CAN SCIENCE TURN A NIGHT OWL INTO A MORNING LARK?

If you're a night owl, you probably have a hard time dealing with a world that starts at 9am. But can science help you tinker with your body clock to make it easier to rise with the larks?

- IAN TAYLOR

Anyone who’s not a morning person is reminded, frequently, that they’re not a morning person. For me, it’s being used as a barely sentient climbing frame when my children charge in at dawn. It’s the brain fog that takes a couple of hours to shake off at the start of each day. It’s the mild despair at seeing messages from colleagues who are already being productive, while I’m still summoning up the coordination required to pour out some breakfast cereal.

If you’re a night owl rather than an early-bird lark, the world is not organised in your favour. For most of us, work or school starts between 8-9am. If you’re a shift worker or a parent to young children, then your day likely starts even earlier. But for around 30 per cent of the population (me included) this runs counter to our biology. We’re slow to rise and slow to feel wakeful or energetic. In some cases (naming no names), we might be a little grumpy and monosyllabic, too.

And that’s because of our chronotypes, the body’s natural tendency to sleep and wake at certain times. Linked to our circadian rhythms – the internal clock that regulates a person’s sleep-wake cycle – chronotypes describe our sleep patterns, and the tempo of behaviours and characteristics that go with them. 

Most of us think there are two chronotypes: night owls, like me, who feel productive, creative or just wide awake later in the evening; and morning larks, who can spring out of bed and jump straight into their running gear or a busy inbox.