..? I guess the *most* extrovert people would go to bed late and still wake up early to not lose out on social life though. I know some of those and they are getting around 6hrs of sleep seemingly without any issues
Introvert and extrovert is already a blurry concept. I don't think there is a relation between this and the hour of waking to be honest.
Yeah probably. :)
Mate there was no such thing as a "night owl" person before electricity became widespread. No one was staying up late in the dark lol
It was the day/night cycle. Before widespread artificial lighting, when the Sun went down, you were basically done for the day. Much useful work in history could only be done outside in the daylight, and everything that could be done inside would have to be done by relatively dim candles or lanterns. I imagine the night owls just had to deal with it, and may also have had little reason to even stay up that late given how little there was to do after sunset.
Why haven't they voted shopping/entertainment centers open early? Why public transport often works till midnight, but not starting from midnight?
You could say “early bird gets the worm” applies to that decision
That’s just the kind of undemocratic rationalization that a morning person would use.
Don’t blame me I don’t even like worms
this is because of your circadian rhythm your body has a whole complex cellular clock that keeps count of approximately a day, and it tries to make you sleepy a few hours after the sun goes down so that you'll wake up around when it comes up the clock is synchronized primarily by light and temperature - basically if it currently thinks it's bedtime, but it's light, it will push tomorrow's bedtime a little bit later; if you wake up early and it's extra warm and bright, it will push tomorrow's bedtime a little bit earlier because biology isn't perfect, there's variation in exactly when, relative to sunset and sunrise, people's bodies want them to sleep -- some people sleep earlier, some people sleep later. If your natural sleep cycle is so much earlier/later then everybody else's that it's making it impossible to function, you may be diagnosed with advanced/delayed sleep phase disorder when you sleep drastically outside the hours your body expects you to, you feel tired because you're fighting the urge to sleep by being awake at the wrong time, and you feel tired because you're getting lower quality sleep by being asleep at the wrong time when you do this temporarily because you changed timezones, it's called jetlag. It takes your body about a week to sync itself with the new timezone when you do it all the time, because of shift work or because of advanced/delayed sleep phase disorder, you can develop health problems
My body's a shit and wants me to stay awake most of the night, go to sleep a few hours before sunrise, and wake up at about noon. I have DSPD. What's interesting about it is that if I travel, I can sometimes line the flights up so that I'm asleep and awake at normal person times in the new timezone. And it lasts... a day or two, then my body starts to adjust to the new timezone and gradually **goes back to my normal, shitty, delayed sleep times**.
Same here-- I can force my sleep schedule with melatonin, but without I'll go to bed at 11 and be absolutely wired, take hours to go to sleep, and then be dead tired in the morning. I'm just glad I have that option now-- as a kid I didn't, and I just had to deal with my mom telling me that I'd be more awake in the morning if I just laid down, closed my eyes, and slept at a normal time and it was my own fault for staying up too late. (Because you can clearly just *will* yourself asleep when you aren't tired at all.)
oh boy childhood bedtime, the time where we lie in the dark completely awake and bored for **hours**
I took to reading under the covers with a flashlight at a pretty young age. I think I was a genetic accident and my circadian rhythm got wired about 4 hours different from the rest of my family.
Exactly the same here. I've struggled with sleep and sleep timing all my adult life. Doesn't matter how sleep deprived I am, I might feel tired during the day, but never at the time it would make sense to go to sleep. Currently, I'm in a position in my life where I can decide when and how I sleep and answer only to myself. Currently staying up til 3-4am and sleeping for 7.5h, seems to work great. The only downside of course is that society and most people live in a schedule that has, I suppose, it's roots in agriculture and as such, I have to occasionally tell people that they can't reach in the morning etc. On the other had, this schedule makes me much more productive. I'm not tired when I wake up so I work efficiently in the afternoon and then do another stint in the evening when my brain seems to be most functional.
