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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

#141

Post by giancarlostoro »

cadence- wrote: post #10
giancarlostoro wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to have nasty insomnia, now I've sorta forced myself to sleep earlier cause I know if not I will not function at work. However, my wife's a night nurse so when she has days off and on weekends, it screws with my sleep schedule. I wish I could just function on less sleep honestly, but I can't anymore. One thing I read from a fellow insomniac though was that sometimes when you just can't sleep, laying down on your…

I agree. Even if I don’t sleep at all, but only lie down at night with my eyes closed, I feel better than walking around at night. I mean, I still feel horrible overall. But better than when I spend the night out of bed.

I read it here on HN coincidentally but I couldnt remember by who, but I felt way better later on that day. I think the best I can do is force myself to sleep though. I'll watch shows on Netflix till my eyes start to shut down nowadays.

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

#142

Post by jotm »

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…

You could do what most people do and have a day job with a long commute :D

Only half joking, it definitely works for waking you up in the morning (unless you like being fired) and going to sleep earlier (because you're tired).

You will likely feel tired until 11am-1pm or all day, but you'll be "normal" in other people's eyes... yay /s

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

#143

Post by Arcsech »

mFixman wrote: post #76
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 had the exact opposite experience as you. I was a night owl my entire life until my last few years of college, when it got difficult. Then I was able to transition to being an early riser in a couple of weeks, and I carry that experience many years later. Waking up early does have a practical advantage: your free time is before you go to work, so then you have energy to do important things.

> Waking up early does have a practical advantage: your free time is before you go to work, so then you have energy to do important things.

This doesn't make any sense to me. I have zero energy or drive in the morning, it's a struggle to do anything. My brain turns on at about 11am - I can be active before that, but serious creative work or figuring out something that requires mental effort is going to be much less effective than if I waited until later in the day.

It doesn't even really matter when I wake up. I can wake up at 6am and be a zombie for 5 hours, or wake up at 10:30am, shower, and be ready to go for the day. Sufficient application of caffeine helps a bit if I need to be fully on before that, but the quantity necessary to do so is not sustainable.

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

#144

Post by jotm »

TheTrotters wrote: post #90
grumpy8 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty much. I'll wake up because I need to go to work. But I'm always tired :/

Sometimes I wish I could work nights, but I did work from home like that and sleeping during the day is also pretty bad. Especially during winter, not seeing much daylight can mess you up.

Going to sleep at 2-3am and waking up at 10-11am seems like it would be great.

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

#145

Post by beagle3 »

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 was, and still am, a night owl - if there are no constraints.

However, there often are constraints that require me to be up earlier (yes, a kid is among them), and I found the following helps maintain reasonable focus and relative ease of waking up early:

1. About 10,000 IU of vitamin D (at 190lbs), taken before 10am - as a replacement for significant sun exposure which I don’t have. This is significantly higher than the RDA, though still below the toxic levels (50,000 IU/day or so at my weight). The timing is important - vitamin D is apparently part of the body’s sunlight clock PLL. Gwern has some n=1 experiments and references.

2. Sufficient protein intake (between 0.5gr and 1gr per lbs of body weight - low end for sedantry, high end for very active). Don’t know the mechanism - discovered by trial and error - but makes a huge difference for me. If I don’t have enough protein, I can’t fall asleep before 3am regardless of how tired I am. (Well, except when I do a multi day fast and everything goes berserk, but that’s for another post).

Even with those, at times I am not constrained I will naturally nightowl.

Don’t trust me. Do your own research and n=1 experiments.

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

#146

Post by dewy »

vneur wrote: post #138
dot1x wrote: post #118

For those interested, Internal Time [1] does a good job at explaining chronotypes. People that say they "changed from night owl to early riser" (or vice-versa) have never been night owls in the first place, but something else was the cause (diet, screen time, etc). Chronotypes are genetics-based so no amount of wishful thinking will make you a night owl or an early riser (though obviously you can try and force this w…

Some caveats to think about for that particular book in this blog post: https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/ (I'm not a researcher in the area, so not sure how valid either side of this is!)

That's actually about a different sleep book, Why We Sleep

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

#147

Post by EGreg »

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…

By the way... have you tried buying those red glasses that filter all other frequencies including green?

They make you sleepy on demand.

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

#148

Post by jacobolus »

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…

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

My 3.5-year-old wakes up at 9AM, takes 1 nap, and goes to sleep at 1 or 2 AM.

Most kids are on an earlier schedule, but don’t count on it.

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

#149

Post by dewy »

jvm_ wrote: post #65

So my natural rhythm is working 10-2 and then a lull until 4-6, and then a lull until midnight, I wouldn't get tired until 2am. Not ideal for a 9-5 job with kids. I'd also need a nap around 5:30-7 or so, also not wife-compatible to fall asleep at 5:30pm for an hour. I started using a SAD lamp and it makes a huge difference, 30 minutes in the morning, I just browse my phone in front of it. It feels like a cup of coffe…

At the risk of you being accused of shilling (a risk I'm happy to take ;) ), would you mind sharing the model of the lamp you have found to work well?

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

#150

Post by kart23 »

sqs wrote: post #17

I used to be a night owl but switched to being an early riser in the last 3 months. I didn't intend to switch and am not sure why it happened, but here's what happened that probably contributed to it: - Started working out 1-2 hours per day (trail hiking/running) - Stopped reading my iPhone in bed at night, now I just read my backlit Kindle - Company switched to all-remote (used to commute to SF) - Had a daughter (~9…

Yeah, I see way too many people watching an hour of tv on their phone or iPad in bed before going to sleep and then complaining they cant go to sleep. I find that I sleep a lot better if i put away screens for an hour before sleeping.
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