In 1670 John Ray coined the phrase ‘The
early bird catches the worm’, before him ‘It is well to be up before daybreak, for
such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.’ said Aristotle. ‘Lose an hour in the morning, and you will
be all day hunting for it.’ proclaimed Richard Whately. It is drilled into our heads throughout our
entire lives that it’s better for us to get to bed early and wake up at the crack
of dawn. In doing so we can, supposedly, get more done
and live richer, happier lives. So, when do you like to go to bed? 30% of the population are ‘Night Owls’,
they prefer to go to bed late and wake up late, sometime in the afternoon. 40% of people are ‘Morning Larks’ they
are more than happy to wake up at the crack of dawn but go to bed early. And the remaining 30% of people are somewhere
in between but usually have a slight leaning towards preferring either evening or morning. This is referred to by scientists as your
chronotype. So, what’s your chronotype? The issue that night owls have is that they
are socially shunned. They are called lazy and immature. People often wrongly assume that a night owl’s
inability to wake up early is by choice and they are berated for this, but the truth is,
such people may not be able to help their late rising and forcing night owls to wake
up early can actually have disastrous health consequences. As far as scientists have observed, all creatures
on Earth, with lifespans longer than a few days, are subject to a circadian rhythm, in
Latin ‘circa’ meaning ‘around’ and ‘diēm’ for ‘day’. It is the natural 24-hour repeating sleep-wake
cycle that determines when we feel drowsy and it’s time for sleep and it also hints
when our bodies should awaken from slumber. Controlled by the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus
- a tiny part of your brain inside your hypothalamus. The Suprachiasmatic Nucleus is your internal
clock. The Suprachiasmatic Nucleus is excellent at
keeping time without any external influence. In 1962 French geologist Michel Siffre spent
two months deep underground in a cave where not a splash of light was able to reach him. He found that his circadian rhythm was able
to keep his sleep/wake routine accurate to around 24 hours, but it would often overshoot
by up to half an hour. This revealed that our Suprachiasmatic Nucleus
is great at approximating time, but without a fixed reference it is unable to maintain
it precisely, to the minute. We now know that the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus
synchronises itself and thus our circadian rhythm with the sun. Interestingly, however, if you were to, hypothetically,
live in a permanently dark environment, with no sun, such as your mother’s basement,
and perhaps you do, then your circadian rhythm would sync itself to any other consistency
that happens on a repeating 24-hour cycle, such as temperature fluctuations or remarkably,
even your daily morning coffee. These time aligning events are called Zeitgebers,
literally 'time giver’ and they are how blind people maintain their circadian rhythms. There are two important chemicals involved
in sleep, melatonin and adenosine. Melatonin, released by the pineal gland, communicates
with our Suprachiasmatic Nucleus, telling it when its time for sleepiness to kick in. It is released in large amounts around our
typical bedtime, or annoyingly when you really want to watch just one more episode of that
Netflix series. Its release slows down whilst we sleep, eventually
halting production altogether when it is time for us to wake up. Think of Adenosine, however, like sleep pressure. It is released in increasing quantities throughout
the day and it swells up more in volume in our bloodstream the longer we are awake. It slows down our neurons which causes us
to feel drowsy. After this sleep pressure builds up to extreme
levels, we can no longer fight off sleep. You know that feeling when you’re sat at
your desk in the early afternoon and your head suddenly drops into a micro-slumber and
then your neck snaps it back up, because you would hate to be fired from yet another job
for sleeping at your desk. This is because the levels of Adenosine in
your body have caused your neurons to slow down to such a level that you can no longer
physically stay awake. A power nap is in order. This afternoon drowsiness happens to us all
since Adenosine release spikes during the afternoon and then again just before bedtime. So perhaps siestas are just meant to be after
all. Although research has shown that this afternoon
drowsiness only occurs in people who regularly fail to get sufficient sleep at night time,
so if you have experienced this, you need more sleep. Adenosine and your circadian rhythm are completely
independent but related systems. If you have ever pulled an all-nighter, you
will have experienced Adenosine in action and how it jostles for control with your circadian
rhythm. During the first day Adenosine or ‘sleep
pressure’ builds up in your system as normal and by that evening your circadian rhythm
decides it's time for sleep and you will feel tired. But if you can make it through this period
of extreme drowsiness and low energy levels until the morning then you will experience
a second wind. But why? Adenosine will never stop being released and
broken down - until you actually sleep. By morning the Adenosine levels in your body
will have reached extremely high levels but, nonetheless, you have a new rush of energy
during this time because your circadian rhythm doesn’t care that you haven’t actually
slept. It keeps marching on relentlessly, up and
down, every 24 hours, along with the cycle of the sun. Your Suprachiasmatic Nucleus is an accurate
but somewhat blind timepiece. So when morning comes your circadian rhythm
does its usual wake up routine and infuses your body with a rush of energy that will
last throughout the morning. This overrides the neural slowdown caused
by all that built up Adenosine. However, as the afternoon draws in on your
