Keep in mind that this study includes all chronotypes, and includes morning people who are forced to work night shifts. (Ha, take that, morning people! Now you know what it’s like!)
I’m including it since it does apply to us; it’s relevant to anyone forced to work on a schedule that conflicts with their natural-born circadian rhythms.
Background: “Rotating night shift work imposes circadian strain and is linked to the risk of several chronic diseases.”
I’ll spare you the medical lingo this time. The study concludes that those who are forced to work rotating night shifts, defined as greater than three nights per month—which is nothing compared with having to do it five days a week or more for decades, as night owls do—are at significantly elevated risk of elevated heart rate (tachycardia), all-cause mortality (!), cardiovascular death, and lung cancer.
Now I finally understand why only half of lung cancer victims are smokers, since that never made any sense to me; perhaps it’s society’s insistence on forcing people out of bed at the crack of dawn that’s killing them. And this study shows that being forced to work on a schedule that doesn’t match up to yours will indeed significantly increase risk of lung cancer.
PubMed, the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s website, states that about 15–20% of employees in Europe and the United States are engaged in night shift work. Considering the fact that anywhere between 30–50% of the population are natural-born night owls, their numbers fail to account for the risk that night owls are exposed to when they experience social jetlag, thanks to getting up too early.
They Call Us Narcissists and Psychopaths
“Creatures of the night: Chronotypes and the Dark Triad traits,” published in the medical journal Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 55, Issue 5 (September 2013), goes so far as to claim that night owls are evil!
The study claims a link between those who stay up late and what psychologists call the “Dark Triad” of personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.
To quote the lead researcher, Peter K. Johnson of the University of Western Sydney, “We propose that in order to best enact a ’cheater strategy,’ those high on the Dark Triad traits should have cognitive performance and, thus, have a night-time chronotype. Such a disposition will take advantage of the low light, the limited monitoring, and the lessened cognitive processing of morning-type people.”
Wow. So now we’re narcissists, psychopaths, and Machiavellians. You know, the kind of people who commit mass shootings, or who are brutal, totalitarian dictators. Unbelievable! If ever there was an extreme bias against night owls, this is it. To his credit, Mr. Johnson did mention that morning-type people have lessened cognitive processing at night. At least he’s right about that.
As usual with these biased studies, it cites no statistical analysis model, which alone makes the study not even worth the paper it’s printed on, and shows that it was likely undertaken with ill intent.
Taking it a step further, one can turn the conclusion around on its head, and claim that early risers must be part of the “Dark Triad” since they happen to get up when there’s low light, limited monitoring, and when night-type people have lessened cognitive processing. See, the guy discredited himself with his own study!
It’s Not Just Diabetes and Heart Disease, It’s Stroke, Too
On top of everything else, being forced to rise early against our natural tendencies also carries the risk of stroke.
Express in the UK reported on a study done by scientists in Melbourne, Australia, who also found that rising before sunrise causes social jetlag, a topic we discuss earlier.
A big part of the problem is that our bodies produce melatonin—the sleep hormone—when it’s dark, and suppress it when it’s light out. That’s a primary reason why it’s so hard to wake up before it’s fully light outside, which typically takes about 30 minutes after sunrise to occur.
As to the health risks, it all boils down to the stress hormone, cortisol. When your body decides that it’s time to wake up naturally, it suppresses melatonin and your adrenal glands dump a significant amount of cortisol into your bloodstream, which is what wakes you up.
However, when you’re forced to sleep off your natural schedule, there’s an imbalance between melatonin and cortisol. In response to the presence of melatonin after rising, cortisol levels skyrocket, and chronically high cortisol levels, along with the imbalance with melatonin, are linked to an increased risk of strokes, heart disease, diabetes, and depression. Furthermore, as you’re about to learn in my personal story of attempting to become an early riser, the chronically high levels of cortisol that your adrenal glands produce can also lead to adrenal exhaustion, a state where you’re so physically and mentally exhausted that you can’t just “push through it.” It’s not like trying to drive a car on fumes; it’s like trying to drive a car off the assembly line that’s never had a drop of fuel in it.
My Personal Metabolic Morning Disaster
The primary reason I started a business at 30 years old, or I should say started the first business that succeeded, wasn’t the money or the cars or the women or anything like that.
It was simply so I could have a steady income without getting out of bed at an insane hour. I wasn’t even after money. I just needed the freedom to be who I am, a night owl, and thankfully I achieved that and was able to quit my last job ever in 2003.
Prior to that, I was stuck getting up for a job, which, even though I liked it, was taxing my body physically and myself mentally. It was the forced early rising that led to my vicious cycle of boatloads of alcohol at night to get to sleep in time to wake up early and then a boatload of coffee the next day to fight through. I’d even turned to a mixture of both caffeine and ephedrine at times, which is downright dangerous in terms of heart health.
Even my coworkers made fun of how much coffee I drank. Since I’ve never liked Starbucks (with all due apologies to those who do), I stopped at a local gourmet coffee shop called “Jitters” every day, along with a few additional stops throughout the day. If my schedule of appointments didn’t bring me past a Jitters location, I’d settle for Starbucks—as long as I had my caffeine fix I could get my work done.
