Fighting your natural body clock

[FullLondonEye]

My husband's natural body clock wants him to be asleep by 8pm and up at 4am. His father has always been the same. He doesn't want this because it makes it hard to live a normal life.

My body clock doesn't work that way. I already go to bed and get up earlier than my natural rhythm so we can spend a reasonable amount of time together but fighting these hours is leaving him feeling so tired. I don't feel great for it either.

Has anyone ever found a way to reset their natural body clock? Or how to work against what it wants without feeling awful?

Following with interest, my body clock would much prefer I am up at 10am and in bed by 1am ish .
I live alone so nobody to disturb but I have to be up for work at 4.30am ( no option to change this )

Really difficult to alter your natural rhythm

My young sons natural body clock has him sleeping only 5 hours per night (around 10pm-3am) and he is ready to embrace the day. The paediatrician has prescribed melatonin to help this. I'm wondering if there are any medications that act in the opposite way that could help him? Or even an occasional pro-plus, though I don't know how safe that is long term

I'm the same as your DH. my body shuts down at 7.30, I get restless legs and start to yawn. I absolutely hate going out at night.

DH stays up till 2/3am at the weekends. I get up a couple of hours after he goes to sleep. We spend about 8hrs in the same timezone. Honestly from pm I start counting the hours to bed!

I find it so difficult to fight it. I can't watch TV in the evening. If DH is watching something I watch on catch up the next day. It makes me feel sick and ill to stay up late.

Even in the summer. Plus I keep the same time schedule at the weekend too.

@Moveyourbleedingarse I also get restless legs if I stay up beyond my sleep time (though mine's later than yours) - wonder if that's 'a thing'? And what the mechanism of that is?

You can reset it but it’s only ever temporary really. You need to be really strict though and not deviate as one slip up and your natural body clock will be back. By default I’m a late night person but my career and my hobbies dictate that I need to be a mornings person so I’ve been playing against type most of my adult life. It’s really bloody hard but it can be done but it’s never permanent.

My natural body clock would have me getting up around 11am and going to bed at 3am. It's not at all conducive to a normal job, but I have to manage it. I can't seem to change it, so I just have to catch up on sleep at the weekend. Funnily enough, two of my three adult children are night owls too.

The answer is yes. Otherwise how would be able to adjust to daylight saving twice a year?

@Moveyourbleedingarse@WotthehellMehitabel
Have you both had ferratin levels tested? Extreme tiredness and restless legs can be symptoms of low ferratin stores.

That's a very sane reply. Regrettably, my circadian rhythm isn't sane. My natural bedtime's about 3am, in summer time it shifts seamlessly to 4am. This is extra annoying during the summer months, as it's getting light at 4 and my 'Sleep Now' instinct battles my 'Dawn! A new day has begun!' instinct.

I'm retired now but, tbh, it wasn't any better while working. My work called for a lot of socialising, so I made the most of long dinners and boozy parties. I could get away with coming in late because I'd been working all night.

Still had to sleep all weekend (daytime) though. I had a psychiatrist who said another patient gave up her City job and became a croupier to accommodate her night-owl tendencies. Said she was much happier!

It's probably fortunate I couldn't have children ...

I go with my natural rhythm and DH sticks with his

He went before 9am and will sleep til his alarm at 7am. No alarm and he will have 12 or more hours

Me?, My alarm goes off at 5am, if Im lucky I'll get to sleep before 2 am

I was shattered the other night and took myself off at just before 9pm. Wide awake at 12pm , sat up till 4 am and got another hours sleep before the alarm

Mine is 116! So definitely not a ferritin issue!

I have been an early morning - early bed person all my life. Made an effort through uni to take part in some social life but it has been awful. Now I'm 44 and don't give a shit. I share time with my night owl DH during waking hours. If we WFH we try to have our breaks together. Otherwise, whatever 😂

I’m the same! Go to bed early and wake up early. I don’t think you can change it, I’ve always been this way. My DS is an early riser as well! OH on the other hand is a night owl. He would stay up all night and sleep all day if he could! We don’t really spend much time together 😂

Same here - asleep by 9:30pm and up at 5am. Even with losing the hour when the clocks change, my body over a couple of weeks will adjust and go back to my normal routine.

I asked chatgpt how to change this sleeping pattern and it recommended putting back bedtime by 15 mins at a time and staying in bed in the morning until 5:45am earliest; no looking at phone, reading or lights on. I tried this for 3 weeks and got nowhere 😄 I just accept now that I’m an early bird!

