Early Bird Or Night Owl?

What your sleep patterns say about you

Scientists now believe there are fundamental differences in the brains of early risers and late sleepers. Genevieve Gannon learns the importance of a good night’s sleep and undertakes a brave experiment to turn her night-owl ways around.

The line at the cafe is longer than usual and I’m already late. Again. But I can’t start the day without coffee so I join the queue and will it to move quickly, yawning as I give myself my usual reprimand — tonight I will go to bed early. Tonight I will get a good sleep. I order a latte and request sugar for extra energy because I haven’t eaten breakfast. Caffeine transfusion complete, I retire to my desk and tap morosely at my keyboard for half an hour until my brain joins the rest of me in the land of the living.

If this morning routine sounds familiar, you might be among the 40 per cent of the adult population that identifies as a night owl. You prefer to sleep late, you’re slow to get going in the morning and around 10pm, when you should go to bed, you’re just getting your second wind. It’s not a new concept, the early bird/night owl divide, but an emerging area of sleep research is discovering there’s far more to the phenomenon than just preference, and that your sleep rhythm, or chronotype, can affect everything from your health and mood to the economy.

“A common misconception is that these two different groups are a choice – night owls just get up late because they’re lazy,” says Monash University researcher Dr Elise Facer- Childs. “That’s a real stigma in society that we need to come away from. Your chronotype is influenced by your environment as well as physiology, biology and some genetic links.”

And scientists now know there are fundamental differences between the brains of night owls and day larks.