Intentional Stress Challenge: Determine Your Sleep Chronotype
Progressive challenge series to gain insight into optimal timing of your sleep. Knowledge of your sleep chronotype provides the foundation for improving the overall quality of your sleep.
Sleep Timing
Sleep is the most restorative function we possess. Without it, we would eventually die.
Show me someone who isn’t sleeping well and I’ll show you someone who isn’t doing well.
Optimal functioning requires adequate sleep.
Thanks to the rise in wellness research and public interest in well-being, scientists like Matthew Walker and Andrew Huberman have illuminated how imperative proper sleep is.
Every aspect of mental and physical health is regulated by sleep.
Adequate sleep promotes optimized health while poor sleep compromises function in all ways. The evidence is so profound that a question to ask anyone who may need support is, “how are you sleeping?” rather than “how are you doing?”
Sleep NEEDS to be a priority for anyone hoping to improve well-being.
Unfortunately, you can’t always control your sleep. Illness, injury, children, occupation, emergencies, and other circumstances all have the ability to negatively impact our sleep.
We can, however, know what is uniquely needed to get a good night of sleep when able.
The eyes are an extension of the brain and our exposure to light, particularly the sun, influences our circadian rhythms. Within our natural 24-hour cycles, developed around the sunrise and sunset, we all have specific time periods that our sleep is optimal. These internal clocks are a representation of our sleep chronotype.
Sleep chronotypes represent genetic predispositions we all have relating to the timing of our sleep. Whether we are a morning, night, or intermediate person has more to do with heredity than willpower. It’s important to note that sleep chronotype is separate from subjective preference. You can’t decide that you want to be an early bird when your chronotype is night owl.
Sleep chronotype can be influenced when life requires less than optimal sleep due to uncontrollable circumstance, but it cannot be permanently changed. Many, however, don’t align their actions, specifically the timing of sleep, with ideal windows that promote maximum recovery due to established habits and routines.
The Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) is a self-assessment that helps to determine your sleep chronotype. This three-minute evaluation will encourage reflection on variables relating to sleep timing and give you a score that indicates which sleep chronotype best represents your answers.
Basic Challenge: Take the MEQ.
https://qxmd.com/calculate/calculator_829/morningness-eveningness-questionnaire-meq
The MEQ does an excellent job of informing us of what our sleep chronotype most likely is.
Considerations of our preference and reflection on past experience can reveal opportunities. Furthermore, the score from this quick quiz provides valuable insight into improving the most important aspect of recovery.
We now need to test ourselves with this knowledge and see how we feel.
Advanced Challenge: Following guidance on the MEQ, modify your schedule to allow for eight and a half hours of time in your bed within your ideal sleep window for seven days.
If you have work conflicts making this hard during the week, this might be a great challenge on Fridays/Saturdays.
Initially follow guidance from the MEQ that suggests your optimal sleep window, but you can definitely modify if those attempts are unsuccessful at providing perceptually good sleep.
Another cost-free, subjective way to determine whether you are a morning or night person, if/when unsuccessful with MEQ guidance, is to play with going to bed at different times and then wake up without an alarm clock.
How do you feel in the morning? Under or over-slept?
Indications of under-sleeping include persistent mental fatigue, decreased physical performance, irritability, unusual cravings for caffeine intake or junk food, and symptoms such as headaches or increased pain sensitivity.
Indications of over-sleeping include feeling tired despite adequate amount of sleep, brain fogginess, unusual difficulty with memory, persistent physical fatigue/slow moving, and poor mood.
Indications of adequate sleep timing include waking up at same time (within 30 min) without an alarm and feeling refreshed without the use of coffee.
Use this challenge to subjectively understand yourself and know what a good night of sleep, based on timing, feels like.
Experience is the best educator.
Elite Challenge: Following guidance on MEQ and lessons learned from the advanced challenge, modify your schedule to allow for eight and a half hours of time in your bed within your ideal sleep window for a month.
Will you be able to strictly follow the guidelines every night? Of course not. It’s important to live life and/or respond to uncontrollable needs that prevent adequate sleep.
The knowledge from this challenge, however, is invaluable information to know how set the foundation for improving sleep when needed or able.
Knowledge is power.
There are many more aspects to overall sleep quality that can be considered when trying to enhance recovery.
Knowing ideal timing of sleep for yourself, however, is a crucial first step in further assessing your habits and routines for sleep optimization.
I was expecting a bit more in the form of results but it's no surprise to me that I am a "Definite Evening" person.
Shift work with kids kind of prevents me experimenting to the next level. But I don't think my Chronotype would change even if I could sleep and work when I wanted.