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Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

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Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#81
post #39

I've been a night owl my whole life, with the exception of that period during secondary school where I was so depressed in the evenings I went to bed early and as a consequence woke up super early. I have followed every advice, meditation (1yr), excercise (3*1.5hrs per week for 18 months), staving off screens after 18:00 (8mo), no caffiene, no sugar, no food of any kind, I also tried: too much food, cooling my body d…

> Based on the comments here, I just need to have a kid.

Personal anecdote, that won't help much. You'll still sleep at midnight, except that instead of waking at 9:00am, you'll have to wake up at 6:00am.

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#82
post #39

I've been a night owl my whole life, with the exception of that period during secondary school where I was so depressed in the evenings I went to bed early and as a consequence woke up super early. I have followed every advice, meditation (1yr), excercise (3*1.5hrs per week for 18 months), staving off screens after 18:00 (8mo), no caffiene, no sugar, no food of any kind, I also tried: too much food, cooling my body d…

Cooling your body down before going to bed will have the opposite effect if your goal is to go to sleep. By cooling your body it will start to try and warm itself and trigger a stress reaction. Eating and working out before bed will similarly raise your heart rate and sympathetic nervous system activity, the opposite of what you want. Sleeping pills are also bad for sleep, ask any sleep doctor. They are great and knocking you out, but that's not what sleep is.

Saying you did "meditation" for a year doesn't tell us much, just the same as you saying you "exercised" for 4.5 hours a week doesn't tell us much. Both of those terms can mean a great number of things qualitatively speaking.

Counter-intuitively you could warm yourself 1-2 hours before bed with a hot bath or sauna session. This triggers the body to bring blood closer to the surface and extremities to shed heat, in effect "helping" the body cool itself as it approaches bedtime.

Based on these observations I think maybe you haven't tried "absolutely positively everything". And even with all the environmental and body things you've tried, the mental aspect cannot be understated.

EDIT: based on some of the replies about temperature. The hot bath method because it will help your body cool in a physiological way while a cold bath will do the opposite. A cool environment will do the same while a hot one will do the opposite. So hot bath 1-2 hours before bed and lower the room temp for the best of both worlds. Some people go further with chilled blankets such as the Ooler.

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#83
post #39

I've been a night owl my whole life, with the exception of that period during secondary school where I was so depressed in the evenings I went to bed early and as a consequence woke up super early. I have followed every advice, meditation (1yr), excercise (3*1.5hrs per week for 18 months), staving off screens after 18:00 (8mo), no caffiene, no sugar, no food of any kind, I also tried: too much food, cooling my body d…

Cooling your body down before going to bed will have the opposite effect if your goal is to go to sleep. By cooling your body it will start to try and warm itself and trigger a stress reaction. Eating and working out before bed will similarly raise your heart rate and sympathetic nervous system activity, the opposite of what you want. Sleeping pills are also bad for sleep, ask any sleep doctor. They are great and kno…

Rising body temperature is correlated with tiredness, that's why you feel exhausted after you've been home for 5 minutes.

Meditation itself was 'mindfulness', some of it was guided, most of it was not, guided meditation was once a week (I'm not counting the yoga, which was also meditative), I spent 5 minutes in the morning, 5 minutes at lunch, 15 minutes when I got home and 5 minutes before bed. (and I'm pretty well disciplined so I stuck to that routine).

The reason I say I've tried everything is because I've seem therapists/psychologists and taken their recommendations on board, I've researched and taken more information on board and this is not the first thread where "night owl" information has come up, and I took information from there too. And, like I said, I'm rigorously self-disciplined; so I'm able to stick to things... But, I will happily take your advice on board and try that. Since I don't care about whinging, I care about results.

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#84
If you were able to "no longer be a night owl" after changing diet, through exercise or by other changes in your behavior, you were in fact never an actual night owl but simply someone with bad sleeping habits.

