If you are one of those people with difficulty waking up in the morning , and in the afternoon or evening you feel lucid and can think better than the rest of the people who did wake up early, perhaps your difference is not due to laziness or bad habits (as you have always been told), but because your “clock” gene secretes melatonin at a different rate from the rest. You have the perfect explanation.

Owls and larks: different rhythms and times

With regard to sleep, we humans can be divided into owls and larks , that is, evening people and morning people.

Morning people usually wake up within eight hours (or the usual hours) of having started sleeping quickly, and within almost 5 minutes they feel awake. As the day goes by, their performance decreases until they are so tired that they fall asleep without being able to remedy it.

The evening people , on the contrary, take much longer to wake up completely (sometimes more than 1 hour from the time they open their eyes until they feel ready to face the day). However, their cognitive abilities increase as the day goes by, feeling lucid and mentally agile until a few minutes before going to sleep, with a good capacity for attention and memory.

Melatonin makes the difference between afternoon and morning

It seems that the difference lies in melatonin, a substance that is secreted during sleep and that induces deep states of sleep and rest .

In 1997, researcher Joseph Takahashi discovered the “clock” gene , which is responsible for encoding a protein that regulates circadian sleep rhythms and also the way in which melatonin is secreted. Through these investigations, it was discovered that the different way in which the protein acts in some organisms and others, causes some people to secrete melatonin especially in the first hours of sleep (so they rest earlier, wake up earlier, and also end up getting tired and sleeping earlier) and others secrete the substance in the last hours of sleep (so they wake up in a sleepy way, they take time to wake up, and their performance improves until they fall asleep again almost when they are still lucid).

Evening people, then, are not averse to getting up early. They simply take advantage of their greater state of lucidity in such a way that they end up delaying their moment of sleep. Actually, both people are used to sleeping the same amount of hours, only they manage their energies differently .

Society is meant for those who rise early

Do we live in a world adapted to this difference? Not at all. We live in a world that is clearly morning , adjusted to the morning needs (due to cultural beliefs, work impositions, etc.). Schools are designed for morning children, so that children who spend the first two hours of class still half asleep are judged. In a professional sense it also happens: the day is structured to work in the morning and rest in the afternoon, when afternoon people are more effective and efficient if they rest in the morning and have activity in the afternoon and evening.

These discoveries can help us to know ourselves better and better, as well as to consider these differences in order to create a more just educational model and a society adapted to how we are , with our differences, instead of having to sacrifice our differences to adjust ourselves to a society designed only for a few. If you are a morning person, perhaps you will understand a little better in the evening. If you are an afternoon person, you have your perfect explanation. No one else will be able to call you lazy or accuse you of having bad habits. Thank you for wanting to get to know you.

Evenings, Morning and Intelligence

Does the being in the evening or in the morning have any relation with the intelligence ?In a previous article we saw that it does. I recommend you to read it, you will be surprised.