So interesting to see people are so different, never considered this before and why I always stay up so late, and struggle to get up.

The clocks are changing, so that will screw everything up again, but must mean you can reset to some extent?

Thinking outside the box here... Have you read about the 'second sleep'? People used to sleep in two chunks in pre-electricity times, getting up in the small hours for an hour or two of relaxing, chatting, possibly sex! Could you have a 2am date with no screens for a couple of months, then he might sleep later and that might mean he can stay up a bit later in the evenings?

I personally find that my body clock is very closely linked to when I eat. So generally if I want to go to bed earlier, I need to eat my main meal earlier (and my other meals correspondingly earlier too) as my body 'expects' to be getting sleepy however many hours after eating. So if you usually eat at 9pm due to being a night owl, try pushing your meals earlier.

I used to be a get up at 5am, go to bed at 10pm person.
When I married a man who was also an early riser I shifted and became a go to bed at 2 a.m. get up at 9am person. I think this was because I needed more alone time.
Now that I live alone and can enjoy unlimited alone time I'm finding it hard to shift back to being an early riser.

It is possible of course, to make yourself live differently from your natural body clock.
Millions of us have to do it throughout our working life, and whilst still at school or college.

I am like @DramaAlpaca
My natural body clock would have me getting up around 11am and going to bed at 3am. It's not at all conducive to a normal job, but I have to manage it. I can't seem to change it, so I just have to catch up on sleep at the weekend.

.......but of course have had to adjust to more typical waking hours throughout my life.
One of the things I love about now being retired - I can stay up until 1am or 2am, when I am wide awake, but actually get enough sleep by staying in bed for 8 hour sleep.
I have always been one to 'power through' and then lie in when I was able to at weekends, or even go to sleep in the afternoon for a couple of hours to try to catch up some sleep.
Some people struggle with 'catch up naps' and prefer to gradually get in to going to be later, and then sleeping that bit later in the mornings..... Don't go up until 30mins after you have been, for a while, then when you get used to that, push your bedtime back by another 20mins of half hour.

I think you can do it temporarily but it never feels natural.
I only feel good on 9 hours sleep.
When I first had a baby 30 years ago I had to bring my bedtime forward to 8pm in order to get some semblance of sleep.
Now I am retired and I am always ready for bed at 9pm, I try to spin it out for an hour and read in bed but I am longing for sleep. It doesn't seem to matter what time I get up i feel the same. Sometimes I'm awake for 3 hours in the night and will sleep later but if I am lights out at ten I'll wake up at 7 (with a couple of bathroom breaks).
It means I dread anything that requires me to go out in the evening and I've given up some regular nights out which were good for me. We went out a few weeks ago and at 9pm I whispered to DH that I wanted to leave. He had already predicted to our friends that I would crash at 9pm.

I am looking at options like this one. Husband looks terrified when I suggest it! 😁

I think we're going to start by trying to follow his 8pm-4am schedule for a while, to see what happens. If he really starts to feel better and more energised by doing this then we can work on a longer term plan to fit in better with both of us. If not then it's probably not the source of the problem or the solution. How I make this work for my body clock I don't yet know, but I'm working on the basis that his working day is much harder, physically, than mine, so it's more important for him to sleep better, plus I'm peri-menopausal anyway so good sleep is never a given for me regardless of bedtime. Essentially my sleep comfort is easier to sacrifice, at least on a trial basis.

I'm another night owl, I would naturally go to sleep at around 1-2am and wake around 10-11am. I really could do with 9 hours a night but that never happens. On a weekend I'll easily sleep til 10 no matter what time I fall asleep. It irritates me so much when people say it's lazy, it's just how some people are.

Even my 5yo loves a lie in! She's going to be just like me.

I do have a job and obviously we need to get to school so I wake at around 7am, I still struggle to get to sleep any earlier than around 12.30-1am which means getting up on a morning is a massive struggle. Has to be done though, our society isn't built for night owls.

I don't know if they still do it but I know a lot of countries historically had a siesta, mostly to avoid working during the hottest part of the day but that system would also suit me too.
No matter what I am doing work , weekend or holidays I could very happily kip between 2 and 4pm and then be ready to keep until midnight /2am

Stay up past 8pm even to 8:30 to start with for a while and slowly increase it. Take ashwaganda and magnesium just before sleep to help relax. Please look in to those 2.