Nine Ways to Become a Morning Person

I cqn relate to what so many of you have written -- I've had delated sleep my entire life. College was a struggle, and over the years I have developed several of the problems linked to the sleep issue. It has caused health, social, and career problems. Also, I believe it has affected my mood. I often think back to my days working rotating shifts at a factory, punching a time clock. Day shift wasexcruciating beyond words, but when graveyard rolled around, I was like a different person: calm, cheerful, productive. Ran twice a day, too. I honestly feel my sleep problem has ruined my life. There is not enough help/support for us. Geez, I'd been happy if I could just get doctors' offices and others to quit calling me at 8 am. -- can't they put a little note in my records that I'm a night worker???

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become a grave digger dummy

i have been a night owl since birth. even as a very yong child (4, 5 and 6) i would stay up all night reading or playing in my bed after my parents thought they were putting me to sleep. naturally, if left alone, (like in the summers during my school years) my body naturally reverts to a sleep schedule of falling asleep around 7 in the morning, and sleeping til about 3 or 4pm. this is my NATURAL sleep cycle. as a child my mom took me to our family doctor because i could not sleep at night. his "advice" was horrible: read at night. well, i was doing that anyway. don't drink caffeine. i never had caffeine as a child anyway, and still don't! he basically had no idea how to help a child that is naturally nocturnal, and through my entire life no doctor has ever has any advice other than take sleeping pills at night. this is my only alternative, because nothing else works. but i hate it because i feel foggy and out of it all day. i wish the world recognized that some people are just nocturnal and operated accordingly. i am in college and it's so hard because all the classes are in the early morning and early afternoon. i don't become alert and mentally active until evening hours, even when i am sleeping at night. it's hard to retain information in the morning, EVEN if i've slept the whole night before. my body and brain are nocturnal. sleeping at night through the aid of sleeping pills doesn't change this. i am frustrated and disappointed, but it's life.

why does health insurance matter when you are reading an article about becoming a morning person anyways? that is a weird change of subject...

@ Nins. I don't know where you get your health insurance but I have never heard of individual plans costing $1500 per month per family. My wife pays $350 a month for her and our daughter and that is with maternity included so your numebrs are WAY off unless you are getting outright robbed by them.

I'll take the lesser of two evils as Obama's idea of the rich that he wants to tax is anything over 50k. He'll screw the middle class like no other president before and he has a liberal congress to do it to.

Did you know that if McCain is elected you will have to pay income tax on the value of the medical insurance that your employer gives you? Worse still, he is offering a tax break for people who pay their own insurance, BUT only $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families.

Let's say you have a family of four. Your insurance policy costs would be at least $1,500-2,500 per month under a self-pay plan, which cost more than employer group plans. So, you pay $18,000 -$30,000 per year for insurance, and you get to deduct only $5,000 of that. If you paid $25,000 for you insurance, you would be out of pocket $20,000 per year. This is FAR WORSE than the current system, where if you are self employed you can deduct 100% of you medical insurance costs.

So, if you're not self employed, you would stick with your Employer's plan. Employer plans for a family of four have a value of $900-$1,500 per month totaling 10,800-$18,000 per year. Surprise! On April 15th, you owe tax on all of that as INCOME to you. Say your bracket is 25%, and the value of your Employer medical plan is $14,000. You will OWE THE IRS an additional $3,500, and that's ON TOP of whatever monthly premium you already pay to your employer for your insurance.

Many analysts say that McCain's new rules would encourage employers to stop offering health benefits. If that happened, then far fewer Americans would be insured than are insured today, because what family of four can afford $18,000-$30,000 out of pocket per year for self-pay health insurance?

Furthermore, McCain's plan does not require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions of people who self-pay their insurance. People under employer group plans have all of their pre-existing conditions covered. This is a hugely unfair aspect of the current system. Insurance companies can afford to cover the pre-existing conditions of the much larger pool of people with group insurance, but they refuse to pay the pre-existing conditions on the smaller pool of self-pay customers. They have been allowed to price gouge the self-pay customers, which is a form of market manipulation that should be illegal.

So let's say one of your kids had diabetes and you have high blood pressure, then your employer stops offering insurance. You now have to buy your own, but you and your child are INELIGIBLE due to pre-existing conditions. Oh, yeah, they will let you buy the insurance, but you can't use it for any pre-existing condition until you have paid on time every month for two years. And you know what happens at one year and 11 months? You get a letter saying your policy has been cancelled. I have many patients this has happened to.

McCain's plan SUCKS.

It does nothing to help middle class working Americans afford or obtain medical insurance. In fact, it makes the current system WORSE.

Now, really, Newsweek!! You have published some excellent science articles; I remember several of them well - and fondly. But this is just garbage. There is a hint in tip #2 that you've talked to someone who knows what Delayed Sleep-Phase is, but you didn't follow up. There are real experts at Johns Hopkins as well as a few dozen others elsewhere. Heck, if you'd even read the Wikipedia article, you should have realized you're on the wrong track. For shame.

This is sound - though painfully obvious - sleep hygiene, and larks can benefit from it, but claiming it will help DSPS people is quite amusing. This from someone who has tried everything that is mentioned in the article (including sleeping pills, which simply don't work on DSPS people, we are not insomniacs). I was willing to just brush it off as an unimportant little article when I read that "we'll get better at 60" - yes, probably we will, just after a lifetime of work humiliation from larks like you, who will forever equate DSPS with laziness, considering you want to "cure" us.

Nancy Collop has not published a single article or study about DSPS; her specialty appears to be sleep apnea. (The other guy, Steven Brown, has published a few studies related to circadian rhythms.) Why didn???t Newsweek talk to a DSPS expert? Seems like irresponsible journalism to me.

The studies on tryptophan are all over the place. The consensus among credible sources is that the typical post-Thanksgiving-meal sleepiness is caused by the large meal and the time of day, not so much the tryptophan.

Sleeping pills do not shift the circadian rhythm; when they work at all, they tend to interfere with REM and stage 4 sleep, which are vitally important for optimal health and daytime alertness.

Actually, the only points that apply to delayed sleep phase are #2 (sunlight) and probably #9 (genetics, according to a few studies, with more still ongoing).

I'm sick of adhering to the Protestant work-ethic-demanded 8am start time for work. Why not let 'night owls' work when they are most productive? Work still gets done--and more of it at a higher quality level. Surely there's a reasonable compromise possible: say, start work at 10am and finish at 6 or 7pm. Obviously, this works in other countries (Spain springs to mind) to great effect. American employers are too uptight and micro-managing.

I abhor getting up early.Always have,always will.When I get up early I feel I am in the twilight zone.I often do not feel well.Takes me a few hours to get my thinking clear.Have been told I stay in the alpha state much longer than most people.

All of this is great advise (i am a physiology student) .. the only information that isn't correct is that turkey does not have enough tryptophan to induce sleep.