Rise and shine—after a while
This explains a lot:
Every morning, people sleepily drag themselves out of bed, wandering through a brain fog that seems to take forever to dissipate. Early risers will deny it exists, but evidence in a new paper in the journal NeuroImage suggests otherwise. The University of California, Berkeley team behind the study also reveal the one way to get through it.
The term for that cognitive fog is “sleep inertia,” but before the current study we’ve never been quite sure why people experience it, says Raphael Vallat, Ph.D., the lead study author and post-doctoral fellow at The University of California, Berkeley. In the paper, he proposes a reason why it exists: Even when the body is awake and moving in the morning, its brain is asleep in some capacity for some time after.
I don’t drink coffee, although some people swear by it (you know who you are!). I can’t stand coffee or any caffeinated beverage.
I also like to use a snooze alarm; I’m most definitely not a morning person (unless you count the wee hours of the morning, when I hit my stride).
But once I’m actually out of bed and standing, I seem to wake up to what I would consider full alertness quite quickly. And you?
For some reason I have always been able to be fully awake, a least I think I am, the second my eyes open, my feet are on the ground and I am ready to keep moving and smiling, others in my family are best left alone and not spoken to until they are ready which might be an hour or so, until then I avoid eye contact.
I like to out the dog out, make a pot of coffee, let the dog in to be fed, unload the dishwasher and with a fresh cup of coffee check the news a favorite websites on my computer, including the NEO stuff. For me a decent cup of coffee, not overpriced, over-roasted bean stuff, just good old canned, fresh Columbian is part of civilized living.
Both my wife and I are very early risers, as in about 5:30am on most mornings. We both seem to lie there a bit on our backs, say a few words, reach out and pet the dog, etc. I would call this stirring around a bit. I look out the windows and start thinking about the day. So before we get out of bed, we both seem wide awake and ready to go. This whole process takes I would think about 15 to 20 minutes. I don’t know how this fits with the Berkley Study but there you go. Then it’s on to you guessed it, coffee!
Apologies for poor typing and proofing above, without proofing I tend to type the way Trump talks, it makes sense to me at the time. Next time I will take time to proof read and correct, probably.
There are two different folks out there: early risers — and early to bed…
Slow risers that can stay up and ‘on-it’ for — seemingly forever.
I’m of the later school. I’ve been known to stay up three solid days straight… not that I actually enjoy that.
The French performed sleep experiments decades ago.
Surprise #1, the natural sleep rythm for humanity is 48 hours. Yup. Once cut off from ALL external stimulus to cue us in, the mind shifts over to a 48-hour day. It takes about 36-40 hours for the mind to wind down naturally. Then the sleep cycle goes WAY DEEP for about 10 hours.
This was seen repeatedly over many different, ultra healthy, test subjects. ( They’d been selected for astronautics. )
Another tic: in the past, it was COMMON for Europeans to become awake in the middle of the night. (As such nights really do get l o n g.) This is when it was customary to reheat the fire and to reheat the foot-warmer. It was also the ideal time to engage in private reading. ( Assuming you could afford the illumination.)
This latter tic has re-appeared in my personal life. I enter sleep normally, and then find myself bouncing off the sheets at midnight. Two-hours later, I’m able to nod off, again.
This tic is often conflated with insomnia… and I sure know what that is.
I love my morning Charbucks, French roast please, bought in bulk. None after 11AM or I don’t sleep.
I thought some people had a natural sleep cycle of 26 or 28 hours. I hadn’t heard of the 48 hour stuff. I always thought mine was about 25 hours.
____
A slightly related fascinating topic is sleep paralysis and night terrors, which some people think are connected.
Apparently, normal healthy deep sleep entails a complete paralysis of the voluntary muscle system. Is that an evolutionary result? Don’t want the lions, tigers, and bears to get you while thrashing about in your sleep?
The problem happens when the paralysis happens before a person is not quite fully asleep. Then the dreams drift towards terror with a commonality of themes. Some of those who experience paralysis while waking in the morning find their dreams drifting towards the beautiful and wonderful.
BTW, the French scheme used DEEP caves and other tricks to shut off ALL outside stimulus.
It was as much of a shock to the subjects — their 48 hour rythm — as it was to the scientists. The progression out to 48 hours began almost immediately… step-by-step. The subjects never had a clue that they were drifting on and on. They didn’t even feel fatigued!
Then, again, they were in a ‘capsule’ in a cave underground.
sorry for this, but something is up…
I guess when he visited other countries… someone got him…
take a look… reminds me of prior people who have had things done…
After Wild-Eyed, Shrieking Public Appearance, People Are Asking, “What’s Wrong With Barack Obama?” (VIDEO)
Read more at http://dcwhispers.com/after-wild-eyed-shrieking-public-appearance-people-are-asking-whats-wrong-with-barack-obama-video/#MIAPGY8sLsdxYdyQ.99
http://dcwhispers.com/after-wild-eyed-shrieking-public-appearance-people-are-asking-whats-wrong-with-barack-obama-video/#SvMSgVq0PAL6jWep.97
Sorry Art, as much as I would like to agree, that video shows nothing. Just Obama doing his street hipster schtick.
