ZACH: Welcome to On Health with Houston Methodist. I'm Zach Moore. I'm a photographer and editor here, and I've worked in multimedia and television for over 15 years — and I'm also a longtime podcaster.

 

TODD: I'm Todd Ackerman. I’m a writer/editor who previously covered Science and Medicine for the Houston Chronicle.

 

ZACH: And, Todd, do you consider yourself a night owl or a morning lark?

TODD: I am a night owl to the hilt.

ZACH: This term morning lark seems new to me. I had not heard until we looked into this topic.

TODD: Yeah, I encountered it in some literature, but it was the first time I'd heard of it as well.

ZACH: I'm similar to you, I'm a night owl by nature. As we discuss, an interesting topic of conversation is nature versus nurture with these kinds of things. Have you tried to break the mold of being a night owl? Or have you decided, you know what, this is who I am and I'm going to be a night owl?

TODD: Yeah, I really haven't tried to change. I can remember being a night owl since I was a kid and my career — journalism — has only hardened my tendencies, as you have a very flexible schedule that doesn't start early and goes later. So, I've made it this far. I think this is who I am.

ZACH: I used to work in television, and I probably destroyed whatever circadian rhythm I had naturally after college because I would work the morning news. So, I would get there at 4:00, and then I'd work till about 1:00 or so. Then I'd go home and take a nap for about four hours and then get up and live life with other people and be out till, I don't know, maybe around 11:00 or midnight. Take another four-hour nap, get up, go to work. Not every day, but a lot of times. And you know, when you're like 22 you can probably do that.

 

TODD: Right.

 

ZACH: I don't think I could pull that off today. But even further back, you know, kids always want to stay up late because they want to, like, break the rules and, you know, just, oh, my bedtime’s here and I want to push the boundaries there. And I personally feel like, yeah, that's just your time at night and you want to keep it going. Because once you go to sleep, you got to reset, you wake up, and the day starts. And I think that's where kind of our drive to stay up late is.

 

TODD: Yes, absolutely. I say that to people who, even in my business, were struck at how late my hours were. And I would say: When I go home that that's my time. And, so, the last thing I want to do is go right to bed and start all over again.

ZACH: Right. So, in our quest to better understand this mystery, Todd, who do we talk to this week?

TODD: We spoke with Dr. Randall Wright, a neurologist at Houston Methodist and a sleep medicine expert.

 

[Sound effect signaling beginning of interview]

 

TODD: Maybe we could start out broadly and just from a sort of neurological point of view: What do we know about night owls versus morning birds?

DR. WRIGHT: Those are old tales that we've kind of coined the terms they're a night owl or a morning lark, we sometimes call it. I think we figure out pretty early in life where we think we are at that time, and then throughout life we either solidify it or change. But, I remember when I was growing up, I used to always love to stay up late [and] waking up early was kind of a struggle for me to do so [laughs]. But then as time went on, I really kind of changed to where I'd rather wake up early and go to bed a little bit earlier — and so I would flip flop throughout life. And sometimes it worked out well for me that I could think through it — especially in medical school and residency, as we're training, we're kind of forced to go one direction. You know, when you're on call, you’re up all night and then the next day you have to perform well. And sometimes that works out well, but sometimes — after a while — it catches up with you. And, so, sleep is one of those episodes of life that will change over our lifespan. So, the concept of the night owl and the morning lark really refers to our chronotype — and that's kind of a new buzzword that we’re using a lot now that tells us what is our natural tendency for peak performance, and it's based upon our circadian rhythm. And we all have that, as you know, as you may wake up in the morning and you feel energized, but then towards the evening we start to kind of get sleepy. Right? And that's normal. We all go through that. But even in that variation, some of us — I’m not sure where you are, how you feel…

 

TODD: I've always considered myself a night owl. I have a journalism background and the business sort of facilitates that, just in that you go to work a little later and you work later. We don't have those hospital hours where, you know, doctors are there at 7 a.m. or whatever time it is.

 

DR. WRIGHT: Right. You know, and so we do that. So, sometimes work puts us into a particular phase that we need to work through. And [for] some of us that works well, some of us it doesn’t. And, so, the night owl refers to individuals who have a preference towards staying up later. So, instead of going to bed at 10:00, they really want to go to bed at 11:00, 12:00, 1:00 and then sleep in later. Whereas the morning larks tend to go to bed earlier, 8:00 — 7:00 sometimes — and wake up earlier.

