2023-08-19 15:39:42
by Cristina Brown
People with a very regular sleep schedule develop a systematic internal body clock and know when to wake up even when they are asleep
People with very regular sleep know, even when they are asleep, when to get up. There are people who claim they don’t need an alarm clock to get up at the right time and, as if nothing had happened, they open their eyes a few seconds before the set time, every day the same. The reason must be sought in how our internal biological clock works. Each individual has his own chronobiology, i.e. the times marked by our body: when it’s time to stay awake, to go to bed and when you start to feel sleepy.
Light and meal times
The internal clock is basically regulated by light. The information on the presence or absence of natural light and how much light enters through our eyes communicates to our suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus , the main regulating center of the so-called circadian rhythm, whether it is time to sleep or to be active. In addition to light, there are other stimuli that regulate the circadian rhythm, such as meal times. Very regular times represent very relevant information for our biological clock. All this is also combined with the degree of activity carried out during the day.
Regular life
Someone who leads a very regular life and always gets up and goes to bed at the same time with very similar activities throughout the day will know when to wake up… even when he is sleeping. Therefore, in people who lead a more or less regular life, the biological clock works very well and it happens that we wake up just before the alarm goes off. And this is the reason why even during the weekend, when in theory we could sleep more, we always wake up at the same fateful time, even without having set the alarm: the brain has that information and continues on its way regular. If a person has regular sleep schedules and, for example, always goes to bed at 11 and always wakes up at seven, during the night he will go through several sleep cycles: first superficial sleep, then deep sleep and finally REM sleep. After 3-4 full sleep cycles your brain will tell you it’s time to get up, which is why your internal clock ticks just before you wake up.
Owls and shift workers
For those who tend to go to bed late and consequently wake up late, the so-called owls, on the other hand it is very difficult to wake up without an alarm clock because the morning is still a period in which sleep makes itself felt: it happens rather that these people turn off the alarm clock over and over again looking for more rest. Even those who work shifts will hardly be able to wake up a few seconds before the alarm clock: work and sleep schedules are so altered that maintaining a regular biorhythm is fundamentally impossible.
August 19, 2023 (change August 19, 2023 | 15:22)
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