Article #49: The Night Owl

 "Jhooti Tassali se khud ko tagtha hai kya 
Jhooti Tassali se khud ko tagtha hai kya 
Koi aur bhi Meri tarah raaton ko jagtha hai kya” 

Shukriya Shukriya Shukriya.. 

It’s True, we have to agree on the fact that 90% of this generation are night owls. Gone are the days when people used to go early to bed and wake up early in the morning. These days it takes at least mid-night 12 for most of us to go to sleep. Of course, I am nowhere an exception to all this. 

By the way, do you know why we are called night owls? Because Owls are always awake and active when the sun is down. This is called nocturnal behavior and it’s common among many animals. They become more active at night to hunt, mate or avoid heat and predators. 

As part of this article, I am going to tell you about the concept of night owls in detail. 

A night owl, evening person or simply owl, is a person who tends to stay up until late at night, or the early hours of the morning. Night owls who are involuntarily unable to fall asleep for several hours after a normal time may have delayed sleep phase syndrome. 

Night owls tend to feel most energetic just before they go to sleep at night.  

Some night owls have a preference or habit for staying up late, or stay up to work the night shift. Night owls who work the day shift often have difficulties adapting to standard daytime working hours. Hence, Night owls have often been blamed for unpunctuality.  

However, on a brighter note, some research has found that night owls are more intelligent and creative and more likely to get high-paying jobs than larks. A study among 1000 adolescents by the University of Madrid found that night owls are better than early birds in intelligence, creative thinking and inductive reasoning. However, they lag behind larks in academic performance and they tend to have unhealthier eating habits, as well as higher rates of smoking. 

The night-owl pattern is more prevalent in men than in women. Night-owls are more likely to be single than in long-term relationships. 

Ever thought, why one becomes a night owl? Obviously, it’s not something that happens by birth. As a kid, every one of us would have slept on-time and also wake up on-time. Then where did things go wrong? What made us the night owls? 

1. Social Media: No doubt, we wake up in the night only to be active on all the social media, may it can be WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, twitter and what not. 

2. Work Stress: Needless to say, most of us have this stress at work and unfortunately, it gets carried even after the usual working hours and involuntarily making us the night owls. 

3. Geography & Location: Of course, it depends on the place where we are. The cold areas on the planet make us lazy to wake up early in the morning, thus postponing our sleep time at night 

4. Night Shift: Whether you like it or not, there are certain jobs that require a person to do the night shift, thus they create a night owl 

5. Parties & Night Clubs: You may call them the spoilers, but they may or may not depending on one’s perception. Irrespective of that, they easily make people the night owls. 

6. Journeys: Frequent Journeys during the night could end up for anyone not having proper sleep, thus making them the night owls 

7. Passion: Most of us do not get time to work on our passions like Article writing or this Podcast during the day time as we are acquainted with people around and the usual disturbances. Thus, we become the night owls to follow our passions 

8. Depression: When one goes into depression, it would obviously affect his/her sleep and the sleep cycle, thus they might turn into a night owl. 

9. Lack of Physical Exercise: If the body doesn’t have proper movements or physical exercise, you wouldn’t get a proper sleep, hence it can easily make one a night owl. 

10. Being a Movie Buff: If you are a movie buff, you tend to choose the option of watching a second show in the theatre or at least at home every day, that makes you a night owl. 

But, do you know what happens once you become a night owl? 

If the sleep time is just 1 or 2 hours beyond the usual hours before midnight, like say 10 or 11 PM, it wouldn’t affect. But if it is beyond the midnight after 12, like 1 or 2 AM and even more than that, People with delayed chronotypes (i.e., night owls) are at greater risk for psychiatric disorders, addiction, hypertension, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and even infertility. But this is not because night owls are inherently unhealthy. It’s because we are forced to live a life of misalignment—our biology does not match up with our external demands, and this causes us to have less healthy habits for maintaining our biological clocks. Unfortunately, these habits constantly mess up your inner biological clock, called the circadian system. This is no small deal, because the circadian system is responsible for keeping all of your biological functions on schedule and running smoothly, including your metabolism, hormone secretion, cognitive function, muscle tone, and even mood. If your body and brain are Grand Central Station, then the circadian system is the network of all the clocks at the station. When the big clock tower’s time always matches the train conductors’ times, which also matches all the computers’ times and each passenger’s watch, then things go smoothly. But imagine if that big clock tower’s time would just randomly change, and nobody could be confident that they knew what time it was. Imagine the chaos at this train station! 

It’s no wonder shift workers, who have an even more extreme version of circadian misalignment, have greater health problems like obesity than their non-shift working peers. Even scarier is that shift work increases a person’s risk for cancer. And even if you are not a shift worker, but have even a couple of hours of flip-flopping back and forth between your weekday sleep schedule and your weekend schedule, you are at greater risk for weight gain, obesity, diabetes, and depression. 

So, what are the ways to try falling asleep quickly? Here are some of the techniques you can apply. 

• Taking a warm shower before going to bed. 

• Opening a window of your bedroom for cool, fresh air. 

• Wearing socks. 

• A 15-minute session of yoga 

• Avoiding caffeine 

• Eating early to prevent stomach digestion or stimulation while trying to sleep. 

I know it’s hard to implement, but if we can try at least, it would give better results someday. The best way is to prepone your sleep cycle slowly, rather than for 4-5 hours all of a sudden. Say, if you are sleeping at 2 AM daily, then try to sleep at 1 AM. Once you get habituated to it, then try for 12 AM and then 11 PM, it would be set. Even I am in the process of implementing it. 

Being a night owl is always fun, but at the same time, it even has the unnecessary risks associated to it with respect to our health. Maybe, health is more important than the fun. What do you say? Let me know in the comments section below.