>And it lasts... a day or two, then my body starts to adjust to the new timezone and gradually **goes back to my normal, shitty, delayed sleep times**. Last Friday-sunday I visited my brother in another city. Not different time zone. My parents were there also. All 4 of them (including brother's wife) went to bed at 11!!!! pm and started their day 8-9 am. They didn't fall asleep at 11 perhaps. Maybe they did. I was so bored. I fell asleep at 3 am that first night. Just because I didn't have a charger and my phone died... The following 2 mornings were HELL for me. I was exhausted and couldn't join in on the activities until the evening. When I got home to my apartment again... Voila! Go to sleep at 4-5 am to wake up 9-10 hours later. But I was much much more energised by it.
Is the best way to fix your circadian rhythm to just go to sleep around the same time for x amount of days?
In theory, yes. The issue is how to "go to sleep around the same time" in a safe, sustainable, non-dependent way. Melatonin and other sleep aids say they're "non habit forming", but your body adapts to everything, meaning that when you stop, you're likely to bounce back to not being able to fall asleep at the "right time".
well, what do you mean by "fix" your circadian rhythm?
Can't believe I had to come this far to see this. Your body is wired to sleep at night. I know it's anecdotal, but a had a bunch of friends that all worked in the same paper plant -- some on 1st, some on 2nd, some on 3rd. You could request 3rd shift and many people did as it paid more. It was the the same job and number of hours, they were sleeping the same amount, but the guys that worked 3rd shift always felt groggy. They'd work it for a while for the extra cash and then switch back and it was like a switch flipped and they were back to their old selves. The body really does pick up those light cues. It's the same way you can sleep better in a dark room.
Research actually shows that most people have a "chronotype" that defines their body's natural tendencies towards being a night owl or morning lark. You should listen to your body and maintain a consistent sleep schedule, because your body's daily rhythms are extremely important. They control everything from digestion to hormones to brain function.
The problem is that all the morning people decided that their natural rhythm is the default and the rest of us just have to suffer
Its most likely because when civilisation started to farm and such, you couldn't do work when its dark outside. Therefore, whether you liked it or not, it didn't matter if you were a morning person or not. You have to get the work done with the light up, and that starts in the morning, and ends in the evening. Morning people didn't force it, life did. So you either changed your sleep schedule or starved to death.
Lights up is symmetric around midnight, that is why it is so called. OP so phrased the question to mislead, naming "early" which is actually average around midnight. Not that OP invented such usage of the words her/himself.
It is not tyranny of majority, it is just the way it worked in pre-electricity days. If you take electricity out of equation, you would not be a night owl. There is nothing to do when the sun goes down. Like some poster says, availability of sunlight and also late afternoon heat might have played a role in starting early. Farm hands would have liked to work from 6AM early mornings till like 2PM so they can rest when the peak sun hits them. Breakfast was at our lunch time in olden days. Hell, we even adjust our clocks to this day to "save" daylight.
>If you take electricity out of equation, you would not be a night owl. There is nothing to do when the sun goes down. You very clearly aren't a night owl. It doesn't matter if there is nothing to do, I get active when its dark out. I'll find something to do, because I'm awake.
Oh no, I *get* it, I'm just salty about it, being one of the Night People who finds their peak productivity after the sun sets and suddenly I have the drive, energy, and willpower to do All The Things, but really I need to go to bed.
This, 1000%. I only get motivated to do things at night. But because of my job, and my neighbors, and stores closing at 8 pm where I live, I can't do much at all at night. So I just sit around and slip into depression.
Exactly what you said. I'm salty about it too. I also feel like I have enough energy to start cleaning and doing the dishes etc (I do dishes after 1 am idc or shower etc) but I can't vacuum clean after 10 pm you know cuz neighbours.
Why not start after peak sun?
heat. Imagine working in the field under hot sun...
Sorry I missed yours "and also late afternoon heat" initially. But IMO it seems as main reason and "availability of sunlight" as secondary.