I remember one year, for my birthday, everyone in the office signed a card and one of the guys even drew a big coffee mug with the name “Jitters” on it … that’s how bad my habit was!
Fast-forward to four years ago and the event that made me choose to become an advocate for night owls.
Someone told me about a mastermind group I should join. At the time I was working on getting marketing automation set up in my sales training business, and one of the group’s leaders was an expert in that, so I decided to join.
I cannot remember if it was at one of the in-person weekend intensive roundtables that I first received this “advice,” or if it was on a call, but either way, several members had read a book that promised the key to massive productivity and success, and here it is: Get up at four or five o’clock in the morning, then do a “ritual.”
First of all, getting up at four or five o’clock, unless your body awakens naturally, is insane and unhealthy. Second, when I hear the word “ritual” my mind immediately goes to cults. I have routines, like my gym routines that I do, but ritual? No thanks.
Anyway, after enough convincing, I gave it a try.
Getting up that early was brutal. My wife was first asking me why I was doing it, and then became amazed that I was able to stick with it.
But not for long.
Even though I’d already given up alcohol, which provided surprisingly little benefit in comparison with quitting caffeine, I was still “on the bean,” as I’ve heard some coffee drinkers put it, and I was downing record amounts.
At one point I was drinking six cups a day, and by cups I don’t mean the standard eight-ounce measure, I mean big coffee-shop cups, enough to cause the medical disorder known as caffeinism. As part of caffeinism I developed the characteristic
anxiety, jitters, and insomnia that are hallmark symptoms of the disorder.
After doing this long enough—and I can’t remember how long I did it because that level of fatigue and sleep phase disturbance seriously impairs memory—I became completely exhausted. I’m talking totally wiped out, as if I were wandering through my days like I was under sedation for a medical procedure. It was that bad.
No one else could understand what it was like. It even caused marital problems when I had to continually cancel on events I had planned on attending with my wife, particularly school events such as their big annual auction gala. She would tell me to just push through, which is common sense, but at that level of extreme exhaustion there’s nothing to push with. It’s like that proverbial car that’s never had a drop of fuel in it.
After consulting with my doctor, he sent me home with a diurnal adrenal saliva test kit. (You can find them on Amazon if you’d like to do one yourself—I prefer the ZRT brand.)
The results were shocking: My adrenal glands were barely functioning at all. The cortisol levels throughout the day were at the very bottom of the chart, save for the “second wind” in the late evening that we night owls are accustomed to, and even that was reduced to a small blip. I was diagnosed with adrenal exhaustion and sent to see a nutritionist to set me up on an adrenal adaptogen diet. It worked, but it took the better part of a year to recover. What’s even worse is that the lab results, when analyzed alongside the long questionnaire that must be completed, flagged me as having the metabolic syndrome and a potential prediabetic state. Sound familiar?
During that recovery time I had little ability to do anything and my business began to trend downward. It began slowly at first but quickly accelerated to the point where we nearly lost our house, I had to get rid of the six-figure cars I’d been used to driving for over a decade, and many other sacrifices along the way. Not to mention medical expenses.
All of this because of one person’s opinion—with zero science behind it—that getting up at four or five o’clock will make you wildly successful. It’s all just more of the endless fallout from the myth of “early to bed and early to rise …” from a man who didn’t even practice what he preached.
The irony in all of this is that everyone I know who is following that program was already getting up by six o’clock in the morning, so it’s not a major feat to push that time back one hour. Even still, they’re like zombies by early afternoon. Meanwhile it’s early afternoon as I write this and I’m wide awake and fully alert!
No, getting up that early didn’t make me wildly successful. It made me gravely ill and I nearly went broke. My kids still say, “Daddy just sleeps all the time.” No, I don’t anymore, but that horrible ordeal lasted so long that I can see why they’d think that. The author of that book is damn lucky I didn’t sue him.
Meanwhile, people I know who still buy into that nonsense and are still following the book’s plan are useless by afternoon. I remember being on a call with someone I was paying $2,500 a month for services related to my marketing automation and he’d literally be passing out at his desk by 3:00 p.m., if not earlier. The same is true for everyone else I know following the “early to bed and early to rise” plan, regardless of what you call it.
As you’ll soon learn, even natural early risers can’t go the distance. Most of them are fading by early to mid-afternoon, hence the office coffee machine that’s perpetually on, not to mention the popularity of Keurig machines and the explosion not only of Starbucks but more specifically of independent coffee shops everywhere. Those morning people are making them rich, along with night owls forced to abide by their schedules.
Thankfully, a short time after six months had passed with me back on my natural sleep schedule and with minimal caffeine, my cortisol levels were back to normal, and I was no longer even close to being flagged as metabolic syndrome and potential pre-diabetes.
Getting my natural sleep schedule back also gave me back my health!
