Teenagers’ sleep timing typically shifts about two hours later, while as we get older, we become progressively more lark-like. These innate sleep preferences also vary with age.
However, even night owls can become a little more lark-like if they reduce their exposure to light at night and seek out bright light from the moment they wake up, which pushes the master clock earlier.
Some people are larks and predisposed to wake up early, others are late types who naturally sleep in most of us lie somewhere in between. “It is not a choice and it is very difficult to change,” says Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Why We Sleep. That depends on your chronotype – your natural sleep-timing preference – which is hardwired in your genes. So, is it better to get up early or late ? US researchers showed that when people were sent on a camping trip and denied access to their electronic gadgets, their circadian rhythms shifted about two hours earlier, which meant they felt sleepier earlier and got more sleep. It also means that we often wake up when our bodies think it is still night-time, which increases feelings of “sleep inertia” – the grogginess you experience immediately upon waking. Our natural sleep rhythm has shifted later, yet most of us must wake up at a prescribed time to go to work or school, meaning our sleep is cut short. However, the ubiquity of artificial light after dusk means that relying on when we feel sleepy to dictate our bedtimes isn’t very helpful. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need alarm clocks we would simply go to bed when we felt tired and sleep until we were ready to wake up. Isn’t it better to wake up according to your body’s natural rhythms? Nick Littlehales, an elite sports sleep coach and the author of the book Sleep, says you should also switch it to silent and rest it on a soft surface to dampen any vibrations from incoming alerts. If you do sleep with your phone, set it to night mode to filter out blue light and adjust the brightness setting to dim. Light also has a direct alerting effect on the brain, which makes it harder to fall asleep. Exposure to bright or blue-enriched light at night shifts its timing later, which means we feel tired later and our bodies are still in sleep mode when it is time to get up in the morning. The main reason is the light from screens altering the timing of the brain’s master clock, a cluster of cells that dictates the timing of all the other biological clocks in the body. Several studies have indicated that greater phone use, particularly in the run-up to bedtime, results in worse quality sleep. There is nothing wrong with using your phone alarm – unless its other functions are interfering with your sleep.
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