I have never been able to get a restful nights sleep in my life. Not to say that I don’t sleep all night–in fact the longer I can sleep the better–but regardless I will wake up feeling tired and be so throughout the day.
If, however, I sleep during the day I only need to sleep for 5 hours or so and wake up fully rested and ready for another day.
I can stay awake through to dawn without feeling tired any night–in fact my feeling of tiredness generally goes away in the evening. Similarly I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat so long as the sun is up.
This is not a goth thing–goth didn’t exist when I was 3 feet tall.
Specifically, when left to myself the way my schedule ends up is that I will quickly get on a night (awake) schedule, but with a 25 hour day. It will start with me falling to sleep about 6am (waking up around noon and feeling rested), with this getting about an hour later every day until I would go to sleep about noon–then I end up staying awake through the day and night to again fall asleep starting at 6am.
I have never particularly researched this and don’t generally mind (traditionally, being awake at night has given me lots of time to think.) But I was just reminded in another thread of this fact of my existence–so thought I would ask.
Is this a something that people have? I’ve never heard of it.
I remember from my psych class that something like 10% of people are naturally nocturnal. I am definitely this way; I actually cheered when my husband got put on swing shift. I usually hit the weights at 3 am. I also seem to be on a 25-26 hour day. I’ve been this way since I was a kid.
My husband works either midnight till eight or 4 till midnight. I work from 4 p.m. until 11. Suits me fine. I’m not entirely nocturnal, but my normal bedtime is between 1 and 4. I resent getting up early. My functional time is between noon and 1 am. He’ll naturally go to bed at 3 am and get up at 1 pm or so.
Was somewhat hoping that someone might know of a study which showed this–for instance, a cite that 10% are nocturnalites. Not certain how to google for that…
“nocturnal sleep pattern study”…perhaps? Well will post back if I find something.
The closest I can get to a (good) cite is referred to on this NIMH site. It is footnote #14.
There is also this article (warning: I got a popup in Firefox from accessing this site, and wasn’t too happy to have “night owls” compared to Morlocks - feh!).
I’d get my psych book but I sold it so I could buy a new outfit for graduation last year. :smack:
Mostly I found stuff talking about people “suffering from circadian rhythm sleep disorders” (here)
The hell? I’m not suffering! Waking up before noon - that’s suffering!
In other news, I’m generally a night owl. I’m at my best when I stay up to 1am or 2am, and then get up at 7am or 8am. Holding to a rigorous schedule, as all the best experts recommend, doesn’t really work well for me. Needless to say, this caused no end of frustration when I was a child. I’d spend hours after my 8pm bedtime staring at the ceiling or sneaking a read with flashlight and concealed book, until I was caught and punished.
Those search terms brings up this article (amongst others).
Anecdotal: When in the seventh grade, I tested out of pre-algebra and they stuck me in algebra. In eighth, same thing. Ninth? Same deal. I failed all three times. The common denominator? They were all first period (around 7am-ish) classes. I dropped out of HS after ninth but went back to college when I was 17.
I picked all afternoon math classes and got straight A’s. Except in College Algebra, where I got a (very hard earned) C - but that class started at 9am.
Tried that with “night owl” and got some articles which led me to “Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome”–this appearing to be the technical term. A google search on that brings up lots of articles which seem to be spot on. Though they all seem to mostly indicate that pretty much, it is genetic and thus unlikely to be fixable.
Though it appears I am better off than some as I don’t fall asleep on on accident during the day. I am just tired and the brain is fuzzy–of course to some extent this is just because I’m so used to dealing with being tired (and can go without sleep for plural days without much difference.)
Another “Me too.” My natural cycle seems to be going to bed between dawn and midmorning and waking up sometime in the midafternoon. We don’t need to ‘fix’ our sleep patterns. We need to get stores and other businesses to adjust themselves to our schedule. And one fine night, we shall rise up and slay the perky morning people.
I’m another one. I work 9-5 now, but I still can’t sleep before 1:30 AM, except on rare occasions. So I just go without sleep. When I worked for myself, I naturally drifted into a mode where I slept until 2 or 3 in the afternoon, then I’d stay up all night and go to sleep at 7 or 8 in the morning. That’s when I’m really happy. It’s just impossible to do that now.
I’m glad to know there are others, I’m not usually social during the night hours but I easily can stay up till 8AM every day. Wake up at 2PM work at 4:30PM, out at midnight, computer till dawn! Yay for no life!
If left to nature, I will fall asleep about 4 a.m., and rise 8 hours later at noon. This schedule works wonderfully for me, but society doesn’t make it easy. After 8 a.m., people make noise, call me, knock on my door, and basically make it impossible to keep that schedule. Even my good friends who have known me for years *forget * that I sleep until noon, and will call me first thing in the morning. Ugh.
I’m on an 8 to 5 schedule now, and while my body doesn’t care for it much, my social life is easier. It’s very difficult to find normal people to hang with when you are up till 4 a.m. and sleep until noon.
