![]() ![]() Your sleep patterns can impact important areas of your life. Differences in sex are also present, with women tending to wake earlier and generally preferring morning activities when compared to men. With increasing age in adulthood, one is likely to become even more morning oriented. Aged 17 to 20, the return to morningness may mark the end of adolescence. Kindergarten aged children are morning oriented, but by the teenage years, there has often been a shift to eveningness. Chronotype has been shown to vary with age. While your chronotype might be affected by genetics, there are other factors that can impact your preferred sleep pattern. While some people were sleeping, others could stay awake and protect the tribe. The variation between individuals could have evolved as a survival technique in hunter-gatherers, as it may have offered groups greater collective safety. Using chromosome information available in the UK Biobank cohort, researchers identified new genetic loci that could be related to core circadian rhythm and light-sensing pathways. There is emerging evidence suggesting that our chronotype has a strong genetic component. Those who lean towards morningness prefer to go to bed and wake earlier than those who lean towards eveningness. “Morningness” and “eveningness” are alternative terms used to describe an individual’s chronotype and preferences for when one chooses to sleep. Circadian rhythm disturbances have also been identified in some mood disorders including depression and seasonal affective disorder. For example, those who live close to the north pole are known to be at risk of sleep disturbances including “midwinter insomnia” during dark periods of the year. While the circadian rhythm occurs naturally in health, external factors such as light and temperature can interrupt it. Put simply, the circadian rhythm helps us to stay awake during the day so that we sleep at night. One of the key topics of study in chronobiology is how our chronotype is related to the circadian rhythm, a process that keeps our sleep-wake cycle roughly the same so that it can repeat every 24 hours. Franz Halberg of the University of Minnesota, who has coined the term circadian, is widely considered to be the father of American chronobiology. Chronobiology examines both the effect of time on biological events, and our internal biological clocks. Chronotypes are studied in the field of chronobiology, the study of biological rhythms. ![]()
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