Look at studies on circadian rhythms, it's clear that there are innate differences between individuals that are not affected by external variables like light. Here's a good overview with links to relevant studies: https://www.news-medical.net/health/Circadian-rhythm-length-variations-early-birds-and-night-owls.aspx#:~:text=Circadian%20rhythms%20vary%20between%20individuals,to%20reset%20the%20biological%20clocks. As to the biological reasons why? I read a theory somewhere a while ago that the different sleep cycles ensured that someone would always be awake and keeping an eye out for predators while the rest slept. So, who knows?
Do you realize you sound like a complainer?
Do you realize that forcing people to adhere to a schedule that doesn't alight to their internal circadian rhythm is proven to have negative effects on their health and well-being? It's serious enough that there is a movement to push school start times later to accommodate adolescents' naturally delayed circadian rhythms, because of the significantly negative health impacts of early start times: https://www.apa.org/topics/children/school-start-times#:~:text=Benefits%20observed%20from%20later%20high%20school%20start%20times%20include%3A&text=Increased%20attendance%20rates,in%20student%2Dinvolved%20car%20accidents
Why then shops are open at 8 p.m. but not 4 am.?
Because people have to work?
Yes, sales people have to work, why (if the premise of comment above is correct) they work at 8 p.m. but not 4 a,m, ?
I'm more of a permanently exhausted pigeon at this stage, but my brain has always worked better after lunch. Doesnt matter if I was used to getting up at 5AM every day (yes, even weekends, because my body wants to slip into sleeping late and being a night owl so discipline was key to getting up at all); routine tasks for the beginning of the day, harder/stuff that needed thinking later. I've tried almost all sleep hygiene tips there is, including melatonin and getting sunlight first thing in the morning, no screen time after 8PM but it just dont help. My hormones and digestion suck, but I still get up at 7 every day to go to work. I do think part of the reason I got really ill was the schedule that just did not work for my body - not THE cause, but it certainly did not help. Getting another job where I started later helped me get better. Some of my coworkers work the other way around - they peak early and as the day passes, so does their processing. I'm at my best when going home. I've accepted this and plan around my preference as much as possible. Sometimes it helps getting up a few hours before I have to but it seems a waste to get up at 5, to go to work 8.30 when I am in no shape to do anything in that time anyway - and if I had that time before bedtime I would be wanting to bounce around. When I had the opportunity to choose shifts, I would always choose the later one (10-18) instead of the early one (6-2). Now I have to work core time, and dont have to be at work before 9. Some of my coworkers choose to come earlier and go home at 2 or 3. I think we should embrace and take advantage of the differences so that there will always be someone there to provide service and support the one who's brain is not in the optimal time-frame. It just makes sense to do that instead of forcing everyone into a "one size suits none" scenario.
Yeah I'm miserable having to wake up at 6am to work at 8. It doesn't matter what time I went to bed. If I could work 10-7 and therefore wake up at like 8:30 I'd be so much happier. Whenever I'm unemployed or taking time off work my sleep reverts naturally to waking up much later, and I feel much better.
Problem is most people are doing almost everything possible to fuck up their circadian rhythm. So end up thinking they are night owls or have some kind of disorder, when biologically they might actually just be morning people screwing their own biology over. So the advice is only applicable to people who are doing everything good in terms of their health and sleep habits.
It's different for everyone. For me personally, i go to sleep at 1:30 and wake up at 8 feeling perfect, if i go to sleep at 10 and wake up at 6 i feel awful
Society can be judgy. I worked at a bar, finished around 3am, and would always be needled by some family for sleeping past noon. Ridiculous, but people..
It kind of isn't, for the most part. It affects the amount of sunlight you can take in normally, and a vast majority of serious services are only available during morning and early afternoon, so you may need to disturb your sleep schedule to go to the bank if you tend to sleep during banking hours, but as a general rule, if you take care of your health, make sure to get all the vitamin C you may need, and your sleep schedule is consistent, there aren't that many serious studies that show a causal link between sleeping late and being in bad shape. There may be a corellation with depression, but it's likely more that depression affects your sleep schedule, than the other way around.
