Have you got the night owl gene?
Early to bed, early to rise sounds easy enough. How many times do we hear that if we just try long enough to change a sleep pattern, eventually the body will get tired enough to make it work?
For some, that’s true. But others have the wrong gene.
Society is built on morning people. The conventional wisdom is that early risers are high achievers, and those who can’t sleep before 1 a.m. nor wake up before 10 are just plain lazy.
Doing something wrong. Hyped up on caffeine and screen time.
Turns out that’s not entirely true, at least not for some with DSPS or DSPD — delayed sleep phase syndrome/disorder, fancy names for chronically not being able to fit the societal sleep norm. Night owls can finally feel vindicated.
In fact, the ancient eastern health philosophy of Ayurveda wouldn’t call that a syndrome, but merely a normal human characteristic. Ayurveda connects different natural sleep rhythms with different body types. Western science is just now catching up.
Apparently, true night owls operate on a different (e.g., 2 a.m. to 10 a.m.) internal sleep clock — one which can’t be altered, as immutable as skin color or blood type. I’m talking about folks who can’t sleep earlier, even when doing everything right — no late-night screen time, a healthy lifestyle, stress reducers, etc. They toss and turn for hours, night after night, year after year, falling asleep in the wee hours only, no matter when they wake up for work or school.
As a result they are chronically sleep-deprived, brain-foggy, and more prone to depression, disease and reduced life spans, no matter what they try.
New genetic research strongly suggests that’s because their circadian rhythm — the body’s 24-hour clock — is set differently, putting the body in sleep and wake mode at different times. They’re hardwired to a different “chronotype.”
In 2017 genetic researchers at Rockefeller University in New York announced the discovery of a gene mutation — a protein made by the CRY1 gene — that essentially keeps some people awake longer. They estimate that mutation is present in about one in 75 people.
The book “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker, director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California at Berkeley, describes how this works. When it’s sleep time, the circadian clock effects physical changes, such as a drop in body temperature as it prepares for sleep. Body temperature increases again when it is time to wake eight hours later.
The thing is, those changes begin naturally at different times for different people.
According to Dr. Walker, about 40 percent of us are morning people, 30 percent are night people, and the rest fall somewhere in the middle.
“Night owls are not owls by choice,” he writes. “They are bound to a delayed schedule by unavoidable DNA hard-wiring.”
When forced to rise too early, the logic and reasoning center of the brain’s prefrontal cortex remains “offline” and can take hours to fully function. Some suggest that different circadian rhythms had an evolutionary purpose, when early man had to maintain a 24-hour watch to protect the tribe from predators.
We may be coming full circle, thanks to technology. Now that the working world is increasingly internet-based and global, the 8-to-5 workday is fading. Night owls may be better able to find their scheduling niche and get a little more sleep.
For more information on the genetic study: https://bit.ly/2DydoXL
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Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Contact her at Sholeh@cdapress.com.