River: The Lark in the Morning

[mdlbear]

This post by madfilkentist led me a merry chase, past this web page and this article, to the idea of chronotypes.

Normal people have a circadian clock set pretty close to a 24 hour cycle, and don't have much trouble shifting it around. Owls have a cycle of longer than 24 hours, and tend to become night people, going to bed late and sleeping long hours. Larks have a shorter cycle, and become morning people, fading early in the evening and getting up early.

I used to be an owl. Back in grad school one of my classmates spent a year or two living on a 26-hour cycle; he would get back in sync with the world every other week. I myself was more likely to see dawn before going to bed than on waking up.

I seem to be a lark now. It's fairly recent; I think I was "normal" for a long time in between. It may have something to do with the facehugger. I enjoy the extra time in the morning, though it's too irregular to count on. Maybe that will improve over time. Sleep is pleasant, but I don't have time for it.

Comments

[brmj.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't people on a non-24-hour cycle just end up in a sleep cycle with no fixed relationship to a typical one, instead of being morning or night people? Think of how the graph of y = sin(1.2 x) compares to that of y = sin(x), versus how the graph of y = sin(x) + .2 compares to that of y = sin(x). I may very well be missing something here, but it doesn't really make much sense to me.

[mdlbear]

Sunlight does a reset, as does your alarm clock if you need it. In the absence of sunlight and external events that need to be scheduled at particular times, yes, your cycle drifts.

[brmj.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That explains it.

Also, you seem to have figured out that I meant y = sin(x + .2), not y = sin(x) + .2, but if not, here is a correction.

[mdlbear]

I didn't bother looking at the equation in detail because it wasn't relevant. The place where it becomes relevant is where in the sine wave the reset happens.