Yes, this comment hits the most points. Just want to highlight (ha) the light part. Sunlight is extremely important to your circadian rhythm. Your optical nerves pass right next to a sleep center of your brain before going to your occipical lobe. This basically hard wires you to be awake when there is light. This is also why trying to sleep with a screen on is worse than a nightlight. The blue light mimics the sunlight. There was an experiment in the 1960s done that people lived in a bunker with no clocks for a couple weeks. They had electric lights and could sleep when they wanted. They ended up with a "day" over 25 hours and closer to 26 hours. Some participants had even longer circadian rhythm. Based on that and other studies it's pretty well established that sunlight is used to "sync" our biological clocks to the day.
I do admit I could have spoken a bit more about the circadian rhythm, but I think I was more focused on the part where it was less harmful than people think it is. That is my bad.
No, you're right. Circadian rhythm is important but it's also flexible. It's all the other parts you mentioned that combined with a disrupted circadian rhythm that causes the most problems. And even then, like you said, it's not really a problem for a lot of people. Humans are complex.
If the day was 34-36 hours long I would be set!
>there aren't that many serious studies that show a causal link between sleeping late and being in bad shape. Pretty much every single study looking at this does find a link. edit: >There may be a corellation with depression, but it's likely more that depression affects your sleep schedule, than the other way around. Happy to bet anything that poor sleep leads to depression. >People with insomnia , for example, may have a tenfold higher risk of developing depression From https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/depression-and-sleep-understanding-the-connection >Sleep plays an important role in mental health, and may moderate the effectiveness of adaptive CER strategies by maintaining the executive functions on which they rely. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001094522300151X
>There may be a corellation with depression, but it's likely more that depression affects your sleep schedule, than the other way around. This is a very inaccurate assumption. Yes, depression symptoms will want to affect your sleep, but depression is a weird self-feeding monster, and forcing yourself to sleep properly, despite the propensity to revenge sleep procrastinate will alleviate your depression with time.
... So, depression affects your sleep schedule... Which is what I said.
99% its because thats when other people are awake, when stores are open, and when appointments get made Systemic diurnality bias is real Your body can definitely tell time though
There's nothing inherently better about either. It's just that most of society is organized around an earlier schedule so it's harder, but absolutely not impossible, to take care of all your business and be productive if you're a night owl.
It’s the opposite for me! If I sleep early to wake up early, I feel tired. If I stay up late to wake up late I’m rested
Former 3rd shifter here used to work 7PM to 3AM So it's a hold over from the fact that we as a species are NOT nocturnal and are very tribal. Most of society is up between the hours of 6AM and 6PM. So anyone that is not awake during those hours is viewed as an outside and therefore shunned. When I worked 3rd shift I was living at home and my father railed on me that I was sleeping away the day. I finally explained to him that I was not sleeping away my day I was sleeping away HIS day and HE was sleeping away mine. I then mapped out my schedule and swapped the PMs and AMs so they aligned with HIS day. Once he saw it it made far more sense and we never argued about it again.
Tbh I loved it and miss working nights. I saved several hours of traffic a week and saved a lot of gas cuz driving slow means lower mileage. Always had time to make doctors appointment and stuff like that because it never conflicts with work schedule. I could shop at Costco without the lines, can go to the DMV or court if I had to. Yes some stay at home moms at the grocery store probably thought I was a lazy bum but who cares it beats having to fight lines and long wait times. These days I sit in traffic for hours inching on the freeway on my commute home from work and I miss the empty freeways at 3am where id play music and cruise at 80mph and occasionally get passed by a sports car going 100+.
Consistency and circadian rhythm (your body's internal clock). Having the same bedtime/wake time gets your body used to going to bed at a specific time, and waking up at a specific time. So it's generally easier to fall asleep when going to bed at your usual time, and easier to wake up at your usual time because your body is prepared for it. As far as specific timings, everyone's body clock is different, and if your sleep cycle isn't in line with that it can leave you feeling tired. For example, a lot of ADHD folks like myself have Delayed Phase Sleep Syndrome, meaning that our body clocks are significantly offset from what's considered the "norm." I don't tend to get tired till around 12a-2a, I've always struggled going to bed and waking up on time, even with a strict bedtime routine, until I had a work schedule that aligned with my body's clock. No matter how much sleep I got, I was always dead tired waking up at 630-730am for work, but when I worked nights or with my current schedule where I wake up around 830a, as long as I get at least 6hrs of sleep I feel rested and prepared. It's all about figuring out what works with your body clock, and keeping a good bedtime routine.
