Steve Pavlina began adulthood as an extreme night owl: up until dawn and asleep past noon. By his early 30s, he was more of an 8 a.m. guy. But he noticed he got more done on days he got up earlier.
So he set out to become a real morning lark, happily up at 5 a.m.
He failed. "I struggled with it for years," says the personal development speaker and blogger from Las Vegas. But then he succeeded, using a technique many sleep doctors recommend: He got up at 5 a.m. every day, including Saturdays and Sundays, no matter how he felt about it — no snooze alarms allowed.
"Now it's easy for me," says Pavlina, 40.
Dark mornings are one likely contributor to seasonal affective disorder (SAD), or winter depression, Lewy says. But you don't have to be clinically depressed to pull the covers over your head: A combination of genetics, age and lifestyle makes some people love the nightlife and dread mornings. When we're young adults, most of us are owlish; as we age, most of us go to the lark side, like it or not. Plenty of older folks complain about waking at 4 a.m., sleep doctors say.
But at midlife, larks and owls are more evenly distributed — and it's the owls who suffer in a world where most jobs and other responsibilities start early, says Jeanne Duffy, a researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Owls "are very often sleep-deprived," she says. Some respond by arranging their lives to match their clocks — taking night jobs or flexible work-from-home gigs.
Many people can't do that. But most can "become more productive and alert in the morning," says Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist in Atlanta and author of Master Your Sleep.
Expect it to be a project, akin to losing weight, Duffy says: "It takes discipline and consistency.
Here's what would-be morning people can try:
•Pick your ideal wake-up time— and if your schedule allows, work toward it, getting up 15 minutes earlier each day, Lewy suggests. Once you reach your time, stick to it, even on weekends. Otherwise, your body clock will drift later, and you'll feel it Monday mornings.
•Get up the first time the alarm rings. "Swing your legs over the side of the bed and walk toward the coffeepot," says James Wyatt, a sleep researcher at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
•Get a big dose of morning light. Light is "the most powerful signal" that the day is underway, Duffy says. Go outside within an hour of rising. Or, if it is still dark, consider getting a light box, a device used successfully by many people with SAD. Get guidelines on using one from the Center for Environmental Therapeutics (cet.org) and the Society for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms (sltbr.org).
•Get morning exercise. "Have a spurt of energy to start off your day," Marks says. Walk or run in the morning sun and get a double boost.
•Try melatonin. Lewy recommends 0.5 milligrams eight hours after waking and, if needed, a larger dose at bedtime. (Note: The hormone, which helps regulate the sleep-wake cycle, appears safe in many studies but is sold as a nutritional supplement, so it is untested for safety or effectiveness by the Food and Drug Administration.)
•Limit nighttime light. "Mother Nature really didn't intend for us to have all this artificial light," says Michael Smolensky, a researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. So dim the lamps and step away from the screens to tell your body it's almost time to sleep.
•Get enough sleep. "For most people, that's going to be seven to nine hours," Wyatt says — which means turning in well before midnight. That gets easier for most folks, the experts promise, if you follow the other tips.
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