Learn how to synch your circadian rhythm and brain's power hours
Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comFrom sex to shopping — 8 times you're naturally brilliant
Seeded on Mon Dec 6, 2010 10:32 AM EST (msnbc.com)
- msnbc.com sites & shows:
- TODAY
- Rock Center
- Nightly News
- Meet the Press
- Dateline
- Morning Joe
- Hardball
- Ed
- Maddow
- Last Word
- msnbc tv
Leave a Comment:
Sorry to burst someone's bubble but this is hogwash. Circadian rhythms are not one-size-fits-all but rather idiosyncratic. Moreover, there really are 'day' people and 'night' people.
I find the thought of sex first thing in the morning abhorrent. My creativity begins, at times, before I am fully awake.
My daughter is a night person. Creative at 9 in the morning? More like comatose.
The part of the article that I find accurate is that we do well to work with our own mind/body cycles and rhythms not only by the 24 hour period but also by day of week, month, season etc.
You are right on. I am definitely a night person and morning is very difficult for me. It takes me hours to wake up and function. I am a different person at night, alert, and ready to go.
Obviously this is not one-size-fits-all as you've pointed out, and also since this article seems to draw from several studies, some which may exclude certain age groups, lifestyles, demographics etc etc.. I think the wisdom in it is that these bodily cycles do exist and that there's an opportunity to take advantage of it. Your 2am may be someone else's 11am (and believe me i use to be that too), but i think the same principles apply, and each person has optimal times during their wake cycle to manage their activities.
i agree with jkatze. i guess this article is just trying to establish some guidlines to this concept of mind/body control. if we are aware of it's existance, then we can harness its power and put it to good use.
I agree. Overly simplistic. My brain switches on around 10pm. My creative burst is around 1am, and easy sleep comes around 5am. Sex at 7am? No thank you!!
The authors should google "delayed sleep phase" sometime.
Completely agree with earlier posters -- circadian rhythms are highly individualistic. I'm a highly creative night person, so the thought of my being creative at 9 in the morning is laughable. 9 PM is much more like it for me.
But there is a lot to be said for being very aware of one's own circadian rhythms and, if at all possible, planning tasks to take advantage of them.
I disagree. A healthy active, outdoor person would most likely fit this schedule.
Those of you that peak at 10PM probably watch too much TV and do not have a life outside the city!
Judgemental....I work nights
Excuse me Ronnie McD's, I only watch about 4 hours of TV a week, and my best time to be creative is from 10 pm to 1 am. I also exercise for at least 2 hours a day from Monday thru Thrusday. So explain that, since you think that everyone has to be same?
But then again, I should not be surprise that there are a lot of people that believe that they are the only righteous ones and that everyone else is doing something wrong.
Hmmmmm. Perfectly innocuous comment gets dropped.
Well, I'll just repeat it.
ronnie, given your line of thought, you'll not want to ever go to hospital. Come nighttime, you'll be dependent upon unhealthy people who watch too much tv and haven't much of a life.
Fortunately, you are not only judgmental, you are completely wrong. I'm sure my daughter's patients are grateful that she is asleep at 9 am and hitting her stride when their needs are the greatest.
Hey McD - I watch exactly 43 minutes of television per day (one episode of a 1-hour tv show sans commercials) while eating dinner.
My wacky clock started when I was about 8 years old and living out in the sticks.
The physiological patterns associated with delayed sleep phase have been well documented. It's a perfectly legitimate shift in the body's natural circadian rhythms.
This sequence is pretty accurate for me, except instead of my day going from 7am to 10pm it's more like 9 or 10am to 2 or 3am. Going to bed before midnight is asking the impossible, no matter how early I have to get up or how little sleep I'm running on. My brain just doesn't shut off until the wee hours of the morning.
Wow... This is so true.... Now if i could get my girlfriend to agree...lol....
This is about exactly backward for me. I always worked midnights, I liked it, I asked for it as a matter of fact. I always hated being up in the daytime, mid-day at least. I don't start getting motivated until after 5 or so in the afternoon. I retired from the police department 6 years ago now and I still stay up until 4 in the morning and get up at 11 or so. If I try sleeping any other times I just feel like I never slept the whole time after I get up. My father never understood me as he was always the "up at 5 am" kind of guy and, even as a kid, I never was. I always told him that someone had to do the jobs at night so it might as well be me. If I had a factory job I would still take the midnight shift. Less bosses, less of a hurry, what can I say. Maybe I'm just lazy <G>.
I am more of the "up at 5 am" type of person - so MY most "productive" part of the day is from 7 am til about 11 am. Then I want lunch and a nap (don't always get it but oh well). By 9 or so, I'm beat, and almost always sound asleep by 10 pm.
Completely generalized and utter b*&)sJKt. Why does this kind of &*@( get published over actual fact. God #$%^ moron should be fired.
 Sssssshhhhhh anything I can show the wife that tells her frisky early in the morning, looks offical and might get her buy in is ok in my book, even if the science (if any) is BS.
nonsense!
This schedule is more or less dead on for me.
Of course there are people who don't fit this pattern, but that doesn't mean there's not some truth to it. I remember back in the late 70s having a programmable calculator that would run an algorithm to calculate biorhythms, and I found it to be pretty accurate, but my waveform would look completely different from my friends' curves. Like many studies, this one just overgeneralizes the results.
For all of you who think this is crap, I wonder...if you adjust the times to your normal wake-up time, is this at all accurate?
Remove the times, then adjust to your current sleep/work schedule. Does this still fit?
This schedule isn't for you... it is for the majority of people, and it is based on observations of a large number of individuals.
You might be a little different, but you still fit the majority of these posted times/activities... even if you just have to offset it by 5/6 hours.
Are the times in the article Eastern, Central, MOUNTain, or Pacific?? I need to set an alarm clock.
Clearly written by a morning person. If I don't get sleepy until after 1:00AM, do I adjust all other times accordingly?
I've ever heard that having sex in the morning rises level of energy. Positive emotions help you in your work during all day long.
http://www.edenfantasys.com/
Maybe the rythm starts with having sex, so if you have sex late the whole rythm is delayed. I would like to experiment with this as much as possible, but my wife thinks we can get the same data by never having sex and seeing if I remain depressed...
SamMcgee - so sorry to hear you're being deprived... I'm one of those women that are the OPPOSITE of that - my boyfriend never complains and it turns out morning sex (on the weekends, at least) is really great for both of us. On the other hand, not being a morning person who has to be at work by 7:30am and work until 4pm does have its drawbacks!
I don't care if i work late into the evening doing over time for the Christmas parade (i work for the city) i always get that morning wood .