What is the best bedtime?

What bugs me is people that say 'you will adjust, just go to bed earlier.'

After 15 years of rising early i still, as always, find the hours after 8pm to be my most productive. I am very focused and energetic, and my mental clarity is at its peak.

The problem is often not lack of tiredness, but simply feeling "not sleepy" when one is "supposed to be". Their minds are active, they feel activated and can't settle down. Can be a tough problem to solve. Morning bright light treatment sometimes help. Melatonin before bedtime might help. Talk to you health care people find out the options.

But of course, anxiety and depression are top causes of insomnia. Various therapies are often quite helpful.

Worth pointing out that there are a huge range of conditions that cause sleep disturbances, and many are impossible to determine without specific evaluation. Some conditions are downright weird so don't be embarrassed if you feel freakish on that account. Believe me, I've heard many strange sleep histories, but I've not considered a single one of them to be unbelievable.

We should check out what's going on. I refer 2 or 3 people every week for sleep evaluations, afterwards almost all say, "hey that wasn't a bad experience at all."

Poor sleep can be lead to bigger health problems--it's a long list I won't go into it now, but a good part of the time helping sleep helps alleviate other conditions.

Basic healthy sleep rules: give an hour to wind down and to wake up. Avoid the "blue light" body snatching phones, computers and all the rest of those evil things ;) Especially in that PM winding-down time.

In any case, if you have frequent or continuous sleep disturbance, don't suffer silently, talk to your primary care doc, just describe the trouble, don't try to explain it, that's the doc's job. Don't underplay the problem, it may be serious. It's just taking good care of yourself, and since it is your top priority job, don't wait do it.

This idea that we all should adhere to the exact same rhythm is ridiculous and it just serves to stigmatize people who despite all efforts can't fit in, especially if they're late risers.

Personally, I'm at my best when I can wake up about 3-4 hours after sunrise, after about 7-8 hours of sleep. I wake up without an alarm clock, I feel refreshed and ready to start the day. I perform better during the day, and I usually don't feel tired again until it's bed time.

Now, of course there are lots of occasions where this sleep pattern is simply not possible, but no matter how long the disruption lasts, it always feels grindy and awkward. Then I definitely need an alarm clock, I tend to sleep more overall, and I often feel purged about halfway through the day. Nobody can tell me this is what being healthy is supposed to feel like.

Of course a lot of people feel fine rising early, but the obvious mistake here is to derive from it that everybody must do the same. Even as we move away from an agricultural society there is still social pressure to synchronize the entire population as if they were tilling fields.