I’m a night owl!

This New York Times article discusses seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and talks about options such as light treatment and negative ionizers. I went to the suggested questionnaire website to find out if I am in fact a night person.  After I answered a few questions, it said that its diagnostic is not calibrated for somebody of my preferred sleeping hours and did I want to continue answering questions anyway? I think this means that my ideal sleep is longer than a normal person’s. For a decade now I’ve believed that my natural circadian rhythm is longer than our 24-hour day. It seems like it’s around 30 hours: asleep 12, awake 18.

I continued with the questions even though the results wouldn’t be especially accurate.

_________________________________________________

My score is 32.

YOUR MORNINGNESS-EVENINGNESS TYPE IS CONSIDERED TO BE MODERATE EVENING.

WE ESTIMATE THAT YOUR MELATONIN ONSET OCCURS AT ABOUT 11:30 PM.

WE ESTIMATE THAT YOUR “NATURAL” BEDTIME IS AT ABOUT 1:00 AM.
This information can be put to important use if you are trying to organize your daily schedule to best match with your circadian rhythm type. It is especially useful if you want to use light therapy to shift your rhythms in a desired direction (morning light shifts rhythms earlier; evening light shifts them later).

December 20, 2007. Words.