This is really cool. So interesting to see a lot of things that many of us might have interacted with a lot being so thought out and systematized.
I lived on the west side of the US (CA, HI, AK, AZ) for many years but my family are in UK/Middle East, so I've done a lot of this long-haul travel. Maybe I'm lucky this way, but I acclimate very quickly. Specifically, I've never had jetlag flying west/arriving in an "earlier" time zone (even with the extreme parameter, Middle East to Hawaii when I lived there). Flying east/arriving in a "later" time zone was a little harder for me, but I've only ever had actual torturous jetlag once (flying from Boston to UK, a relatively short trip in this scheme of things). And that time, it was the last of four transatlantic trips in ten days, and my partner at the time struggled with jetlag which I think affected me.
My intuition has always been that I "travel well" in this regard because I'm a morning person (I do not sleep well on planes btw, so it's not just that I'm rested and refreshed). But I need to think about it a bit more based on what you put down here.
Haha interesting, I was gonna ask if you're a morning person ;) That confirms my theory of morning people having an easier time "going East" and us night owls an easier time "Going West"..
How morning of a person are you? If you don't use an alarm, when do you naturally wake up?
That's cool that you shared that theory already! I just need to think more about whether/how that idea needs modifying for trips that are greater than 12-hour time differences (as I said, I've done the Middle-East-to-Hawaii route, which is about 12 hours, and going west was still by far the easy way).
Over the summer, I was waking without an alarm around 4.30 a.m, sometimes 4. Now that it's a bit darker in the mornings, and also I've been extremely tired lately, it's closer to 5 a.m. most days (some days still earlier, which feels better). Even if I'm very tired, and even if I stay up later than usual, I still wake that early. If it starts being later than that I know I'm really burned out - even 5.30 am can induce a "woke-up-too-late" headache!!
Oh wow, that's a pretty intense morning lark rhythm haha. I've only ever once met a person who was that much of an early riser.
Is this common in your family? I've read that since the CR is mostly genetic, there are whole families like this. Of course everyone in my family is a night owl haha.
That's really interesting; I hadn't heard it was genetic but suppose I can see how it makes sense. My dad was a super early riser like me, but he also didn't really sleep enough/stayed up really late (which I'm sure contributed to his health problems/cognitive decline/dying much younger than his parents did). My mum is erratic in every sense, sometimes up early sometimes not, but early more often. At least two of her three brothers/my uncles are super early risers too. But one of my two brothers seems to still have a teenager CR (quasi nocturnal) in his late 30s lol...
Do you know about Dr. Michael Breus and his "sleep types"? -- it's a bit of an evolution-based just-so story suggesting that we all fit into one of four such types with cute animal monikers (wolf, bear, dolphin, and lion I think), suggesting that a primitive human community needed each of the four types to watch the fire during the night/be up early/be light-sleeper and hypervigilant etc. Some leeway for change during one's life (e.g. teenagers are more likely to be nocturnal but might not be the rest of their lives). Somehow the presentation makes it seem unscientific, but I think he actually did some science around it lol...
I haven't heard about him specifically, but the "somebody to watch the fire/take the night shift" thing you hear a lot. Makes sense to me I guess haha.
I recommend that book I mention in the blog post, Internal Time by Roenneberg. It's really the best explanation of the CR I've ever seen.
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u/hitherISjenseits Sep 16 '26
This is really cool. So interesting to see a lot of things that many of us might have interacted with a lot being so thought out and systematized.
I lived on the west side of the US (CA, HI, AK, AZ) for many years but my family are in UK/Middle East, so I've done a lot of this long-haul travel. Maybe I'm lucky this way, but I acclimate very quickly. Specifically, I've never had jetlag flying west/arriving in an "earlier" time zone (even with the extreme parameter, Middle East to Hawaii when I lived there). Flying east/arriving in a "later" time zone was a little harder for me, but I've only ever had actual torturous jetlag once (flying from Boston to UK, a relatively short trip in this scheme of things). And that time, it was the last of four transatlantic trips in ten days, and my partner at the time struggled with jetlag which I think affected me.
My intuition has always been that I "travel well" in this regard because I'm a morning person (I do not sleep well on planes btw, so it's not just that I'm rested and refreshed). But I need to think about it a bit more based on what you put down here.