second day without sleep your circadian rhythm starts to wind down your body as bedtime draws
closer yet again. But this time, the Adenosine levels in your
body have built up to unholy levels and are ready to burst, so when these two independent
systems once again sync up you will experience an almighty energy crash and sleep is almost
inevitable. Research on DNA samples of 90,000 people collected
by 23andMe revealed that our bias towards being a Night Owl or a Morning Lark is roughly
50% due to of our DNA and it can never be altered, although it does usually shift slightly
more towards a morning bias as we grow older. It’s believed the reason the population
is split in their DNA preferences for earlier or later bedtimes is that in our hunter-gatherer
days having this divide played a crucial and beneficial role. It’s hardly surprising that in our prehistoric
days, when we lived in tribes and we had rival tribes and deadly predators stalking the forests
and plains of an evening, then having some members of the tribe awake at all times was
quite handy. As long as Bob and Steve were awake from 12
am until 5 am when Dave usually woke up, then they could keep an eye out for Dave. And then, Dave would continue the watch after
Bob and Steve fall asleep at 5 am. Evolution determined that hardwiring varying
peaks and troughs of awakeness and sleepiness for a portion of the population then it would
ensure that there would always be at least one person awake in each tribe to keep watch
because these people would feel naturally inclined to still be awake whilst others weren't
and more importantly, they would still be alert. We can shift our circadian rhythm somewhat,
by up to an hour each night, if we change our sleep pattern. But we will always have a natural circadian
‘template’, a default time of the day when we are biologically predetermined to
fall asleep based on our immutable DNA. Scientists have now recently been able to
sequence and observe the unique DNA in each of us that causes these variations in our
chronotypes. So being a night owl is in your DNA, and whether
or not you are lazy, the fact that you may struggle to wake up is not your fault but
is in fact hardwired in your biology. The brain of a night owls functions best in
the evening. When they wake up their prefrontal cortex,
the front part of the brain that is responsible for logic and decision making is still ‘offline’. MRI brain scans of night owls have revealed
that this part of the brain, in particular, has a warm-up phase, where it will slowly
ramp up into life over the course of the morning and reach peak efficiency in the late afternoon
or early evening. Morning larks are the opposite, their prefrontal
cortex is at its peak at dawn and it loses effectiveness as the evening draws in. This begs an important question. If 30% of the population are unable to use
their brains in the morning, are employers making a mistake in forcing such people to
come into work at 9 am? At a time when these people are unable to
work efficiently and may make more mistakes in the workplace. Furthermore, asking these people to wake up
and come to work so early can be detrimental to their health and cause them to die sooner. Some people may belligerently proclaim ‘I’ll
sleep when I’m dead’ but those people will be dead very soon because tens of reputable
studies on millions of people have been conducted on the relationship between sleep and health. Overwhelmingly these studies have found that
people who don’t get the required eight hours of sleep per night die sooner. Adults older than 45 who sleep less than six
hours per night are 200% more likely to have a heart attack or stroke. And at any age, evidence suggests that if
you sleep for less than six hours per night for a period of 14 years then your risk of
heart disease increases by a whopping 500%! Generally, a lack of sleep has been strongly
linked to an increased risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and dementia. So then, it seems that more flexible work
schedules are needed worldwide that are better tailored to the sleeping habits of individuals. Employers will be rewarded with employees
who work harder, smarter, more efficiently and importantly don’t die so damn quickly. If you are a night owl and you suspect that
your inability to wake up and function early in the morning is holding you back in life
then I encourage you to think again. Research conducted at Southampton University
analysed the sleeping habits, ie. chronotype, health and wealth of over 1,000 subjects in
England. Contrary to what every supposed soothsaying
business guru has told you, night owls were found to be, on average, wealthier than morning
larks - those who went to bed later had a larger mean income and were more likely to
own a car. And a later study also found that night owls
were slightly more intelligent than morning larks. Interestingly these results were still true
even when the participants took intelligence tests again in the morning instead of the
afternoon - night owls still performed better, during a time of the day when their neural
functionality is supposed to be suboptimal. It’s not all bad for morning chronotypes,
however, In 2012 psychologists at the University of Toronto studied over 700 people and found
that morning larks are on average happier and have a better general mood throughout
the day. Morning larks are also more agreeable, more
cooperative and more conscientious. I’ve recently launched my first book which
I’m crowdfunding ‘Stick a Flag in it: 1,000 years of bizarre history from britain
and beyond’ and I’m so pleased to announce that the crowdfunding campaign has reached
100% so it’s definitely going to be published. But there are still stretch goals to reach. So if you want a first-edition signed copy
then head on over to Unbound, the link is in the description, watch the launch video
if you haven’t already and pledge today. Thank you.