Even after all that, I was frequently tempted to make an attempt at early rising again, but closer to something like 7:00 a.m., not 4 or 5 a.m. I like seeing my wife and kids before they all leave, but after about a week each time, I realize that I’m harming myself—and eventually them, for financial reasons—and wisely return to my natural schedule.
Why am I frequently tempted to try to get up earlier? Simple: The brainwashing is so pervasive that even the author of this book, The Morning Myth, sometimes starts to wonder if it’s true.
If I can fall for that absurdity, it’s no wonder that most of society believes it, too, and suffers as a result.
Morning Madness
Medical science has proven that deviating from your normal sleep schedule puts you at risk for heart disease, stroke, cancer, adrenal failure, and many more health problems. Meanwhile, advocates of early rising go so far as to call us “evil” and classify us with the worst of human society. It’s no wonder, then, that so many fall for the morning myth.
CHAPTER 6
Your Circadian Rhythm—and Why You Can’t Change It: The Internal Clock You’re Born With Is the One You’re Stuck With
Books, books, books.
Aside from the infamous one that I referred to in the previous chapter, I can’t even count how many books I’ve read on success, self-improvement, and the biographies and autobiographies of countless successful people.
Meanwhile, I also can’t remember exactly how many of them preached the wonders, merits, and even morality of getting up at extreme hours.
It was very common to read about how they were all up at 5:00 a.m. each day! That makes me wonder how many of them were actually telling the truth, considering the fact that Ben Franklin was a late riser in spite of his famous advice, and even I’ve told little white lies about what time I get up to avoid the night owl stigma and the label of “lazy” and so on.
Come to think of it, most of them got up at 5:00 a.m. on their fathers’ orders. No wonder they’re preaching that nonsense, when the brainwashing was forced upon them at such a young age, an age when kids need many more hours than adults to sleep and maintain healthy growth and development. It really makes one wonder how much more they might have achieved had they been allowed to sleep on a child’s normal schedule instead of being forced out of bed before dawn like a Marine recruit at boot camp.
Hours a Day—but Not for You
Your circadian rhythm determines when you naturally fall asleep and when you naturally awaken. Here is the typical human circadian rhythm beginning in the evening; keep in mind that everyone is different, which we’ll get to shortly (and notice that in a “typical” circadian rhythm, natural awakening occurs around 7:30 a.m.):
6:30 p.m.: Highest blood pressure
7:00 p.m.: Highest body temperature
9:00 p.m.: Melatonin secretion starts
10:30 p.m.: Bowel movements suppressed
2:00 a.m.: Deepest sleep (again, this is “typical,” and not specific to night owls)
4:30 a.m.: Lowest body temperature (this is when I frequently wake up briefly to turn off the ceiling fan)
6:45 a.m.: Blood pressure rapidly increases
7:30 a.m.: Melatonin secretion stops (natural waking time)
8:30 a.m.: Bowel movement likely (too much info, I know)
9:00 a.m.: Highest testosterone levels in men
10:00 a.m.: High alertness
2:30 p.m.: Best coordination
3:30 p.m.: Fastest reaction time
5:00 p.m.: Greatest cardiovascular efficiency and muscle strength (meaning hit the gym! Or at 9:00 a.m. if you’re a man, when that big testosterone rush hits.)
And there you have it. This is what your body does around the clock, and it’s all governed by our inborn circadian rhythms. As a general rule, women tend to have shorter rhythms and get up earlier, but again, that’s just, well, “typical.” Everyone is different.
What I find most interesting about this example is something I’ve stated earlier, that it takes two
full hours to become fully alert and achieve peak cognitive function. That’s why I broke the habit of getting up and immediately grabbing my laptop and getting some work done. (Also, the medical hypnotherapist I was seeing for the anxiety that that stupid book caused strongly advised me to stop doing that.)
Congratulations! You’ve Won 25 Hours a Day!
Well, maybe not congratulations. It’s more like a problem, but only because society says it is. Personally, I consider it an asset.
Many call it a “disorder” rather than recognizing it for what it is—the fact that everyone’s sleep cycle is different. Just like we’re all unique in such things as the color of our hair, eyes, skin, height, weight, voice, nationality, and so on, we’re all born with a unique circadian rhythm.
It’s this habit of calling a later, or actually, a longer circadian rhythm, a “disorder” that causes much of the stigma about night owls being lazy and slothful and everything else they can think of. Just as former president George W. Bush is fighting to remove the word “disorder” from PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, our modern society must start recognizing that a different sleep cycle in others is no different than someone having different color hair or a different shoe size than one’s self.
There’s absolutely no “disorder” in having a sleep cycle that differs from the average person. After all, no one is calling early risers out as having a “disorder” for being up at five o’clock. Instead, they’re celebrated, while we’re stigmatized and labeled.
Here’s where it gets interesting: While there are a fixed 24 hours in a day, human circadian rhythms vary wildly from exactly 24 hours in extreme early risers, to 25 hours in those with what’s known as delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD), or those who typically can’t fall asleep until five or six in the morning.
The Morning Myth Page 7