 

TODD: Is it sort of an either/or thing? Or is there a continuum there that people are on? Could there be a middle group?

 

DR. WRIGHT: So, a quarter of our population — about 25% — will be, in theory, will be a morning lark. And then a quarter will be night owls. And the other 50% will be some variation of that time frame. So, it varies.

 

TODD: How about people who alternate according to the season? I have a colleague who was telling me that during the summer he becomes more of a night owl. During the winter, he's more of an early riser.

 

DR. WRIGHT: So, our sleep changes to some degree. And why is that? Because we are — as humans — we are tied to the sun. The sun makes a big difference in how we respond to lots of things. That's where the whole circadian rhythm comes from. The sun really tells us when we should wake up, when we should go to bed. And, so, as the seasons change, the cues from the sun will change for us. And based upon where you are in certain states and certain time zones, all those things will affect how our body responds, when we wake up. So bright light, white light makes us wake up. It's a cue to the brain through a nucleus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus that, hey, it's time to wake up — and it blocks melatonin. As the sun starts to go down in the evening, the light goes down, it changes — the quality and the color of the light on the spectrum changes — and melatonin starts to get produced the more that goes down. And, so, the timing of that is going to vary based on season, based on where we are in that particular time zone. And, so, you can get lots of different variations from where you are. Over our life span, our circadian rhythms will change. So, when we're a younger, we tend to be very much skewed forward. So, kids, you know, will fall asleep earlier and want to sleep for a very long time — kids can sleep 12, 13 hours…for a long time. As we get older, as we approach adolescence, the time that we need to sleep goes down. They come down to a more normal adult type, getting down to the 7 to 8 and then 6 to 8 hours. So, it starts to skew. And they also start to skew when they go to bed, which starts to annoy parents because now they want to stay awake later. I have two young boys and I can literally remember that my son around 9:30 would just literally fall over. He could be watching TV — anything — and then just falls over because he's done. Now, that same kid is pushing 1:00 when he wants to go to bed — just within a year and a half that's changed. So, our chronotype, our circadian rhythms will change over time. In the adults and young adults, they really start to push the limits — and their natural biology wants them to go to bed around 11:00 to 1:00, and so they can stay up late. So, our college students they're naturally up and prowling around all night long because that's kind of their chronotype and what their rhythm dictates. As we get into, you know, adulthood, it kind of comes back down to a different time zone. But then as we get older, our ability to sleep starts to decrease and we start to shift back to almost a childlike time where we start to want to go to bed earlier. So, yeah, so over time you start to see a transition in how our circadian rhythms will function.

 

[Music plays to signal a brief interjection in the interview]

 

ZACH: Because Dr. Wright referenced circadian rhythms a number of times, we thought we'd talk a little more about the concept — which you may know better as one's biological clock. These circadian rhythms coordinate our physical, mental and behavioral changes and repeat roughly every 24 hours. In other words, they make sure the body's processes are optimized at various points during the day. The term “circadian” comes from the Latin word circa meaning “around” and diem meaning “day.” That is: Around a day. When people talk about circadian rhythms, it's often in the context of sleep. The sleep-wake cycle is one of the most clear examples of the importance of circadian rhythms. The most powerful influence on circadian rhythms is light. During the day, it causes your internal clock to send signals that generate alertness and help keep us awake and active. When daylight fades, your circadian rhythm signals your brain to make more melatonin — a hormone that makes you sleepy. When the sun rises, they tell the brain to turn down the melatonin. Internal disruptions can throw our circadian rhythms out of whack. Jet lag, which causes insomnia and sluggishness and distractedness, is the classic example of the sort of malaise caused by circadian confusion. Staying up late over the weekend, dubbed social jetlag, can have the same effect. New understandings into people's biological clocks are giving birth to a new field — circadian medicine, which involves research into the best times to eat, exercise or take medications. But that's probably a topic for another podcast.

 

[Music ends to signal return to the interview]

 

TODD: So, is this definitely a genetic thing? Or does nurture — the environment — also play a role? I mean, the workplace…society is so geared towards early birds, it seems.

