on tricycles and mornings

[baratron]

I've known for years - nay, decades - that I am Not A Morning Person. I only realised how serious the issue was when I attempted to go back to full-time work. I am so very Not A Morning Person that it is impossible for me to maintain a "normal" sleep-wake cycle. This is a statement which no one else has the right to argue with, by the way. Believe me, I've tried absolutely-effing-every piece of advice from sleep specialists, several modern pharmaceuticals, a bunch of herbal stuff and home remedies, and it still doesn't work. The fact is, my natural sleep-wake cycle is for me to wake up around midmorning, and fall asleep around 3am. If I stay on this cycle, I can maintain it indefinitely. If I attempt to get up at a "normal" time, I still don't fall asleep any earlier. So if I try to get into work for 8.30am, I can manage that for less than a week before I collapse in a terrible heap of physical and mental exhaustion. No drug with a Z in the title has ever made me sleep. (When I was prescribed Zolpidem, I once, in desperation, looked online for the maximum safe dose. I proceeded to take 4 tablets, and was still utterly wide awake wondering why the hell I couldn't sleep 5 hours later.) The healthiest thing for me is to say "sod 'normal', I'll have to work for myself at the hours I choose". Just like my fat activist friends who believe it is safer and healthier for themselves to maintain an active body at a higher weight rather than going through a constant cycle of dieting followed by weight gain, I believe it's safer and healthier for me to have a regular sleep-wake cycle rather than a "normal" one.

So I was ridiculously amused when rowan_leigh found this link: The A-Team and the B-Team (warning, post contains artistic nudity). I agree with almost everything the author says, except that his B-ness is nowhere near as extreme as mine. (Falling asleep at 1am & waking at 9? Luxury!). The thing that I've noticed though, and have never actually documented, is how much I'm Not A Morning Person. I'm sure it's entirely normal to be brain-fogged and bleary for a while in the morning. But my Not A Morning Person-ness extends to far more than my brain.

This morning (yes, it was before 12 noon): I woke up. 45 minutes after waking up, I cycled to my first student of the day. Slowly, in 3rd gear.

After the lesson, an hour later: I cycled along a road with more bumps in it slowly, in 4th gear. Then up the Hill That Used To Defeat Me (copyright epi_lj) in 1st gear, puffing a little.

Came home, sat in front of the computer for a couple of hours before going back out to the shops to buy all the things I'd forgotten existed, because I'd been too sleepy earlier in the day to remember that I needed to eat more than one meal. Cycled along the road at high speed, in 4th gear. Considered switching up to 5th, but didn't as my tyres felt like they could do with some attention. Came back up the Hill That Used To Defeat Me in 2nd gear, easily, despite noticing the existence of photochemical pollution due to the sunny afternoon & its effect on my lungs.

It seems that as well as mental "not being awake yet", there's a physical factor too. Though I tend to get out of bed feeling rested, my body has no stamina when it's the morning for me. It aches and gets tired far more quickly. By my mid-afternoon, this has eased, and I have more strength with which to turn the pedals. Also, by being more awake, I have the confidence to ride more quickly, knowing that I'm in full control of the tricycle, and that I need only a fingertip touch to stop or redirect the trike if some obstacle occurs. By the evening, I'm properly awake, and I can enjoy long periods of exercise - an hour or two hours. Or I can start creative work in earnest, knowing I'll have several hours of my brain working at its peak capacity before bed. My most awake hour is 10pm, and I try to schedule serious brain-work for then.

The realisation that it's a whole-body thing goes some way towards explaining why I'm so impatient & easily annoyed by those freaky mutants who leap out of bed with the most energy they'll ever have in the day.

Comments

[nitoda]

Yup. These are the kind of things they should teach people to look for in relationships *before* getting to the wanting to live together stage, to my mind. Certainly on holiday I would tend to the wanting to go places and do stuff early, though there are times, on ski holidays for example, when Marjorie and I reverse roles a little and she wants to be on the slopes for the first lift of the day whereas I would prefer a lie-in but it's not to huge extremes and we've lived with our differences for 35 years, so we must have found ways of coping. :-) I don't think either of us is particularly extreme ... and we've been fortunate enough most of our living together to have plenty of space and therefore be able to work around each other's preferences. But we've rarely *gone to* bed together (for the purposes of sleep anyway!) The other difference that interests me is that she can nod off during the evening, wake up and be perfectly equable whereas I am immediately bloody-minded and impossible if I fall asleep at a normal time, then have to be woken up (after only a brief sleep) and moved elsewhere. I'm not hugely good at getting up in the middle of the night either - one year when we were at the airport at 3am I managed to fall off a kerb at the carpark and twist my ankle before we even got to check-in. Purely because I was half-asleep still. Tired and needing sleep to me is a disabling state; it doesn't seem to be that way for her and she finds it impossible to understand why (or even that) it is for me.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the recognition that functional adults have different sleep-wake patterns is in its infancy. Previously, it was recognised that hormonal disruption during puberty affected around 70% of teenagers at any given time, but it was thought that only "broken" adults maintained this into adulthood. I have an official diagnosis of Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, which is useful for prodding people who say I'm just lazy. But ideally, it would be recognised as a difference - and indeed, an advantage, rather than a disability. Like so many other things in the social model of disability, it's only a disability because of modern society's expectations.

tirnoney has a theory that the different "types" developed when we were primitive hunter-gatherers. The majority of people would go to sleep when it got dark and wake again with the light. However, the prevalence of wild animals and other threats meant that there always needed to be someone to keep watch at night. We B-type people are the ones who would have stayed up until 3am to guard their loved ones in the darkness, and you A-type people are the ones who would have woken up at 3am to keep guarding them 'til dawn. The percentages that have just been discovered would fit with that fairly well: 10-15% A-type, 15-25% B-type and 60-75% "normal".

The numbers also mean that there are a considerable number of us who are disadvantaged by modern society's expectations. The reason that B-types are so... well, militant is because most people see us as lazy because our brains don't work in the morning. Whereas A-type people are seen as industrious and dedicated to their jobs because you get in early and are bright in the morning. In some ways, like with the evening socialising you mentioned, you're just as disadvantaged as us - but at least you're awake during the times when you're supposed to be at work!

I'm surprised how large the B-type percentage was, but then I'm always automatically suspicious of any geek or coder who doesn't prefer staying up until the wee small hours bathed in monitor light ;) I think the internet has made it much easier for B-types to "come out" and not have to fight their body clocks all the time. I know it's great that I can be online at almost any time of day and night and find someone to talk to, even if they live many timezones away from me! It's certainly great that we're able to carry on this conversation now without being constrained by our preferred sleep-wake cycles. Go technology! While we wait for society to catch up :)