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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

#181

Post by AndrewKemendo »

dijit wrote: 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…

I'm in the same boat as you. There's no "fix" here, and you're not broken.

I have three kids and spent 11 years in the military waking up a 5 AM. That didn't reset or change my natural rhythm.

My answer is that you need to find a job/lifestyle that fits your natural cycle. It's not perfect but I get to set my own schedule for the most part and it's working ok for me right now.

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

#182

Post by Raphmedia »

boomlinde wrote: post #156
Raphmedia wrote: post #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.

> 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. Is there an established strict definition of "night owl" that supports this conclusion? I always thought a night owl meant anyone who for whatever reason prefers to stay up late and sleep in, which doesn't r…

This is part of the issue and one of the causes of the stigma. People who have biological and/or genetic particularities and are unable to follow regular sleep cycles should not be put in the same category as people who have regular circadian rhythm. This article is about biological factors so its safe to assume we are discussing about people with actual circadian disorders and not people who have bad habits.

"Circadian rhythm sleep disorders are characterized by a persistent or recurrent pattern of sleep disturbance (difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep and excessive sleepiness) due to alterations of the circadian timekeeping system and/or misalignment of the endogenous circadian rhythm and the external environment." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3523094/

Key part of this being "persistent or recurrent". In other words, people who have been struggling with this for a long time and have it reoccur after trying out different strategies.

Adding a distinction could help. Perhaps "voluntary night owl" vs "involuntary night owl".

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

#183

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

paulrpotts wrote: post #127
shawabawa3 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, is waking up at nearly 9am late? I wake up between 8 and 10 daily (I have very flexible working hours atm) I optimised my home for a short commute and have never had a job where arriving before 10am was required

Yes, by the standards of most employers and schools it is very late. I am fortunate in that I can often sleep until past 8, and I'm much saner and healthier for it. But all through high school I had to get up at 6:30. Since I was _also_ an extreme night owl and used to do all my schoolwork after everyone else in my house was asleep, I'd usually get to bed by 1:30 or 2:00, which meant I was severely sleep-deprived all…

There are jobs in I.T., like emergency Server Admins for hospitals who get paid extra to work the "night shift". That might be worth looking into.

Or if you live on the East Coast working Remote with a company in Pacific Time Zone.

The thing that finally worked for me was finding out the amount of sleep I ABSOLUTELY needed to function. Which was about 4-5 hours. My body wants 8, but I can make it through the day with 4 hours.

Try to only sleep this minimum about for several weeks, and eventually you will be tired enough to go to bed exactly when you want. For me that was a midnight to 4:00am schedule, and I was gradually able to add a couple hours sleep to that over the course of a year. Now I'm sleeping 11:30pm to 5:30am.

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

#185

Post by gwbas1c »

schuke wrote: post #30
inertiatic wrote: post #21

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 wonder if the genetical night owl can pull this off too?

I was quite the night owl before my first child came. I think the change is part biology, and part the emotional connection to my children.

There is no job, hobby, or other calling that could turn me into an early riser like raising children.

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

#186

Post by balfirevic »

BuildTheRobots wrote: post #28

I like the fact they present it as an either/or choice. My natural sleep cycle seems to default to a 28 hour day (eg I go to bed slightly later every evening then morning) which makes interfacing with reality pretty difficult. This seems to be something shared with a number of geeks I know.

I'm like that too. Melatonin helps me fall into 24-hour rhythm.

I take 1 mg in slow-release form, 2-3 hours before desired bed time. My bed time is still pretty variable, shifting 2-3 hours back and forth but at least it's not hopelessly drifting forward every day.

I do sleep a lot, 9-10 hours (no alarm clock), which could be because of melatonin (1 mg is a rather large dose). See here for a lot of details about melatonin dosage and timing: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th...

Relevant quote for non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder:

And what about non-24-hour sleep disorders? I think the goal in treatment here is to advance your phase each day by taking melatonin at the same time, so that your sleep schedule is more dependent on your own supplemental melatonin than your (screwed up) natural melatonin. I see conflicting advice about how to do this, with some people saying to use melatonin as a hypnotic (ie just before you go to bed) and others saying to use it on a typical phase advance schedule (ie nine hours after waking and seven before sleeping, plausibly about 5 PM)

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

#187

Post by hinkley »

dijit wrote: 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…

What I never told my parents until I was an adult is that the entire reason I still had a night light at 12 years old was because it was just bright enough to play with my favorite toys in the dark. I thought I was so sneaky. However, while I almost never missed school as a child, the most common cause of doing so was exhaustion. Too many late nights and I'd pay for it, badly, sleep in until 1pm and then feel like I could win a war single-handedly.

So somewhere between keeping me from getting sick and just appreciating that as long as I pretended to be asleep they could get 2 hours of peace before bedtime, I would get spot-checked inconsistently. Got really good at listening for footsteps in the hallway.

Getting up early because of kids or dogs isn't a 'fix' for insomnia, btw. It's a coping mechanism. If you are too tired at 10 because the dog thinks breakfast is to be served sharply at 6:30 even though it's been 7:30 since they were puppies, you're not gonna stay up trying to invent a new compression algorithm. You're gonna collapse like a sad sack and make the most of tomorrow.

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

#188

Post by jjoonathan »

ApolloRising wrote: post #175
dijit wrote: 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…

Exercise everyday as soon as you wake up for 30 minutes may help reset your brain (treadmill or similar would work or a brisk walk before you shower). Your brain will naturally anticipate the exercise and wake up faster because it has to do so. It would take 3 weeks to become a habit. Also sometimes this can be an early sign of sleep apnea if you fall into the other risk factors. CPAP + room air filter + blackout cur…

Counter anecdata: One summer, I didn't have AC available so I forced myself onto the early bird schedule for 3 months so that I could run at the daily temperature minimum. It did not "reset my brain" or "make me wake up faster" -- I was still groggy after my run with metabolism ramping during the day and peaking at night (with dips after meals), just as it was before + after.

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

#189

Post by jjoonathan »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #4
bilekas wrote: 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.

Maybe it’s just the small subset of software engineers who frequent HN, but I swear 99.9% of the people on here are night owls, and they very much let their opinions be known on every thread about sleep.

If the passive aggression from early birds weren't so intense, us night owls wouldn't have such a chip on our shoulder. But it is. Just look at the early birds in this thread: nearly every post equates their schedule to virtue.

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

#190

Post by IndrekR »

dijit wrote: 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.

Sorry to say that, but in my case it did not help, made things worse instead. Seriously. It forces my body into unnatural rhythm and feel sleepy most of the days. Even if I get 7..9h of sleep.

Oh, how I love those productive hours from 22:00 till 03 in the morning and waking up between 10 and 12 next day fully rested!

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