 

DR. WRIGHT: Yeah. And, so, I like to think of it as: Genetics sets the stage, but we put on the play. So, genetics will bless us with an ability, or a chronotype, that we have naturally. So, some are naturally just early risers or are naturally late crawlers. But we can also have an environment change it. If we're forced to do shift work, for example, then we're going to change the way we behave. If you're in an environment that — for residency, we were forced to kind of work harder and longer sometimes —would change that. And, so, we can't adapt to it. The issue with adaptation, though, is that, in some cases, it's not good for our health because when we start to work against our chronotype, we can have predisposition to certain diseases: inflammation, our immune system is changed. We seen increase in cardiac diseases, certain cancers — they can result from individuals who have worked against their chronotype. So, we can do it — but there may be a cost and we’re starting to understand more of that in recent years.

 

TODD: So, if early birds were to work a night shift, they could have this problem. Just as night owls having to get up quite early in the morning could have those things?

 

DR. WRIGHT: Absolutely. It was interesting because, even during the pandemic, we started to see changes in our work patterns. People started working from home and they could almost get into their natural chronotype — they could be more efficient because they can sleep in later, they could do different things. And, so, I think you may well see a shift in how we — and we should — see a shift in how we look at work. Because a lot of the work hours were set a long time ago, based upon the sun. It all ties into allowing people to work under their natural chronotype. And I think it’s a wise thing. Even for high schools, we see that some high schools have pushed back their start times to allow their students to get to school later, to sleep in longer.

 

TODD: So, it sounds like you're saying it's not a bad thing to be a night owl. It seems like everything I've read in my entire life is that it is kind of a bad thing.

 

DR. WRIGHT: [laughs] No, not at all. You know — now, what you do in the night is a different story — but to have that natural tendency is just fine.

 

TODD: But just because, historically, society so operates on a day schedule...

 

DR. WRIGHT: Yeah.

 

TODD: It's a bad thing in the sense that you're working against your chronotype.

 

DR. WRIGHT: And those are — I love these interesting kind of philosophical questions — because a long time ago, you know, the ability to work at night wasn't as easy as it is now. And before you had lights and everything, the daylight was just when you got your work done. And, then, when that was down, we had to stop because you couldn't do anything. Then you invent lights and incandescent lights, and now we can keep that going at nighttime. But, then, now we have different devices that emit LEDs — that emit a different spectrum of light. In which, we love to look at our phones before we go to bed, and so now light becomes a big factor in sleep problems. Because now we can have light on us nearly 24/7, and that disrupts our melatonin production — which is a big driver of sleep…

 

[Sound effect signals a brief back-and-forth between the hosts]

 

ZACH: So, talking about your biological clock and knowing your own preferences and tendencies, do you sleep [with] blackout curtains and need complete darkness to go to sleep? Or does sunlight wake you up? Do you feel the first rays of the sun on your face when you wake up? Or do you feel that affecting you in your everyday life, Todd?

 

TODD: You know, I can’t honestly say I do. I haven't done that complete blackout that they recommend. I tried it recently. It's…it did seem to help me fall asleep faster, so maybe I should. But once I'm out, I sleep through earthquakes. So, the light doesn't necessarily wake me.

 

ZACH: Yeah. Like anything else health-related, you know, we kind of lose track sometimes and lose sight of the fact that, you know, we should really be the top experts on our own bodies. Like what sleep cycle works for us or those sorts of things. Because you can try so hard to do something, and, as he said, like, it's kind of nature versus nurture, almost...like your patterns. You can be born a certain way and you can fight it for a certain amount of time to get through medical school or get through a certain job, but, from what I took from him, you're going to kind of fall back into whatever you were born into.

 

TODD: Yeah. Which was great news for me to hear.

 

[Zach and Todd laugh]

 

ZACH: There's no point in even trying to change, because your body's going to force you to go back to what you were.

 

TODD: I spent my whole life thinking this is a negative quality I have, that I'm a night owl. And, so, for him to say you are who you are, I took some solace in that.

