Waking up in the morning...

TheWharfMaster

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I notice, when im lucky enough to wake up early, that my energy, my mind, and my body seem to tune in much better, and the rest of the day seems much longer and fulfilling.
Its sort of obvious I guess: Dont sleep all day and yes, you might have a better day! But I dont know, there seems to be something more to it.
I also read that if you sleep and wake before the time of the day you were born, like your up for the time when you actually entered the world, then it has positive effects on you.
I was born at 10:30 am, so maybe the morning just rings good for me, whereas someone born at 9 pm might feel more energized around that time, I dont know, but its interesting stuff.
Anyone else ever experience anything like this?
 
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Our adaptive metabolism allowed for some of our ancestors to adjust schedules or even become nocturnal, depending on the availability of game. If you want to quickly adapt to a new time schedule or avoid jetlag, all you need to do is stay up and fast for a while, and make sure your next meal is at the time when you would plan to eat breakfast in your new schedule, then you will be able to stay up for the rest of the day.
 
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That is awesome.
Could you explain that process just a step deeper though? I have a buddy who's goal is to eradicate his need for sleep, but he doesnt use a single healthy practice.
So you would stay up and not eat for a while, then declare when your morning would be and eat a good meal, and then be able to sustain for the next day?
I did find after fasting for a while for ceremonies, that my appetite had decreased a lot, yet I got more fulfillment from food, and filled up faster. More energy as well, but I dont know why.

Another cool thing that was used, probably by more war-like tribes, native people and all was an herb called Guayusa. It contains more caffeine naturally than any other plant, and they would use it to stay up for days and nights when they were expecting enemy invasions. I believe it grows in South America all over, probably other places too. I used it and found the effects profound.
Its most commonly referred to as the Watchmans Plant, because its ability to solidify and lengthen dreams, and make them easier to recall. I thought it was pretty wicked, the dreams I was having while drinking guayusa tea, id recommend it to anyone.
But yeah, good count, if you would explain a little deeper that method, id love to hear more.
 
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That is awesome.
Could you explain that process just a step deeper though? I have a buddy who's goal is to eradicate his need for sleep, but he doesnt use a single healthy practice.
So you would stay up and not eat for a while, then declare when your morning would be and eat a good meal, and then be able to sustain for the next day?
I did find after fasting for a while for ceremonies, that my appetite had decreased a lot, yet I got more fulfillment from food, and filled up faster. More energy as well, but I dont know why.

Consider someone relocating from England to South Korea. They'll be maladjusted to the time difference for a while but eventually their sleep cycle and internal clock will readjust - otherwise people who moved across several timezones at some point in their lives would be unable to function. If you shift your morning and maintain it consistently, you'll adjust to it similarly to how someone would eventually get over jet-lag. Having the lights on and eating when you wake up (or putting them on a timer to automatically turn on right before you want to wake) helps reinforce this by mimicking the natural stimuli animals internal clocks use to calibrate themselves.

The benefit of a fasting and staying awake until you would want your new normal time for sleep to start is that it helps ensure you'll be able to fall asleep and stay asleep until you plan to wake up. It may also help people who normally don't feel much like eating in the morning get used to having a substantive breakfast (something more than a granola bar.) If you want to shift your sleep cycle significantly from your current one then consistency with all these things will be very helpful because you're basically trying to provide more compelling stimuli than day and night for your body to adjust to.

I notice, when im lucky enough to wake up early, that my energy, my mind, and my body seem to tune in much better, and the rest of the day seems much longer and fulfilling.

That's probably because your later wake time coincides with when you would normally be re-entering a deep sleep stage and the earlier wake time tends to coincide with REM or a lighter phase of sleep. The cycling between these stages over one night's sleep may look something like this:

http://media.photobucket.com/image/recent/mikro112/Schlafstadien_einer_nacht.png

If your sleep stages looked like this, then when you wake up a little later then it is likely you don't feel as rested because you are interupting an early-mid part of one of the deep sleep stages (III and IV). Waking up during one of these stages has been demonstrated to cause temporary disorienation and sluggishness. This would only make sense though if you're already waking or nearly waking once or twice throughout your sleep. You may remember it if you're walking up to use the restroom or not remember it if its the result of sleep apnia. Without something like that already effecting your sleep cycle, it would be unlikely you'd have one of those deep stages that late in.
 
