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I'm the only person I've encountered that naturally runs on a 25 hour clock. I get the same amount of sleep per day (~8 hours) but I follow it with 17 hours of
by pg_bot 8y ago
I'm the only person I've encountered that naturally runs on a 25 hour clock. I get the same amount of sleep per day (~8 hours) but I follow it with 17 hours of wakefulness so my clock moves forward by an hour every day. To my knowledge there are no adverse health effects, but it's certainly out of the ordinary. I often wonder if more people are like me since sleep problems are so common, but they cannot follow their natural rhythm since it does not fit into the traditional 9-5 work week.
- tomglynch 8y agoSo you then have periods where you sleep during the day? Work for yourself or have a very flexible employer?
- pg_bot 8y agoYes, I sleep during the day quite often. I currently work for myself, it's never been an issue for other people I've worked for.
- mercutio2 8y agoFunny, I thought living with a 25 hour day was a nearly universal desire for people under 40. Certainly most of my close friends in my teens and 20s would regularly discuss that this would make our lives better. Once I experienced the pain of needing to wake up for a small child, I was forced out of my historical sleep pattern. Fortunately I, like my parents, need less and less sleep as I get older, so 24 hours with an early rising child is more tolerable now than when I initially experienced it.
- rootusrootus 8y agoI suspect there is a pattern -- have kids, learn to wake up earlier. For me it was self-reinforcing; the act of putting the kids down for bed at 8:30PM is like drawing a line in the sand, with quiet hours afterward. It makes it sensible to go to bed earlier and wake up earlier.
- sleepnoob 8y agoI have a coworker like that. We have flexible hours, so it's not too bad for him, though we do have core hours where we expect people to be available for meetings, etc. Luckily for him, his boss is pretty laid back about such things, and we can also often video conference in from home. So worst-case he gets up for a meeting, calls in, then goes back to sleep. But others like you definitely exist!
- nanomonkey 8y agoIf it's any consolation, my roommate in college had the exact same 25 hour circadian rhythm. At the time it was frustrating to me because the hours that he would sleep were more often than not out of phase with my own, but it was interesting none the less.
- smadsen 8y agoYou're not the only one. When I was younger (20s), I used to say I thought days should be about 25 hours long. Now that I'm in my 40s with kids, 24 hours seems plenty.
- sixstringtheory 8y agoI've come to the same conclusion about myself, but I pegged it closer to 26 or 27 hours. For a while I've thought about just letting it rotate through the 24 hour day, to the point that I'm awake all night and sleep all day, until it realigns, to see what would happen. Sounds exactly what you're doing, though. I'm scared that it would have adverse psychological effects... and no doubt it would make working in the "real world" more difficult. Interested to hear more about your experience, how long you've been doing it, etc. In the end, my wife is a lark, so I'd rather be awake with her :)
- aaronmdjones 8y agoI'm at somewhere between 24 and 26 hours a "day". It varies over the course of several weeks.
- Kenji 8y agoI have exactly this.
- cimmanom 8y agoApparently that’s pretty common when your light exposure isn’t dominated by natural light (insufficient exposure to natural light during the day and/or significant exposure to artificial light at night): https://www.circadiansleepdisorders.org/info/cycle_length.php https://www.circadiansleepdisorders.org/info/cycle_length.ph...
- non24 8y agoCongrats, you have Non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake...). I have it too. Have since childhood. There seem to be various incarnations of it: it's pretty common among blind people, though not all have it. Some people just seem to have a really long day, 26+ hours, so that they need extreme light exposure to entrain to the sun's rhythm. I tried that, and apparently it was something else - I suspect a defect in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprachiasmatic_nucleus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprachiasmatic_nucleus), which is a part of the brain responsible from interpreting the signals from the eye that keeps the daily clock in sync. I've mostly fixed it using the Ketogenic Diet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet), which tells me it has something to do with the sugar metabolism in the brain. Because that's what the ketogenic diet addresses eg. in epileptics. Ever since finding out I had this "incurable" condition and fixing it within 3-4 days of keto, I've been just a regular night owl. I like to go to bed at 2am and wake up around 10am, though I have to make due with 12-8 for work :-/ It's not the same though. In my experience, sleeping at the correct time makes an enormous difference. I've been "symptom free" from Non24 for almost 3 years now using keto, and I know of 2 other people that have had success. Should your SCN not be the problem, but you simply have an extremely long circadian rhythm, you can try extreme morning light exposure. This giant article explains tons about DSPS and what he calls the "farmer's lifestyle": https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/sleep#farmers_lifestyle https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/sleep#farmers_lifestyl.... (He's wrong about Non24 always being an extreme form of DSPS - it does exist). It is worth experimenting months at a time and solving this. You'll spend 1/3 of the rest of your life sleeping, finding out how your body wants to sleep is a huge investment. I found out in my 30s that I had an "incurable condition" and had it accidentally fixed a year later.