You read the same thing whenever there's a discussion on clinical depression. People push their anecdotes about mindset changes but fail to acknowledge they were never clinically depressed in the first place.

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#85
post #55
post #48

This may be very anecdotal but might help someone in a similar predicament. After reading Why We Sleep I think I got some explanation what happened to me, but at least for my case it seems it wasn't really on the money. I _was_ able to make the switch from night owl to an early bird myself so it's certainly possible, though requires some effort and dedication. I naturally woke up at 10 am and didn't really like morni…

I’ll add n+1 to this anecdote. Found a form of exercise I was excited and willing to get up for, now I wake up around 5:45 every morning trying to drag my “early riser” wife out of bed to go start the day. Was a complete night owl before, and my wife was constantly reminding me that it was late and time to call it a day.

Off topic, but if you don’t mind me asking, what exercise could possibly be exciting at 5:45? I ask because I’ve been trying to find exercise that makes me excited to get up and do it but I’ve been drawing blanks.

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#86

I've been a night owl all my life. Now I wake up by 7 before my alarm even rings. All it took was getting into the habit of trying to get a little person to sleep by 10 in the evening and falling asleep with them. I'm still at my most productive at the end of the working day however and early morning is still not great.

I was the same for many years then travelling from Chile to Peru, there was a two hour time difference, despite being pretty much the same longitude (there was a one hour difference, and I think Chile had daylight savings on top of that).

It made me realise that it's all just a number. In other words if you don't like getting up early, then go to bed an hour or two earlier. It has exactly the same effect. In countries with daylight savings we adjust our schedules by an hour two times year and no one makes much of a big deal. Its the same as that!

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#88
post #2

I am very much a night owl and I have a really hard time getting into a routine of getting up early in the morning, even if I do manage to get my hours of sleep. It took a long time to find a balance of forcing to sleep and forcing to get up. But now I have to be very concious, if I have a late weekend I am out of sync for the rest of the week. People say its a lazy thing, but its really not.

How long does it take you to adjust when the clocks change in Spring?

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#89
post #39

I've been a night owl my whole life, with the exception of that period during secondary school where I was so depressed in the evenings I went to bed early and as a consequence woke up super early. I have followed every advice, meditation (1yr), excercise (3*1.5hrs per week for 18 months), staving off screens after 18:00 (8mo), no caffiene, no sugar, no food of any kind, I also tried: too much food, cooling my body d…

Cooling your body down before going to bed will have the opposite effect if your goal is to go to sleep. By cooling your body it will start to try and warm itself and trigger a stress reaction. Eating and working out before bed will similarly raise your heart rate and sympathetic nervous system activity, the opposite of what you want. Sleeping pills are also bad for sleep, ask any sleep doctor. They are great and kno…

This is really surprising. All the studies I have read say precisely the opposite. The theory goes that because, in the environment in which our minds evolved, the temperature would ALWAYS drop at night, this is one of several signals your body responds to to prepare for sleep. Others include lower availability of food and darkness.

Re: Early riser or night owl? New study may help to explain the difference

#90
post #53
post #39

I've been a night owl my whole life, with the exception of that period during secondary school where I was so depressed in the evenings I went to bed early and as a consequence woke up super early. I have followed every advice, meditation (1yr), excercise (3*1.5hrs per week for 18 months), staving off screens after 18:00 (8mo), no caffiene, no sugar, no food of any kind, I also tried: too much food, cooling my body d…

You say "You've followed every advice", but what were you trying to achieve exactly? Is it that you can't fall asleep or that you're not productive in the morning, or something else? Personally what worked best for me is just to wake up at 6am for 2 weeks without nap during the day. Most people try to adjust their sleeping time to match their waking time, but they've got it backward. Set your wake up time and listen…

Counterexample: I had to wake up at 6-6:30 am Monday-Friday for over half a year. I never adjusted and was chronically sleep deprived.

Chronotypes can only be bended so much.

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