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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Internal Time: The Science of Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You're So Tired | Brain Pickings

SUMMARY: German chronobiologist Till Roenneberg: our sleep patterns have little to do with laziness and other such scorned character flaws, and everything to do with biology.

Each of us possesses a different chronotype - an internal timing type best defined by your midpoint of sleep, or midsleep, which you can calculate by dividing your average sleep duration by two and adding the resulting number to your average bedtime on free days, meaning days when your sleep and waking times are not dictated by the demands of your work or school schedule.

Roenneberg added, "I am often asked whether we cannot get used to given working hours merely through discipline and by confining our sleep habits to certain times. The assumption inherent in this question is that the human body clock can synchronize to social cues. I tend to find that any such questioner, who usually also displays a somewhat disdainful tone towards the weakness of late chronotypes, is an early type — someone who has never experienced the problems associated with the [desynchronized] sleep-wake behavior of late chronotypes."

From: http://ping.fm/V2v6L

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