The Human Circadian Clock
Rupert: We picked up this earlier post from Peter Lewis:
"How long does it take you to recover from the "daylight saving" time shift? I keep waking up an hour early for over a week. It is a form of jet-lag without the carbon footprint. I plan to keep a log this year to see when I surface from sleep. Under stable conditions I will wake up at most half an hour before the alarm goes off. Most often the time is less than 15 minutes before. Sunday does not count, start on Monday."
Peter is not alone. This week saw the publication of new research into how humans cope with the clock change. iPM has been speaking to one of its authors Professor Till Roenneberg
More here too. A chance to find out more about your chronotype, are you a morning person or a night owl?
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Comments
I would like to complain about the ridiculous system of changing the clocks at this time! I am a 'lark' (i.e. more wideawake in the mornings) and I have to sit in bed in the morning light till 7 am when it is OK to get up. It gets light at about 6.30 am, for heaven's sake, when you 'owls' are still snoring - and then we have to close the day down an hour earlier. I feel I am being shortchanged of daylight - and therefore my valuable vitamin D!
I do agree with changing the clocks eventually - say around the third weekend of November - but only for the real winter, not the beautiful Autumn days we are enjoying at the moment. Then the clocks should revert to BST around early February, so that the whole dark period is limited to, say, 5/6 weeks either side of the Winter Solstice. Can I persuade anybody to agree with me - we could start a petition?
Sally Greenhill
Hi Sally - I've moved your comment from the What's iPM? page - seems to sit better here.
thanks
Jenny
I am personally in favour of the time change - BST is there to stop the sun rising at 3:45am in mid-summer; GMT is there to stop it rising at 9am in mid-winter. I like finishing work and having it already dark, rather than having gloom on the way home. It's so much more cosy walking out to full darkness.
My body clock is attuned to my watch and therefore the time change meant very little to me physically. When I've had to go across time zones, I just readjust the hands, and hey presto, I'm tuned into that time zone.
Of course, if my watch stops, then that's it...
I think it takes about a week. I have been waking up before the alarm all week but now its only a few mintes before, not an hour. The fact my body clock thinks i've been up till 1.00a.m. and later all week just makes me feel more tired than normal.
Clocks should go forward every saturday morning and back again every sunday morning. That way I'll get a lie in every sunday! I know it means a shorter saturday but does that matter?
I defininetly feel tired and listless for a few days following the time change.
However my children don't seem to have changed over at all. They are now up at 7am instead of the 8am the rest of us have moved to, despite putting them to bed later to wear them out.
It would be easier if we just stuck to GMT.