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I used to sleep in a lot, and I used to really feel like shit, all day long. I felt like I had to sleep in on the weekends to avenge my work cycle of getting up early every day. More and more now on my days off I find myself getting up at like 5 or 6 am, even if its just to read or something. The more I sleep, the more tired I stay it seems. Get up early, eat light, gets the day going well. You find yourself looking at the clock after what seems like a day is past and it's only noon, or 1 o'clock you got a lot done. It's a good feeling.

There's also something magical about the very early hours of the morning. Get up at 5 in the morning, make yourself a warm drink, then go for a long walk. Watch the world wake up around you as the darkness fades, the morning dew a blanket over the world, the crisp morning air making your breath slightly visible, the birds and animals doing their routines all around you. We have a small lake nearby, its wonderful first thing in the morning to experience it, a great way to start the day. It puts me in a completely different mindset. I dont think i'll ever sleep in til noon again!

Its actually got me losing weight as well, ive went from 210 to 185 (which at 6' is around ideal) since i started getting up early.
 
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Wow thats really interesting, thanks jswisner.
In that diagram, what does Wach represent? Not Awake, but maybe an ideal time to wake up and go on with said rest?
Because I noticed your at Wach status after about 4 hours, then 7, and then 8.
But waking around 4 would be tricky because of the steepness in that area between deep, IV stage sleep and REM/Wach states. Probably wouldnt be enough sleep anyway.
 
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Very nice Samhain, ive experienced the same kind of effects, and thats awesome how uplifted you are by it. Not enough people appreciate nature, and the little things in the world.
And I was always a real bad sleeper too, much like yourself, trying to make up for lost sleeping time and all, and you know what they say, Youll sleep when your dead! Its definitely a healthier, more productive way to be, just for every aspect of your life. Tear it up brother :D
 
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Wow thats really interesting, thanks jswisner.
In that diagram, what does Wach represent? Not Awake, but maybe an ideal time to wake up and go on with said rest?
Because I noticed your at Wach status after about 4 hours, then 7, and then 8.
But waking around 4 would be tricky because of the steepness in that area between deep, IV stage sleep and REM/Wach states. Probably wouldnt be enough sleep anyway.

That is a sleep state chart for someone who snores and wakes up very briefly a few times a night. Wach signifies those points - many people who have his happen will not remember waking up but if you snore badly there's a very good chance you do this too. It's not an ideal sleep patern, but just one example of an individual's pattern. The typical/ideal one would look more like this-

http://healthy-ojas.com/assets/sleep/sleep-cycle.jpg

Though an individual's may differ. I general it feels more restful and you awake more alert if you wake up when your sleep state is naturally closer to "awake" on its own. It kind of make sense that if your alarm goes off and your brain is already very close to an awake state, it will not be as much of a chore to get it the rest of the way there. You certainly don't want to actually have it go into the awake state multiple times a night though - that's inefficient, makes it more likely you will wake up disoriented, and can be a sign of sleep apnea.

Using the more typical graph I showed you, a person following those timings would wake up feeling far better after 5 hours than 6 and possibly slightly better waking up after 6.5 hours of sleep than 7.
 
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There's also something magical about the very early hours of the morning. Get up at 5 in the morning, make yourself a warm drink, then go for a long walk. Watch the world wake up around you as the darkness fades, the morning dew a blanket over the world, the crisp morning air making your breath slightly visible, the birds and animals doing their routines all around you. We have a small lake nearby, its wonderful first thing in the morning to experience it, a great way to start the day. It puts me in a completely different mindset. I dont think i'll ever sleep in til noon again!

The only time I'm up at 5am is when I haven't went to sleep yet, and that's been happening quite a bit lately. I've always been like a vampire when it comes to sleep though. I love the night, and I generally don't even like going outside until after 4pm. I thought this would change as I got older, but so far it hasn't.

I used to work a shift that was 4am til Noon. Most of the people I worked with went to bed at around 9pm and were up around 3am to prepare for work. Not me… I would just stay up until it was time to work and then sleep during the day afterwards. :)
 
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I work in shifts 24/7/365(366) around the clock and I have no other choice than to be at least somewhat "fit" at certain times of the day ;) .

I'm definitely not much of a morning person, however. I quite often have to be at work at 05:45. I don't really have any trouble getting out of bed, that's usually not the issue (the bigger trouble is falling asleep and falling into a deep sleep/slumber instead of a shallow, on the surface sleep).
On days I have to get up at 05:45, I usually get to go head home at 14:00 (on weekends and holidays at 18:00 which makes for pretty tough 12-hour shifts) and shortly after getting off of work at the latest, I always begin to feel somewhat drowsy and sleepy.

