Have you ever wondered when is the best time to go to bed? Or, what time you should wake up in the morning?
As it turns out, there is no universally agreed-upon best time to get up in the morning or to hit the sack at night.
However, there is an ideal time for you to do just about everything and it will vary from person to person.
Perhaps surprisingly, this isn’t something you need to choose or guess at because it’s already going on inside of you just running in the background.
Each of us has our own inner clock embedded in our brain keeping perfect time. This precisely tuned timekeeper is called your circadian pacemaker or biological clock.
Specifically, it’s a group of nerve cells that resides in your hypothalamus right above the pituitary gland called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). The SCN is your master clock that controls all the other clocks throughout your body.
Nearly every aspect of human physiology including core temperature, blood pressure, cognition, hormone production, alertness, energy, digestion, hunger, metabolism, cell regulation, immune function, creativity, memorization, sociability, athleticism, and sleep all fluctuate and are governed by these inner-clocks.
Here’s how it works:
In the morning sunlight enters your eyes, travels along the optic nerve, and activates the SCN to begin each day’s circadian rhythm.
Out of necessity, for fifty thousand years our ancestors lived their lives around their inner clocks. They woke up with the sun to hunt and gather – spending most of their time outdoors while coming home to sleep in complete darkness.
This ensured that they produced the necessary daytime hormones during the day and the proper night-time hormones in the evening, which ultimately led to balanced circadian rhythms and ideal sleeping patterns.
That began to change on December 31, 1879, when Thomas Edison introduced the first incandescent lightbulb. Within a decade, waking at dawn and sleeping in total darkness became optional.
Interestingly, Thomas Edison’s thoughts on the importance of sleep were well documented. In 1889 he was quoted as saying, “I hardly sleep more than four hours per day, and could keep this up for a year.” And in 1914 on the 35th anniversary of the lightbulb, he used the occasion to mark sleep as a “bad habit.” He went on to suggest that all Americans sleep fewer hours per day and predicted a future of sleeplessness.
And to drive it home he said, “There is really no reason why men should go to bed at all, and the man of the future will spend far less time in bed.”
Wow! Did Edison ever nail that one or what?
Eventually, this was followed by televisions, computers, iPhones, and iPads – all of which have continually exposed us to more and more artificial light. I think we’d agree that all of these have been wonderful inventions. Not only do they offer convenience and provide us with enjoyment but they have enabled us to increase our productivity as well.
Think about it, back in the day, there was probably a limit as to what you could do by lantern or candlelight. While this might seem boring to us, you can begin to appreciate why we sleep less now…there’s simply more time and opportunity available to do stuff.
Today it’s common to have 24-hour work schedules and you can stream your favorite Netflix program any hour of the day. Again, while it’s great to have these options, the question has to be asked, is it good for us?
In essence, all of this artificial light has tricked our master clocks (SCN) into thinking it’s daytime all the time and prevents it from doing its job appropriately.
Getting an adequate amount of sunlight exposure in the morning is essential because it is what is responsible for regulating the SCN. If this doesn’t occur, your circadian rhythm and sleep cycle will likely suffer.
So, while being exposed to light during the morning and afternoon is good, it starts to become bad when you’re exposed to too much light during the evening hours.
Light is a signal to your brain to wake up – which is precisely why you want and need it first thing in the morning. So what signal do you think is being sent when you’re sitting in a room full of bright overhead lighting with your big screen TV beaming, and your phone right up in front of your face?
You’ve probably heard about melatonin. It’s the hormone that gets released enabling you to have restful sleep. The catch – we produce most of it in the evening hours when it’s supposed to be getting darker.
See the problem taking shape?
I’m getting a little ahead of myself and will focus exclusively on this next time because of its importance in getting quality sleep. My main purpose today is to help you become aware of and identify your sleep chronotype.
A chronotype is your body’s natural disposition to be awake or asleep at certain times of the day and is closely related to your circadian rhythm. You’ve probably heard the expressions “she’s a night owl”, or “he’s an early bird” – that’s what I’m talking about here.
I first learned about this concept from Dr. Micheal Breus who identifies four different chronotypes: those being the Lion, Wolf, Bear, and Dolphin.
Lions (15-20% of the population) tend to be morning people, whereas, Wolves (15-20%) are those who thrive late into the evening hours. Dolphins (10%) tend to be the light sleepers, and Bears (50%) are the go-with-the-flow types, whose cycles most closely match the rise and fall of the sun.
The significance here is that all four types run on a different bio-time (biological clock or schedule). And, as I alluded to at the start, bring with them an ideal time to do just about anything from waking up in the morning, to making a big decision, and even when to have dinner – all according to the chronotype in which you fall.
I have found that chronobiology isn’t something most are familiar with, and that’s why I thought it was worthy to talk about today. Here, we have this entire body of science dating back to the 18th century and it’s been largely ignored.
This is starting to change as evidenced by the recent moving back of school start times for children, but there is likely much more we can become aware of and implement for a more productive society in general.
While I’m not suggesting chronobiology is a cure-all for all your woes, if you’re someone who constantly feels like you’re swimming upstream to be on the same schedule as everyone else – there might be a legitimate scientific reason for it, and this might be something for you to further explore.
Rather than going into any more detail, if this sounds pertinent or just interesting to you, I’d highly recommend checking out Dr. Breus’s book – The Power of When. His book covers all the details and it also served as the source for just about everything I went over today.
Don’t care about the details and just want to know your chronotype? You can also head over to Dr. Breus’s website and take the quiz there and find out if you’re a lion, wolf, dolphin, or a bear. Or, shoot me a note and I’ll email you the quiz.
Anyway, I hope you found this interesting and helpful. In part 3, I’ll begin going over strategies to help you get more high-quality sleep and have lasting energy throughout the day.