 

ZACH: Yeah, I remember in high school — senior year of high school — I had off-periods and I took my first two periods off. So, I went to school at like 9:15 in high school. Normal high school, you know — if you had full seven periods, you get there like 7:00 or something, right? I remember my mom telling me like, “Don't get used to this. When you go to college, you're going to have to get up early.” And, sure enough, I sign up for college and I started all my classes at 10:00, and it was great. So, just having that kind of control over your schedule. But, I’ve always thought this was interesting because you go to grade school for like 12 years and it's more or less — it's not quite an 8 to 5, it’s like a, you know, 7 to 2 or some variation of that, right? You do that for 12 years. You have the schedule that you kind of settle into of like this is how everyday life is. And then you go to college and it's like, well, you can take, you know, classes on Tuesday and Thursday, maybe start at noon or this or that...So, for a large majority of people, your schedule is completely out of whack in college. And then you finish your four or five years and then you go into the workforce and [it’s] 8 to 5. And it's just this strange anomaly, like connecting the two of like the workforce adulthood and the grade school. I don’t know, I feel like college screws up whatever patterns you have that you develop when you're younger.

 

TODD: I think some people had it forced on them even in college, with a lot of classes that were only available at 8 a.m. I, too, was able to find classes.

 

ZACH: Liberal arts majors here, right?

 

TODD: Right.

 

[Zach and Todd laugh]

 

TODD: But, yes, it's probably telling that I never went into a profession that requires you to be at work at 8 a.m. But, you know, Dr. Wright himself mentioned that he was a night owl and was able to change. So, I guess it is possible.

 

[Sound effect signals commercial break, commercial plays and sound effect signals return to the interview]

 

TODD: Are there any generalizations we can make about the two categories beyond how it affects your chronotype. Say, are early risers more productive, better test takers — like it seems I've read over the years?

 

DR. WRIGHT: I think if you operate in your chronotype, you can do amazing things. It's when we're not operating, and it gets back to your earlier question about society — [which] is really a little biased towards the morning larks. Some restaurants open up early, some close early. And certain towns everything shuts down early. And, so, it's really biased towards the morning larks…and with that being the case, if someone's trying to operate in that system, they may have more difficulty. But I think if we start to make more accommodations that fit with that chronotype, I think they can do it just as fine.

 

TODD: And have a health impact. Same thing? It's just if you're in your chronotype milieu, then then it's okay? Or are there inherently any higher risks from being a night owl?

 

DR. WRIGHT: Most people don't recognize that their chronotype exists, and we all try to force ourselves to be in bed, you know, by 10:00 and up by 6:00 or whatever that small window is. But in many individuals who — if you're a night owl — you do realize that and you're trying to go to bed early, you're really missing your window of performance and you're going to bed at a time when your body is just not ready. And, so, then you're going to perceive yourself as having insomnia, and then you going to seek treatments for that. And you might take medications to try to put you to sleep earlier and all kind of things that can result from that…when you’re really just fighting against your biology. So, in our practice, I'm not quick to prescribe medications. I do try to take some time to understand someone's chronotype, understand what other factors maybe are contributing to their insomnia — that may be biological, may be sleep apnea or may be some kind of medical condition — before jumping into prescribing medication. Because if I can get you sleeping naturally, that's going to be really to your advantage.

 

TODD: Is there any left brain, right brain component to this? I read some suggestion that night owls are more creative.

 

DR. WRIGHT: That's another fun conversation because creativity is one thing that is really good if you get a good night's sleep, especially we get into the dreaming conversation — as far as why do we dream and what can happen when we're dreaming? It's a time when our brain is disinhibited. We can…there are no holds barred. And, so, one might argue that the more you sleep — or getting a lot of sleep — allows you to have those times of creativity when we're dreaming. And, so, what side of the brain that affects? I think it affects all sides of the brain. It can make you a better mathematician because you think of math problems in a different way. Many of our geniuses throughout the years in the past who had their greatest epiphanies with mathematics came from the creative side — though they are thought of to be very logical. So, I really think a good night's sleep floats all boats.

 

TODD: So can you change? Like, say, a morning person gets a job as a shift worker. What can they do about that?

 

DR. WRIGHT: So, I think that we can change how we perform, right? So, we can change — we can become a shift worker, working at night. The real question is, if I do that, what happens to me biologically, right? Is that a good thing? Because many studies are showing that shift workers may increase their risk of certain conditions, like heart disease, certain cancers, certain cognitive disorders — because there is that shift from sleeping in our natural rhythm, our chronotype. And when we change from that, our immune system starts to go a little bit awry. And we're seeing that those things may happen. So, we can do it. The question is, should we? Or should we work for society that allows us to really work in our chronotype? You may ask: Why do we have chronotypes? Maybe that's why. So, it's like filtering out, okay, who should be the night shift people? There is your night owl — go for it. Who's your day shift people? There’s your morning lark — go for it. Maybe working with our biology may actually give us better outcomes when we do have jobs that need to get done.

