A Failed Experiment

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This last “sleep cycle”—mine, that is—I tried to experiment a little.

What if I remained awake the night through—society’s norm, that is—and expose myself to morning sunlight so my body knows it is actually morning and time to be awake?

At about 0700H, I went out to the back porch and sat, waiting for the morning sun to hit me full in the face. I was trying to “re-set” my body clock, so to speak, by stimulating it with sunlight. I was hoping I could stay up for the whole day, never mind that I’ll eventually “lose” it because I’d be very sleepy, just so I could go to sleep earlier than 0400H on the next “sleep cycle.”

Fat lot of good it did me.

By 0800H, after an hour of basking in the morning sun and feeling my skin tighten and prickle from the novel experience, my body was literally begging for sleep and I was dozing off every now and then. (I was also thinking that I could probably count in the low 100s the number of sunrises I have seen in my entire lifetime, including my schooldays.)

I tried to read the Bible, hoping I could insert in a few minutes of prayer time—in the morning, for once!—but all I could remember now is something about the parable of the sower and if I ever said something sane to God while I was praying, I don’t remember it anymore. Still, I labored to finish Matthew 13 (I checked right now) and by the time I got to the last paragraph, my eyes were out of focus.

Nothing to do about it but give my body what it was crying for—sleep.

So I did. I went to bed, scrapping the experiment all together, and I woke up an hour late (1300H) from my usual waking time every day (1200H or thereabouts). I’m a bit sleepy now, a tad slow as I write this post, but overall, my mind and body are more or less alert, aware and awake. (I’d probably try a nap later on in the late afternoon if I get sleepy again.)

As soon as I woke up, I read stories about people in the same boat and how they’re coping or managing DSPS:

• There’s Brian Strong, publisher of the Breaking Free blog, who started noticing signs and symptoms of DSPS since high school. He’s now a successful entrepreneur, eschewing the 9-to-5 timetable and conforming more to the clock that nature has set for us DSPS people. If you read on the comment thread of his article on how he learned to live with DSPS, you’ll find that 0.17% is a significant population when we do start getting our voices heard.
• There’s also Dr. Shawn Smith, a psychologist who maintains the IronShrink blog over at Psychology Today, who himself is a night owl.

There’s one good thing about night owls like us, though. It seems that study has shown that night owls are a lot smarter than the larks (morning people). In effect, the research is saying that the early-to-bed instincts is over-ridden by general intelligence, which alone handles new stuff that goes into the evolutionary timeline.

“People with higher IQs are more likely to have values and preferences that just didn’t make sense for our ancestors to embrace. One of those is staying up late…Because the nocturnal lifestyle allowed by electricity didn’t exist 10,000 years ago, we must now rely on general intelligence to override our early-to-bed instincts. So those with more of it stay up later.”

It’s a fairly new study, but I like the implications.

For those of us DSPS people who are still on denial, here’s an advice from the Sleep Doctor, who happens to be a Clinical Psychologist and a Diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine:

“…don’t mess with Mother Nature. Go to bed when you are tired, and get up when you are well-rested. Period.”