Sleep Disorders Expert Discusses How Sleep is Influenced by the Body Clock that You are Born With

Even if you try your best, you can’t wake up early.

Many people are said to be first-class businessmen who wake up early, and many of them engage in morning activities such as coming to work early in the morning and exercising before work. Many people believe that “morning activities = a person who can work well,” but those who are weak in the morning may find it hard.

“In fact, early morning activities do not suit everyone. Sleep studies have shown that the timing of activity, such as whether to be active in the morning or at night, differs slightly for each individual.”

Shingo Kitamura of the Sleep and Wakefulness Disorders Research Department, National Institute of Mental Health, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, says that “Chronological timing of activity tends to be different for each individual”. The tendency of an individual to have a timing of activity is called “chronotype”

 

“Morning people are good at going to bed early and waking up early, have a good appetite in the morning, and in return cannot stay awake until late at night. The opposite is true for night-types, who are not good at getting up early in the morning, feel energized in the afternoon, and go to sleep late.”

If you can’t get up early despite your best efforts, or if you are too sleepy to go out for a late night drink, it may not be a matter of your own energy, but rather the time of day that doesn’t suit your chronotype, which represents morning and night types.

“Our bodies are equipped with an internal clock. We wake up in the morning and naturally become sleepy at night because our body clock is working regularly. Chronotype is influenced by this biological clock.”

“Chronotypes, which vary from person to person, are not divided into two types, morning and night, but rather are distributed in a smooth normal distribution, such as extreme morning type, slight morning type, intermediate type, slight night type, and extreme night type,” he says.

 

“This is reported to be related to the multiple genes we are born with. The extent to which genetic factors are involved in morning and evening types has been investigated in twin studies, and it is said that about half is determined by genetic factors and the other half by a variety of other factors.”

“These include, for example, age: between the ages of 10 and 20, people become increasingly nocturnal, and after the age of 20, they slowly become morning-oriented. This is why we become earlier in the morning as we age. It is also related to the amount of exposure to artificial light such as sunlight and fluorescent lamps. In other words, about half of our bodies, excluding age and environmental factors, are determined at birth by genetic factors.”