 

TODD: As long as we do have jobs that force some people into the opposite of their chronotype, is there any tips you have on how to adapt?

 

DR. WRIGHT: That's the beauty of — as we understand more about sleep and we understand why we sleep and how we sleep — we can start to do things that allow us to maybe improve it or take a situation, make it better. So, for example, we know that light is a driving factor for sleep. So, when it's bright in the morning, that's a cue to our brain to wake up. Time to get up, let’s get going. When it gets darker, that’s the cue for us to start to go to bed. So, we can use that information to start to create an environment that's best for us, for our sleeping. We call that sleep hygiene. And so some of the tips or tricks that we use for sleep hygiene for individuals who may suffer from insomnia is to make sure that when it's time to go to bed, they create a routine…For any of us, we perform best in routine. Our brains love routine. And, so, going to bed around the same time every night and waking up around the same time in the morning, that does the brain a great job. When we're erratic in that behavior, we don't do as well. We’re sleepier. We know that a decrease in temperature of one degree is a sign to the brain that it is time to go to bed. So, if a shift worker is trying to go to bed and its daytime, get the blackout shades, keep it dark, but also start to drop the temperature in the room. Around 67 degrees is kind of where the brain likes to be when it's time to sleep. But it's also the falling temperature that is a trigger to the brain that it's time to go to sleep. So often some say, hey, take a warm shower and then go to bed into a cool room. And that transition tells the brain — it's a natural trigger to tell the brain — it's time to go to bed. So, those kinds of tricks can be helpful in helping someone ingrain a routine that's off their natural chronotype.

 

TODD: A shower both wakes you — you know, as a night owl, I often find the only thing that gets me awake in the morning is a shower. Showers both wake you up and get you ready for sleep?

 

DR. WRIGHT: So, if you if you've been in the bed all night — cozy in the bed — and you hit a cold shower. Yes, I’m waking up big time.

 

[Todd and Dr. Wright both laugh]

 

TODD: Well, I don't take cold showers.

 

DR. WRIGHT: You don’t have cold showers.

 

[Todd and Dr. Wright both laugh]

 

Todd: No.

 

[Todd and Dr. Wright both laugh]

 

DR. WRIGHT: Yeah, but no, the body is very sensitive to temperature. And, also too, a rise in temperature is a very strong arousal. So, in our household — my wife and I over the years have fought about bedtimes and things like that — until we got a device that allowed us to control the temperature from my phone. That was an amazing device for me. And, so, I was able to set that, around a certain time, the house starts to cool, and now we have our trigger to start to go to bed. But, in the morning time, it starts to heat up — and I can feel it. I can tell when what time it is by when I feel the heat rising. I'm like, okay, now it's time to get up. Because heat, you know, from my deep sleep, wakes me up. Without having light, without having an alarm, I can tell when the temperature rises.

 

TODD: So, does society, do schools need to...should this be more of a topic of conversation? We need to sort of identify what you are, and so for what direction you want to go in life?

 

DR. WRIGHT: So, are you suggesting that instead of placement tests we have chronotype tests?

 

[Dr. Wright laughs]

 

TODD: Yeah.

 

DR WRIGHT: I think that would be wonderful, because knowing who you have there makes a big difference in what's going on. Now, I'm not sure if they can ever stagger school based upon someone's chronotype test. Because, on average, there's going to be a lot of the students who are in high school and college…we know where they are for the most part, right. But maybe when it comes down to job duties and assigning roles, I think it would be very helpful to know who you have. You might not place that early morning meeting at 7 a.m. if you got a room full of night owls there, you know. You might push it back towards later in the evening. So, I think you can have a smarter business, a smarter university, if we start to utilize this information.

 

TODD: In summary, I guess what you're saying is that the big issue isn't whether you're a night owl or a morning person. It's identifying which you are.

