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Can a Night Owl Become a Morning Person?
The short answer is yes, but we need to debunk some myths to figure out if they even should, then consider why and how
Being a night owl can be miserable, not just because sleeping late in the morning is out of sync with much of the working world or school start times, but because night owls get lots of flack from parents, significant others and bossy overlords who think them lazy, along with popular media articles warning of disastrous health consequences.
The accusations are a boatload of bunk, however, and for night owls who wish to change their sleep schedule — not all do, by the way — it is possible. Same goes for anyone who tends to stay up too late—anything past, say, 11 p.m.—and feels tired or unproductive during the day.
“We all have genetic tendencies toward being a morning person or being an evening person,” says Rafael Pelayo, MD, a sleep specialist at the Stanford Sleep Medicine Center and author of the book How to Sleep. “But your tendencies are not your destiny.”
What makes a night owl
Night owls aren’t any lazier than anyone. Whether a person is naturally inclined to be a night owl or a morning lark depends significantly on their chronotype, a point in time determined largely by genetics at which half of a night’s sleep is typically done and half is yet to come (assuming one is able to sleep when their body tells them to).
Chronotypes are linked to each person’s circadian rhythm, a body clock that generates melatonin and other signals that tell us when to get sleepy, then does the opposite when we’re supposed to be awake and alert.
Human chronotypes vary by up to 10 hours among adults. They tend to change as we age. Before 40, men on average have later chronotypes than women, and later in life the tendency reverses.
When children enter puberty, their overall body clocks, along with their chronotypes, shift later, explaining why they struggle to fall asleep on schedules set by adults. The result: about three-fourths of high school students and a third of younger kids are sleep-deprived much or most of the time.
