The Science of Living Stuart Farrimond 219 Reasons to Rethink Your Daily Routine
Beep-beep-beep-beep! It’s morning, and that sound you hear? It’s the dreaded and familiar racket of your alarm clock going off. You reach out and hit snooze before it can drill any further into your sleepy head.
It’s a familiar scenario to many. After all, it’s hard to wake up in the morning. When you do finally pull yourself out of bed, you likely feel as if you’ve gone a few rounds with a heavyweight boxer. Why is it so difficult to feel fresh and sprightly first thing? And what can you do differently?
The key message here is: Mornings can be tough, but there are some tricks that can help.
Feeling a bit groggy in the morning is natural. That’s because many of your bodily systems, like the digestive tract and parts of your brain, fall into deep sleep at night. Getting them all going again can be like starting a car on a frosty morning; it takes a bit of time.
Also, the precise timing of when you wake determines how you feel. At night, your body passes through different stages of sleep. The lighter ones are REM phases – that’s when you dream – while the rest are deep and dreamless. If you wake during REM sleep, you’ll often feel refreshed. But waking from deep, dreamless sleep can leave you in a fog, as the frontal, thinking parts of your brain aren’t ready yet.
So what can you do when this happens? Well, getting out into daylight can help, as it increases levels of special “wake-up” hormones. You could also try stretching, gentle exercise, or yoga, as this will increase your heart rate and get blood flow to the regions of your brain that are still “asleep.”
But while these techniques can help shake off some morning inertia, part of it’s simply biological. Everyone has a different body clock, or chronotype. Your chronotype determines whether or not you’re a morning person, a night owl, or something in between.
For instance, if you always feel sluggish in the morning and alert at night, you’re a night owl. Your natural rhythm is set and there’s little you can do to change it. If that’s the case, your best career choice is one that allows flexible working – a workday tailored to your own personal body clock.
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In the Western world, many people consider breakfast the most important meal of the day. There are cafes dedicated to breakfasting, takeaway breakfasts for commuters, and whole supermarket aisles full of breakfast cereals.
But it wasn’t always like this. The Romans snacked very lightly in the morning and ate their main meal in the middle of the day. Breakfast has become such an institution as a result of a concerted effort by business – namely, profit-hungry breakfast cereal manufacturers.
But if that’s the case, could you go without it?
The key message here is: Breakfast isn’t quite as important as you think.
The truth is, there’s no hard evidence that eating breakfast makes you healthier. Recent studies have shown that, contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t fire up your metabolism and help you shed calories, either. There’s a small increase in the metabolic rate at breakfast time, but it’s no bigger than with any other meal.