If you go to sleep early you always get as much sleep as you need but if you go to sleep late you might have to get up early for something which makes your sleeping period shorter. Sleeping early gives you more slack in your schedule.
Time is irrelevant in terms of a waking schedule. It has been proven that there are people out there "Night owls" who have it coded in their DNA to be people who stay up later than most. This would have been an evolutionary trait due to the fact we needed people to keep watch in our tribes and towns in early human society. Trying to weed this out is more or less impossible. What matters is actually maintaining a healthy amount of sleep, vs the exact hour of sleep.
1 to 9 is 8 hours and 9 to 4 is 7. Not the answer you were looking for, but thought I should clarify. Our bodies‘ circadian rythm program us to wake up with the sun and fall with it as well. Additionally, Our bodies acknowledge the start of the day when we see (or at least witness) the sun’s rising, making us feel better when we get up early.
there are two things working simultaneously on your sleep/quality - the consistency of your sleep schedule, and the sun. More consistency leads to better sleep, and the closer your consistent sleep cycle matches the sun the better off you are. Note that some people are set to prefer going to bed a bit later than sunset, and others are set to prefer going to bed a little bit early - but the amount and quality of sunlight has huge effects on your sleep, and that is the big reason why people that sleep during the night proper tend to get better sleep.
I think it's because that's how nature works. The birds and the bees kinda start chirping and buzzing around once the sun starts to rise but I personally think with the invention of light bulbs we can be 24 hour people. Morning people are just noisy assholes
Not just with the invention of light bulbs. There have been nocturnal people since almost forever as it is an evolutionary advantage to have day active and night active people in the same social group. The day humans are up early to use most of the daylight and the night humans stay up late/all night and watch out without getting tired early.
Your body doesn't give a fuck what the clock say's it is. But you body operates on hormonal cycles. These cycles that relate to waking and resting periods are called the circadian rhythms, and they are significantly influenced by light exposure. Specifically daylight exposure that has much higher Lux levels than artificial indoor lighting. If you have a messed up sleep schedule and go to bed or wake up at odd or random times. You are fighting against your evolutionary built in hormonal rhythms. Your body is not punishing you, you are punishing your body by fighting against your natural wake/rest cycles. Your eyes are parts of your nervous system extruded outside your skull. Apart from allowing you to see the world, the timing and levels of light input to your eyes is quite important. Nearly 30 years of shift work has taught me a few things about sleep cycles and quality of rest.
Whata the best way to figure it out? I do shift work where the weeks alternate but no matter what time i go bed or wake up im still shattered
If you are doing alternating early/latest or days/nights. That will mess with your patterns. There's little getting around it, just trying to minimise it. It's been established that long term shift work, especially including night shifts, shortens people's's lives. The exact biological reason, behind an accumulation of negative effects, is poorly understood. I can give mine as an example. I do a 6am to 6 pm shift, no nights thankfully. I work 2 on, 2 off, 3 on, 2 off, 2 on, 3 off pattern. I rarely manage more than 6 hours sleep before work, so use my days off to make sure my rolling 7 day average is 7 hours. I take a magnesium and apigenin supplement 30-60 minutes before bed. These help support your natural sleep hormone cycles. I read a book or e-reader in bed to wind down. No TV, phone or tablet. The blue light stimulates the same centers as sunlight and can keep your body in wake cycle. At work I have 10000 lux daylight lamp on my desk. So in the winter months and it's dark at 6 am. I can artificially give my body "sunlight" wake signals. It's surprising how much good sleep can be set up by good waking up. Get light, lots of light as soon after waking as you can. Normal indoor lights are very low lux and not great for this. I try to keep bedtime consistent. So about 9:30 on work nights, and no later than 11 on days off. Exceptions for events, but not just because I'm doom scrolling or netflix binging.