The late shift -from a metabolic point of view- is not much of a problem at all. It's 13:45 to 22:00 so there's no problem getting out of bed and not much of a problem going to sleep. I don't like that shift at all since I'm no early morning person and thus a late shift means that the vast majority of my awake hours is going to be consumed by work.

Night shift is my favorite type of shift. It usually runs from 21:45 to 06:00 or on weekends and holidays from 18:00 to 06:00 (12-hour shifts again). I have absolutely no problem staying up over night. I sometimes get a little tired (especially if I did sports during the day) but it's all within reason.

I was born at about 15:00 in the afternoon from what I know so there may or may not be a correlation to any of those preferences.
 
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I tend to get up at 5 in the morning when I'm in a writing phase. It's so quiet and nice then, and my productivity is at its best. But I tend to stay up rather long, too, so it may not be the healthiest approach out there.
I was born at 10:22 pm - don't know what to make of that in this context.
Kiddo was born in the morning, yet he loves to sleep until noon.

My usual walking time is around noon. I want to keep the morning silence to myself I guess, and I really love to spend brooding hot noon hours out in the forest. They are rather silent, too.
 
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Oh yes, the productivity seems through the roof in those golden, morning hours.
Yeah im not really sure about the relativity between when you were born and when your possible peak performance might be, I just heard somewhere, that experiencing the time when you were born in a day, has positive effects on you, during that day.

A lot of you guys really appreciate nature too, thats awesome. I need to take more nature walks; almost nothing better for creativity or tranquility.

Take care guys, hope you all had a sweet christmas
 
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Oh yes, the productivity seems through the roof in those golden, morning hours.
Yeah im not really sure about the relativity between when you were born and when your possible peak performance might be…
It doesn't make much sense. The idea that our bodies would remember the time of day we were born, and that this should have a majore influence on your performance/productivity seems very far-fetched.

Besides, my youngest daughter is born at 0500 AM, which should imply a peak productivity in the middle of the night, which is clearly not the case.

A lot of you guys really appreciate nature too, thats awesome. I need to take more nature walks; almost nothing better for creativity or tranquility.

Take care guys, hope you all had a sweet christmas

Same to you.

pibbur who's peak productivity hours have changed a lot during his lifetime
 
Yeah it really doesnt, but then again, the body does many things that the conscious mind isnt aware of. But yeah theres a lot of evidence against it so...:D

Indeed, I used to just wake right up once the sun went down. I felt like I was ready to start the day once the night fell, for some reason.
 
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I had to wake up at 5 AM today and feel much better, probably because I had 1.5 hours to myself. I knew that I could sleep in and wake up at 6.30, but I would feel like crap.

Usually, when I'm free, I like to go to sleep at about 5 AM (which was a bitch today since I had to wake up at the time when I usually go to sleep). Wake up at around 3 PM. The most creative time for me is after midnight.

I used to work in the US. With the time difference, I went to sleep there at midnight (which was still 5 AM where I'm from). It was the only time when I was able to fall asleep without any problems. The time zone was adjusted perfectly for me. Nobody was bitching about me being lazy and sleeping until the afternoon either.
 
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I have found out that simply when I get to bed early, then I usually feel much better in the morning.
 
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I have found out that simply when I get to bed early, then I usually feel much better in the morning.

Haha yeah, even with all the thought that could and does go into it, the simplest way seems to be the most effective: Just sleep early enough and youll seemlessly awake in the morning, refreshed.

Nice quote by the way, Schumacher ;)
 
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My sleep patterns are all messed up. I have discovered that essentially if I stay up to about 1-2AM and get up about 7-8AM, I hit the floor running as soon as I am up and feel completely energized all day. Change that to say 11am to 5am (which is what I do now due to my job) and I am worthless until about noon and it doesn't matter how much coffee I put in my system.

One thing I have read is that light makes a big difference in waking up. It's always dark when I wake up. For Christmas, my wife bought me an alarm clock that gradually raises the light level, using 'natural' light, for about half an hour before the noise goes off. I'm going to start giving it a try this week.
 
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Nice quote by the way, Schumacher ;)

Thank you. :) I discovered it only several days ago, and it instantly impressed me. :)

My sleep patterns are all messed up.

Mine currently as well : Due to excessive holiday/vacation (is this the right word ?) late-night-SWTOR-gaming. :rolleyes:

But that's what an alarm clock is for … ;)
 
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