Everyday Jet Lag

Some people are larks. Others are owls. You cannot change which one you are.

If you are a night-owl like me, you can spend a lifetime forcing yourself to get up earlier than your body wants to. You will do that through your school years, and, for most of us, through your working life. Even in retirement, you might find a reason to get up early. In my case, two wonderful grandkids show up at our kitchen door before 7 a.m. every weekday. It’s worth getting up, but it’s never easy.

Theoretically, we can drop the kids at school and be back in bed by 9 a.m. But by then it has taken so much effort to be awake and talking that I can’t just pop back into bed. Lately, when I do go back for a nap, I’ll plan on sleeping for an hour but find myself waking up three hours later. On weekends I’ve been sleeping until 11:30 unless I set an alarm. I have blamed this in part on my own biological rhythms and in part on the fact that daylight hours are becoming shorter in our part of the world. I tried going to bed earlier than usual, but I lay awake longer than if I’d stayed up..

The New York Times Magazine of October 20, 2013, reports what I’ve known for years: Scientific research shows that each individual has a unique daily biological clock, or circadian rhythm, and it’s genetic. (I’ve known this because 30-some years ago I worked with a professor at the University of Minnesota whose job included promoting awareness of chronobiology research findings.).   

In the Times story, Till Roenneberg, a professor of chronobiology at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and a leading expert in sleep studies, groups people into three “chronotypes,” designated as early, intermediate, and late. He and other researchers have found that late people—night owls, as my mother called me—suffer the most from having their schedules interrupted. And their schedules are interrupted often, because the world tends to favor early start times.

“If you are forced to wake up earlier than your body naturally would, you suffer from what Roenneberg calls ‘social jet lag,’” says the magazine. Various studies around the world have linked this “jet lag” to increased levels of weight gain, depression, and changes in white matter that may make the brains of night-owl types less efficient.

I pause a moment to let this sink in, for those of us whose brains have become less efficient.

The Times story reports that being a person of the night is not just a bad habit, as some might believe. It says in a study reported in the May issue of the journal Chronobiology, “researchers found that late chronotypes tended to have activity in genes that contribute to later sleep onset, offering further evidence that the urge to stay up late or to rise early is not a lifestyle choice but resides in our DNA.”

Roenneberg has a suggestion and an observation.

His advice to late chronotypes: Get outside more, because soaking up sunlight helps move most people, regardless of chronotype, toward an earlier sleep time.

In addition, he has found that Daylight Saving Time disrupts sleep for everyone, but especially for us late people. “Everybody sleeps better when it ends.”

I hope he is right. I am celebrating the turning back of the clocks (I wish they would just stay this way year-round).  I joined Peter to sit in the sunny (if chilly) garden for a bit this afternoon. The story didn’t mention it, but I suspect exercise helps, too, so I’ll be practicing my tap dance routines more often.  

I’m an owl in a world mostly scheduled for larks. You’d think by now I’d be used to it, but you’d be wrong!    


I found the lark-and-owl illustration on a blog by Mitch Hinz, where he wrote about his own efforts to sleep better.