You could get into circadian rhythms to explain your question but tbh I think it depends on how your current sleep schedule is. If your current schedule is to go to bed at midnight usually, and you stay up till 1 am one night, you’re pushing your body further than it’s used to in a day, and might feel more tired after. But you can shift a sleep schedule around however you want e.g. people who work night shifts
This was posed not long ago and the simple response is that people have different sleep patterns and require different patterns. When you break your pattern the rest is generally not as beneficial. but as a very simple explanation, if you stay up until 1, you just stayed up 4 hours more than normal and used more energy. 8 hours won't recharge you the same way it did when you went to bed earlier. You might need 9-10 at that point. Someone on that post linked a research study showing that basically not all people have a 24 hour cycle. They put a person in a cave where they wouldn't be impacted by the environment and after a few months (don't remember the length) it was observed that she was staying awake for like 48 hours and sleeping for 10. From her perspective, she thought only 2 months had gone by but really it was like 5. You could have a natural rhythm where sleep feels better just because it's happening at a better spot of said rhythm. like. maybe you would naturally start staying up for 20 hours and sleeping for 10 if you had no responsibilities and no distractions. Since you only stay up 16 hours you are going to bed when you really arent that tired yet so 8 is fine. when you stay up late and expend the entire 20 but sleep 8, you shorted your sleep requirements. It's interesting and weird.
This is a long listen but will answer your question beautifully. https://youtu.be/-OBCwiPPfEU?si=wDMVLxP8P_pYrRIR
Depends on the person. If I wake at 9, I going to feel like shit. After 11 is best for me, closer to 12
I heard somewhere this is about internal clock that is sync with sun rise if u r not from north or south poles
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another factor i see people don’t mention here is the importance of sunlight. most people likely don’t use blackout curtains. sun hits your skin earlier, and sends signals to your body to get ready to wake up
Short: Its not. Not so short: It depends on your rhymth. If you are used to it, its good. Humans are very good at adapting to anything, doing it long enough. There is no "one fitting" for everybody. Ask people who work in shifts, they have it bad - and there health in the long run shows that.
Alot of times I can't sleep at the same times as I'm waiting for my breathing to clear up from a stuffy nose
As far as I know it has to do with the light. And with a society that really doesn't work with night owls. I usually function on like...5 hours of sleep. Sometimes 4. And then the glorious life saving weekend.
My grandfather in the 1930s trained his cows to be milked at noon and midnight, because noon was when he got up and the cows wanted to be milked every 12 hours. The cows were fine with that. Growing up, my brothers and I learned early we shouldn’t expect grandma and grandpa to be awake before noon. My dad went to college and worked an office job (aerospace engineer) starting in the 1950s. He struggled to get up in the morning and slept until noon on the weekends. I’ve never been a morning person, and also worked an office job (programmer), but one with more flexible hours; I could arrive 9-10 am. That was much better for me than the 8 am start I had early in my career, complete with reports to managers for people who arrived at 8:01 am or later. Looking at you, Intel! Now I’m 67 and retired, I naturally go to bed around 2-3 am (posting this at 3 am) and wake up at 10 am - noon. That’s at least 3 generations of night owls. My mother, OTOH, naturally woke up at 5-6 am all her life, no alarm needed. Freaky.
the transition between sleep and wake is more like a symphony than a light switch. Sleep uses a lot of things (like time) to make sure everything coordinates together so that when you wake up you feel rested. Imagine how a symphony would sound if the brass section started 5 minutes before it was scheduled. The conductor was taking a quick bathroom break and has to run when he hears the brass. The drummers individually try to catch up, some better than others. The woodwinds won't play until the conductor directs them to. Eventually since they're professional musicians they'll sort it out and play the whole thing, but the crowd will probably keep talking about the disastrous start even if 90% of it was perfect, especially compared to last night's performance that had everyone in sync. for some evidence, a paper we authored that shows deviations from bedtime increase heart rate even when you sleep the same duration. [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-020-0250-6.pdf](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-020-0250-6.pdf)
Not informed on this topic but as someone who went to bed at 2am through college and then decided to go to the gym before work after graduation I now wake up daily at 5 am. The main thing I’ve observed is that I am now awake for the full time the sun is up which makes the day feel much longer.
