Jenny Carter is an" extreme night owl", one of an estimated 8. 2% of the population whose natural characteristic is to fall asleep well after midnight. Left to her own devices, she'd prefer to go to bed around 3 a.m. and wake up about noon.
She has struggled to organize her life in a way that suits her natural sleeping pattern. She negotiated a slightly later start time at work一10 a.m.一but wishes she could begin at noon and finish at 8 p.m. Instead, she deprives herself of sleep during the week and catches up at weekends, when she often sleeps until 3 p.m.
But this isn't what frustrates her most about being a night owl. "I think one of the worst things is people equating night owls and late risers with laziness," she says." I am just as productive, enthusiastic and organized as others, but at a different time. Feeling completely out of line with the rest of society is the hardest thing, like you must be the one that's wrong.
So why do night owls exist? There is no single universally accepted theory, but evolutionary biologists think that communities with more variation in sleeping patterns may have been more likely to survive.
Another theory is that variation is simply how genetics works. Colin Espie, professor of sleep medicine at the University of Oxford, says this mirrors differences in hair, eye and skin colour, or height.
Natural night owls are fundamentally different to insomniacs or people who stay up until the early hours because of family or work circumstances. Being a night owl isn't a problem.
But this isn't always well understood. Jessica Batchelor is a medical writer who feels most productive at 11 p.m. in the evening. "I can't tell anyone when I went to sleep, woke up, showered, ate a meal, or took a nap without being judged," she says. "I struggle with feelings of guilt and shame.
This mentality is rooted in our ancient past, when farm work had to begin at dawn.
Our culture mistakenly associates sleeping little and rising early with virtue. It is often praised as a habit of successful people: for instance, in the fascination with Margaret Thatcher's four-hour rest, or articles about "sleepless-elite" CEOs who start their days with a 4 a.m. jog. Yet here comes a problem: around eight hours of good-quality sleep is essential for better health for almost everybody.
