Have you noticed your, or family members, preferred sleep times shift over time? Early rising babies grow into late rising teens who then mature into early rising seniors. This shift happens to all of us, but deeper than that we are all born with an immutable genetically-gifted tendency towards being an early- or late-riser, one that sets our circadian rhythms – our chronotype. This adds another layer of complexity worth considering.
Chronotypes
Surely you already know if you already lean towards being an owl or a lark, but here’s a good test to hone in with more detail.
Also, Mathew Walker’s Podcast has two episodes with a third forthcoming all about chronotypes.
Very briefly, if you want to save the links for later, people fall somewhere on a spectrum from very early risers to very late risers. Naturally.
Are you starting to see why certain times of day are easier/more difficult to think and function? It isn’t our fault (provided we’ve given ourselves sufficient sleep opportunity at night), it is how we are wired. Some people are not built to work optimally at 7am while others are not their best at 10pm.
The Power of When
Another fantastic resource to look at if you want to go deeper with chronotypes is The Power of When by Michael Breus, PhD. I originally read this almost a year ago when looking for solutions for our own mis-matched chronotypes at home. We have a very late riser that has now hit his teen years, making him even more of a night owl (is that even possible?). I needed guidance on what is an appropriate schedule to enforce. Since he does not go to a school, we are free to create whatever schedule we want that will best suit his needs, but I also want to be sure it is appropriate and not simply a teenager choosing to sleep until 2pm everyday. (BTW, the answer is not 2pm, in case you are wondering.)
In this book Breus breaks the chronotypes down to four:
- Dolphin – intelligent, neurotic light sleepers with a low sleep drive
- Lion – morning-oriented driven optimists with a medium sleep drive
- Bear – people who prefer a solar-based schedule and have a high sleep drive
- Wolf – night-oriented creative extroverts with a medium sleep drive
He then breaks each type down and describes the best time of day to do basically everything, what a perfect day in the life of each type is, typical schedules, how to function with others of different types, etc.
We’re landing on something that works that isn’t as Breus describes, but this was incredibly helpful as a start. As a result, our son is growing and thriving versus dragging himself miserably through the mornings.
Chronotypes at School
This is a huge issue. Most kids are not early risers, especially as they get older and into the upper levels of school. Yet, as they grow we have earlier and earlier school start times. The times they should be deep into early-morning REM sleep is now spent awake in classrooms, bleary-eyed, absorbing basically nothing. You can read about this actual brain-bounce effect in Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep.
Some schools have experimentally adopted later start times with incredibly positive results. I’d love to see that happen worldwide – the effects would be astounding. Not only with education, but there would be improved student health. And this…
“Yet something even more profound has happened in this ongoing story of later school start times—something that researchers did not anticipate: the life expectancy of students increased. The leading cause of death among teenagers is road traffic accidents,VIII and in this regard, even the slightest dose of insufficient “sleep can have marked consequences, as we have discussed. When the Mahtomedi School District of Minnesota pushed their school start time from 7:30 to 8:00 a.m., there was a 60 percent reduction in traffic accidents in drivers sixteen to eighteen years of age. Teton County in Wyoming enacted an even more dramatic change in school start time, shifting from a 7:35 a.m. bell to a far more biologically reasonable one of 8:55 a.m. The result was astonishing—a 70 percent reduction in traffic accidents in sixteen- to eighteen-year-old drivers.
To place that in context, the advent of anti-lock brake technology (ABS)—which prevents the wheels of a car from seizing up under hard braking, allowing the driver to still maneuver the vehicle—reduced accident rates by around 20 to 25 percent. It was deemed a revolution. Here is a simple biological factor—sufficient sleep—that will drop accident rates by more than double that amount in our teens.”
– Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep
Are you stunned? Ready to help push for later school start times?
Dig In
There is MUCH more than I am sharing here. Please dig into both books cited above to learn more. As I mentioned a few days ago, we spend 1/3 of our lives sleeping. It behooves us to understand what is happening and make the most of it. As I’ll get into tomorrow, there are a lot of truly fascinating things going on in our bodies while we sleep – we need only provide ourselves the correct opportunity for sleep.
Until tomorrow, sweet dreams!
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