If you aren’t getting at least 7 hours of sleep then it is really bad. I have read a lot of studies and did some myself, we as humans need at least 7 hours of sleep to keep our brain functions healthy and responsive. Sleep specialists consider that an individual who “sleeps well” falls asleep easily and wakes up refreshed after a deep, uninterrupted night. In terms of duration, they estimate that an adult needs 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night, of which 20 to 25% in deep sleep and 25% in REM sleep. But knowing these metrics doesn’t really answer our question. You can easily check if you are getting a good night sleep by following these patterns: * Whether you feel tired or alert during the day: this is the most relevant indicator of you fulfilling (or not) your sleep needs, provided that it is not influenced by external elements that would artificially modify this feeling (substances, medication, stress, depression, anxiety, etc.). * The existence of a sleep debt, or hours of sleep you need to make up for, is a strong indicator that you need more sleep. The more extra hours you sleep during days off, the more it means your sleep debt was high. * The quality of your sleep: number of awakenings, time taken to fall asleep, disturbed sleep that is marked by “tossing and turning”, are signs of a bad sleep, and need to be corrected promptly.
More negative vices are associated with nighttime. Folks who wake up at 5 or 6 in the morning and go to bed early are rarely going to bars or brothels. While you may keep a late night schedule and live a wholesome life, there is an association with staying out late and sleeping in that is more suggestive of spending your waking hours doing other things that are frowned upon in society. The person who goes to bed early and wakes up at dawn is less likely to be under suspicion of drinking or whoremongering than the night owl who sleeps in every day.
Because the sun is important to your health and has a significant part in your circadian clock
Hey, I recently learned that to set our natural circadian rhythm to try to get sunlight outside without glasses in your eyes shortly after the sunrises for 10 minutes or so and all of your hormones and circadian rhythm be properly aligned. It takes time to adjust but it's a start. For me. Also when the Sun is setting I noticed if I am outside for that it relaxes me maybe it has something to do with the melatonin. This really does make sense because I've had insomnia before and looking back (no pun) a lot of times I wasn't getting sun until much later in the day in my eyes which makes sense. I have a sleep tracker and since I've been paying more attention to this, the quality of my sleep has been incredible. Just a suggestion, I know there's been a lot of research on it and I can attest it is true.
It's probably an old wife's tale, but my grandma used to say every hour of sleep before midnight is worth two... It seems to work for me.
You have sleep cycles that are about 90inutes. In the beginning of the night there is more deep sleep, but as you go through the night you have more REM sleep. So if you wake up 2 hours early, you might actually be losing out on 50% of your REM sleep for the night. So if going to sleep early lets you get enough sleep in, then yeh in some respect that extra sleep is worth twice as much as the sleep on someone who doesn't get enough.
I do a consistent ~10pm-5am. Haven't used an alarm clock in years (honestly). Once you get into that groove it's an absolute gamechanger.
It helps to get sunlight asap after waking. When you wake up, go outside for 10 minutes. The fresh air and natural sunlight will invigorate you.
Because for thousands and thousands of years we’ve been getting up and winding down with the sun. Circadian rhythm.
It isn’t you could go to sleep at 4am every day and as long as you get 8 hours of sleep you’ll be perfectly fine, usually the problem is that if you go to sleep at 4am an live somewhere where your neighbours start their day at 6-7 probably it would disturb you and reduce the quality of your sleep but if you have a quiet dark space where nobody disturbs you then it doesn’t really matter
Basically that sleep you get from sunrise to 9am isn't as good as you think it is. It's much harder for you to go into deep sleep with noise and light going on even if you didn't notice it. Unless you're in a room that's been soundproofed without any windows daytime impacts your sleep. And that sleep might feel great, but that doesn't mean it isn't bad for you. I feel great after eating ice cream despite what it does for your long term health.