 

DR. WRIGHT: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, no one's better. Night owl, morning lark — they're both amazing categories of people. But if you're not operating in your natural zone, you're not going to be as efficient. And, so, as we start to talk about this — so, thank you for the conversation today because I think it's a great topic to start off with — as you start to identify that we can optimize our own personal performance and also start to help prevent certain diseases. Because recognizing that these sleeping mismatches of not operating in your chronotype can be a risk factor for certain diseases, wouldn’t it be amazing to start to prevent some of those things? And that's really, from my vantage point as a brain wellness provider who looks for that, it gets me super excited.

 

TODD: Okay, very good. All right, anything else you want to add?

 

DR. WRIGHT: Sleep is one of these pillars of health that has been very much underrepresented for a very long time. We’re used to hearing people say, “You can sleep when you’re dead.” Well, no. If you don't sleep, you will be dead sooner. Because we need to sleep. Sleep really is almost a foundation for all the other things that we do, such as eating and exercising — all those are altered by sleep. Our performance is altered by sleep. And, so, trying to cut down on how much sleep we get is not the answer. Trying to optimize sleep is the answer, and we should talk about it more.

 

TODD: All right, great. Well, thank you for taking time to explain some of these issues to us.

 

DR. WRIGHT: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

 

[Sound effect signals the end of the interview]

 

ZACH: Well, that was a great conversation to have with Dr. Wright, Todd. Something that stuck out to me was the mentioning of lowering the temperature to kind of put you into that sleep state. And you guys talked a little bit about showering, and I prefer to be a night showerer. I like taking warm showers at night. And maybe that's why I feel like I sleep pretty well. I'm pretty — you know, you mentioned earlier you can sleep through an earthquake — I feel like I'm a pretty deep sleeper, as well. And there's a science to that, as you said. Like, you know, if you if you take a hot shower and you go to a cool room, you just kind of drift off and then you're good, right? So, are you…what's your shower situation? You a morning or night showerer?

 

TODD: I'm definitely a morning showerer. That's the only thing that wakes me up, helps me wake up — partly because it clears up my sinuses.

 

[Zach laughs]

 

TODD: But it's always a hot shower and I still find that that is helpful. I only take showers at night when I've worked out and come back. And, I agree, that that does seem to get you in into a sort of a more mellow mood, that it's more natural to fall asleep.

 

ZACH: Soothing.

 

TODD: Yeah.

 

ZACH: Yeah. And trying to — you know, we mentioned off the top, trying to break that mold, right. Of being a night owl or morning lark. And, ultimately, society seems to, as you mentioned in your conversation, leans to favor the morning larks.

 

TODD: Yes. He seemed to indicate that maybe there was some possibility to change that. I'm not real optimistic. I think the key is to find something that fits your chronotype. If you're a morning lark, obviously society is already geared to you. But if you're more of a night owl, the best thing is probably to find something that fits your natural schedule.

 

ZACH: Yeah, he mentioned even testing for, you know, this sort of thing when you're younger — as far as aptitude test. And, I don't know, I think it's a great idea. But when you're a kid, might not be developed yet — so maybe that's not the best time either. It's just one of these things you kind of figure out as you grow, right?

 

TODD: Yeah. To me, it sounds great, too — but I think that's going to be a lot of years before society ever gets to that point.

 

[Todd laughs]

 

ZACH: And, as he mentioned, you know, the way technology has evolved, a lot more work can be done at night, right? I mean, we have electricity. Even 100, 150 years ago…it's like, well, it's dark now, so, unless you have a candle, you can't get much done. But [now] there's a lot of opportunity out there to work a different schedule. But, again, does it correlate with a field that you have a good aptitude in, that you're interested in. So, there's a lot of factors that people may or may not be considering when they pick a career that, you know, maybe they should — because sleep is something that you have to do every day. So, having it fit into a good rhythm for your own body is going to be, in the long run, best for your health.

 

[Music begins]

 

TODD: I agree that it would be great if we could make these changes, and maybe we can make them as work becomes more remote. It certainly gives people a lot of more flexibility to fit things into their schedule.

 

ZACH: All right. Well, that's going to do it for us this week. And be sure to share, like, and subscribe On Health with Houston Methodist wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this conversation, for more topics like this, visit our blog at houstonmethodist.org/blog. Stay tuned and stay healthy.

[End of episode]