I have no trouble believing what Blert shared about the French sleep studies. I am a life-long poor sleeper. It has always been difficult for me to fall asleep. I was a natural “owl” until I joined the workforce and became a “lark”. For some time now, I go to bed by 9 and wake for a couple hrs around 12-1 a.m., read my phone, go back to sleep (usually) and am out of bed by 5:30 a.m. M-F I’m out the door by 6:15 a.m. Just this week I’ve decided to adjust my schedule because I’ve found I like to linger in bed for 30 or so minutes before I get up. So instead of going to weekday Mass at 6:30 M-F, I’m going to take Wednesday off and do my exercise bike and leave for work at 7:15. I attribute the need for change to age.
As many of us might intone when we were young and eligible . . .
Early to bed and early to rise,
And you lose your girl to the other guys!
M J R
Ok, prob. should not leave personal info of this sort but I will.
Elderly parents who it is a privilege and honor to have, but coming with some years of daily stress and crises now, even with full time round the clock caregivers in the house. The healthier one passed away recently, basically honoring his vows to the eventual cost of his energy, health and life. That old cowboy was a real man …
Having been walking around in a jacked-up caffine stupor myself for the last several years, I went to bed on some recent weekends and wound up sleeping 12 or more hours. Feeling guilty as Hell after 6 or 8, I shrugged and pulled the covers over my head anyway.
I noticed that when I finally got up, I was strangely awake, and calm. No muscle tenseness, no ready for battle feeling. Just awake and moving around without much of a thought as to what “had to be done” in my head. Almost as good as going hunting.
I wonder if it could be done deliberately.
2 cups before I am able to get moving. Wife is an early riser, I usually go to bed around 1 or 2 am. She walks the dogs in the morning, we split them up in the afternoon, I take them for the night walk. Staying up late was a change that happened in my 50s after years of getting up at 5am.
Artfldgr: Obama does look a little loony in that video.
My guess?
Obama is not drawing big audiences.
Trump is drawing huge audiences.
Trump is very entertaining, very funny, in his rallies.
Trump is actually “cool.”
Obama is trying to be entertaining, funny.
Obama is not entertaining. Not funny. Not cool.
I have been an early riser all my life, but in the last 5 years or so this has come at the expense of evening activities. Now I find that I want to go to bed around 9 in order to feel rested and ready to rise at 5:30 or so. When I do get up, I find a cup of coffee essential to get me started on the day, but I am not groggy or slow functioning, even before the coffee.
I heard a review of a book on NPR a year or two ago about historical sleep patterns. I wish I could remember the title and/or the author but I was driving and I couldn’t write them down.
But one of the interesting factoids mentioned was similar to what Blert mentioned about the French study: apparently, before electric lighting, it was normal in many societies to have a midnight waking period. People read if they could afford the cost of illumination. And sometimes, they got up and visited with family, told stories by the fire, and even went to neighbors houses to talk and share a quick snack.
Fascinating! I’d love to find that book.
My own sleep pattern is I go to bed 8:30 and 9 p.m. I often wake around 1 a.m. for a bit. I might read for a little while then go back to bed and sleep until 5 a.m.
At roughly 5:10 a.m. I have a cup of tea and an English muffin with raspberry preserves. I wake the wife and kids up at 7:15 (none of them are morning people) and I leave for work at 7:40 a.m.- Those are the two sanest, quietest hours of my day. I get a lot of writing done in those two hours.
I recall reading about a study they did with a guy in a cave. He could read, talk on the phone any time he wanted and other things but nothing that would give him an idea of what time it was. He fell into a long period of being awake (32hrs.) and then a long period of sleep (16hrs.).
I’m an early riser, usually between 5 and 5:30am, and wide awake as soon as I get out of bed. I make some coffee and set down to read for an hour or so. I’m not a sociable fellow during this time; very much enjoy this alone time. Between 6:30 and 7 I make myself some breakfast. My wife usually arises at that time. She is a chatty and chipper person in the morning. Having had my hour by myself I am then properly prepared to engage in conversation with her. For what it’s worth, I drink coffee throughout the day, it never disturbs my sleep.
Seeing as I still work full time there are plenty of days when I have to be up and ready by 5am or earlier. Last week, for example, I had to rise at 3:30am to shower and shave so I could be at Logan for a flight to an all day customer meeting. Didn’t get home until 9pm. So long as I have that first hour to myself I can manage to be a pretty agreeable person for the rest of the day, however long it lasts.
Don Keyhoti describes my morning wake up routine almost perfectly. I set the alarm about 20 minutes earlier than I have to get moving so I enjoy that wake-up-slowly time. I drift off at night in a similar way. Very relaxing.
As suspected, Mr. Vallat is a self-proclaimed “neuroscientist”. Neurologists, neurosurgeons, neuroanatomists and neurophysiologists) do not call themselves “neuroscientists”. Only psychologists do. It is rather like a mule naming itself as a racehorse. Guess what? Vallat is a mere post-grad fellow in the Berkeley psychology department.
I have no respect for “Neuroscientists.”