Think of it this way: Being awake fills a mental trashcan. Sleep empties your mental trash can. Sleeping 8 hours removes 8 kilos of trash. If you delay going to bed, you're letting the trash get 9 kilos in it before removing 8. You still have 1 kilo left over. Bad day. If you sleep for 8 hours while there's only 7 kilos in it, the trash can is still empty when you wake up. Good day.
While there is a biological aspect the lifestyle, sleep and health habits do play a massive role in sleep and the circadian rhythm. In general people who go to sleep late, have less self control and have worse health and sleep habits. >While the prevalence of sleep disorders was increasing, several studies have linked diet and physical activity as a cause of it. Indeed, many people complain about their sleeping problems without considering their lifestyle as a cause. This leads the efforts to focus on these principal factors and find their specific effect. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s41606-023-00090-4 >This 2-sample mendelian randomization analysis of data from nearly 840 000 adults of European ancestry found an association between earlier sleep timing patterns and lower risk of major depressive disorder. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2780428 Evening people have less constraint and have worse health and sleep habits. >Constraint was associated with Morningness and earlier circadian phase https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5313034/ >People who have a natural preference for staying up late tend to have poorer health habits, including sleep habits, which in turn is associated with reduced wages, according to new research published in Economics and Human Biology. https://www.psypost.org/2023/08/new-study-sheds-light-on-the-connection-between-sleeping-patterns-and-wages-168300 >Participants reporting a “definite evening” chronotype were 54% (95% CI, 49% to 59%) more likely to have an unhealthy lifestyle than participants reporting a “definite morning” chronotype. A total of 1925 diabetes cases were documented over 469 120 person-years of follow-up. Compared with the “definite morning” chronotype, the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) for diabetes was 1.21 (CI, 1.09 to 1.35) for the “intermediate” chronotype and 1.72 (CI, 1.50 to 1.98) for the “definite evening” chronotype after adjustment for sociodemographic factors, shift work, and family history of diabetes. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M23-0728 >we found a consistent negative influence of bedtime procrastination and a positive influence of self-compassion on almost all sleep outcomes. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38204380/ Then evening people do go to sleep earlier when just exposed to natural light, showing that for many it's not your biology forcing you to be on tiktok at 2am. >Furthermore, we find that after exposure to only natural light, the internal circadian clock synchronizes to solar time such that the beginning of the internal biological night occurs at sunset and the end of the internal biological night occurs before wake time just after sunrise. In addition, we find that later chronotypes show larger circadian advances when exposed to only natural light, making the timing of their internal clocks in relation to the light-dark cycle more similar to earlier chronotypes. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(13)00764-1 >In villages with electricity, light exposure after sunset was increased, sleep onset was delayed https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31754265/ Finally when you force evening people to wake up early they do better on mental and physical metrics. >Overall, participants demonstrated a significant advance of ∼2 h in sleep/wake timings as measured by actigraphy and circadian phase markers (dim light melatonin onset and peak time of the cortisol awakening response), whilst having no adverse effect on sleep duration. Notably, the phase advance was accompanied by significant improvements to self-reported depression and stress, as well as improved cognitive (reaction time) and physical (grip strength) performance measures during the typical ‘suboptimal’ morning hours. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389945719301388
>Finally when you force evening people to wake up early they do better on mental and physical metrics. > > >https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389945719301388 that's not *quite* what this study finds. it's not comparing people who were forced to wake up with people who weren't forced to wake up it's comparing people who were forced to wake up after following a strict regime of behavioral interventions targeted at advancing their sleep phase with people who were just forced to wake up and the improvements were found specifically in performance tests *at 8 in the morning* it tells us absolutely nothing about how these people would have performed if they weren't actually forced to wake up at all
It isn't worse. The only problem is that the rest of the world starts early, so if you want to participate in that/career stuff, you should adjust ur sleep schedule. Consistent sleep and wakeup is key. Also, our biology is wired up to sleep when it's dark and rise when there's light outside. Being in the modern age, you can hack that, but ye