Exposure to bright light in the morning is considered one of the best ways to become more of a morning person and shift your chronotype earlier. If you cannot go outside, sit by a window or buy a light therapy lamp that is designed to imitate natural light.
It's OK to not be a morning person, but gradually moving your sleep-wake times, being strategic with light exposure, and improving your sleep hygiene can help.
The secret to becoming a morning person is exposure to bright light, Martin stresses. That's because light suppresses melatonin, a hormone that plays an important role in circadian rhythm. “The sun is the driver of our internal clock,” she says.
Yet getting up early to meet life's responsibilities is the bleary-eyed reality of most late-to-bed types — leading many exhausted night owls to wonder: “Can I reprogram my biological clock to be an early riser?” The answer for most night owls is “Yes, you can,” according to sleep experts.
Put simply, no. You can't change your chronotype yourself, but your chronotype can shift on its own with age. In fact, it's perfectly normal for that to happen. Most kids have an early chronotype, driving them to wake up and go to sleep early.
Dolphin. The rarest chronotype is a dolphin with only around 10% of the population falling into this category. Dolphins have trouble following any sleep schedule – that's because they are restless light sleepers who wake often during the night.
Types of sleepers: lion, wolf, bear and dolphin. The American sleep scientist, Michael Breus, revised the owls and larks model and identified a total of four types of sleepers. Whoever knows what type of sleeper they are can optimise their daily routine accordingly, thus improving their performance.
Morning people really are happier, study finds. A new study finds that night owls have an increased risk for mental illness and are less happy than morning larks. Morning larks wake in the early hours with smiles on their faces and a can-do attitude that befuddles most night owls.
Night owls make up approximately 15% of the population and are most productive late into the evenings. Many are creative and more open to taking risks. While not always true, they may be more likely to: Be sleep-deprived.
Like most facets of personality, extremes are rare: Just 10 to 15 percent of the population is only a morning or evening person.
"Morning people are those who rise from sleep fairly easily and are most productive and/or active in the mornings," says Dr. Ayish "If you're a morning person, your brain is most alert in the morning, and you're generally very good at harnessing this energy and focus to get tasks, work and chores done."
The research, published in Nature Communications, found that being a morning person is causally associated with better mental health, but does not affect the risk of obesity or the risk of Type 2 diabetes as some previous research had suggested.
“Sometimes people with ADHD are 'slow risers' (not morning people) and need to build energy toward tasks in the morning and night,” Tomlin says. He adds that sleeping in too late or not getting enough sleep can also become problematic by: causing the person with ADHD to become nocturnal.
Usually, people who are night owls stay awake past midnight, and extreme night owls may stay awake until just before or even after dawn. Some night owls have a preference or habit for staying up late, or stay up to work the night shift.
Early risers are more successful in the business world. Here's why. „The early bird catches the worm.” This motto has been around in American top management as a success formula for years.
There is some evidence that early risers are healthier and live longer. Some studies have found that night owls exhibit higher rates of depression, high blood pressure, poor diets and substance abuse. There's also reason to believe that they do, in fact, procrastinate more.
Studies have shown that people with higher IQs are likely to deviate from familiar evolutionary traits, such as circadian rhythms. Night owls who opt to wake up in the later hours of the day and stay awake until the wee small hours of the morning may be exhibiting a form of evolution.
A morning person who tended to go to bed at 10 and wake up at 6, for example, would have a sleep midpoint of 2 a.m. They found that in people with the genetic variants for being an early bird, for every hour earlier the sleep midpoint, there was a 23 percent lower risk of major depression.
Wolf chronotypes are the opposite of the lion, as they're considered the “night owl.” If you're a wolf chronotype, you stay up late into the night and wake up in the late morning or early afternoon.
Specifically, sleeping on the side or back is considered more beneficial than sleeping on the stomach. In either of these sleep positions, it's easier to keep your spine supported and balanced, which relieves pressure on the spinal tissues and enables your muscles to relax and recover.
The most common type of sleeper is the side sleeper, in part because there are so many variations for sleeping on your side (like the fetal position). Side sleeping has many upsides, including the alleviation of insomnia or chronic sleep deprivation and the reduced chance of sleep apnea.
ADHD has been associated with the evening chronotype, although studies of children are scarce and varied, and no specific explanation has been found for this correlation.
Men are typically later chronotypes than women before 40, but earlier types after 40. The greatest differences are observed between 15 and 25 for both sexes, equaling more than 50% of the total chronotype difference across all age groups.
6) Several studies have demonstrated that the evening chronotype is associated with sleep disturbance.