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What larks! It's enough to make you 'owl


JamesF

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Or perhaps not.

I'm a night-time person.  Really, really definitely a night-time person.  Left to my own devices, my natural "going to bed" time could quite happily slide around to the point where it's actually starting to get light in the (southern) UK summer.  Which sounds great for astronomy.  But in a piece on the BBC website it reports on research that "owls" have higher rates of depression, anxiety, diabetes, cancer and heart disease than people who identify as "larks".  And apparently the good news doesn't stop there either, with "owls" being more likely to be unemployed, underperform at work and have to retire early due to disability.

So if you're struggling to stay up as late as you'd like on those rare occasions that the clouds part, maybe it's not such a bad thing...

James

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I’m definitely an owl. My record for getting up is 4pm, no alcohol or prior difficult day involved. Left to my own devices I creep later and later even though I freely admit there’s nothing more beautiful than a gently-coloured pastel dawn. I have to positively arrange things in the mornings to reset my clock. I envy larks.

M

Edited by Captain Magenta
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It's long been known that night shift workers are more likely to suffer ill health. Thankfully my shift days are over now. Although much like you James I've always been a creature of the night, it does catch up with you. Luckily these days working 9-5 I really have to force myself to bed but do sleep well.

 

 

Edited by ScouseSpaceCadet
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13 minutes ago, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

It's long been known that night shift workers are more likely to suffer ill health. Thankfully my shift days are over now. Although much like you James I've always been a creature of the night, it does catch up with you. Luckily these days working 9-5 I really have to force myself to bed but do sleep well.

 

 

Lots of this is born of people being shift workers without their say in it and not the inherent badness of a later schedule. Working mornings and evenings mixed was a miserable existence until things got really irreparably out of hand for me with sleep quality. I have worked permanent evening shifts ever since and it felt like this is how life should actually feel when i adjusted to it! Nobody should be forced to work outside their "natural" schedule, but unfortunately the world doesn't work like that. Obviously astronomy is a great hobby for someone whos free time usually begins at around midnight 👍.

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I spent a lot of years working full rotating shifts- a full 7 days of 6-2 earlies, followed by 3 days off followed by a full 7 days of 10- 6 nights followed immediately by a 2-10 late (so as not to sleep into a rest day) followed by 2 days off, 6 2-10 lates and then a day off before starting the pattern all over again.

As you can imagine, a few folk who worked that pattern a lot more than I did, were unable to manage many years of claiming their pension.

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Starting at 39, seven years working evenings. I missed a lot of evening family time with the kids & decent meals.

After those seven years I had an interim 8-4 day job for a year and without any real effort happily lost four stone.

Followed by three years of rotating eight hour earlies, lates, nights and occasional 14 hour day shifts that turned into a much worse hammering 12 hour day/night rotation for a couple of years until I got out of it into 9-5.

When I finished my last shift job this time around that weight had gone back and I have type 2 diabetes. 

Now the weight is slowly coming off and the diabetes is well controlled. I'll never work nights or shifts again no matter how attractive the pay is.

 

Edited by ScouseSpaceCadet
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SWMBO fits in with the owls. She comes to bed most nights close to midnight.

But with my three days of 4am to 1pm work, I'm the opposite. Even on my days off, unless I'm trying to view, I'm in bed by 7.

It's difficult to reset your clock, but it is possible.

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