Eli5: Why does 8 hours sleep from 3am to 11am feel worse than 8 hours sleep from 11pm to 7am

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Eli5

In: Biology

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It doesn’t for everyone. It depends on you. Your body is more suited to sleeping at certain times. For you, sleeping at 3-11am will feel bad cos your body wants to sleep earlier. You’re more of a ‘lark’. For someone else (me) they may like sleeping at 3-11am and feel better than waking up at 7am. They’re owls.

It’s biological. Some people are born as morning people and some as night people. And it’s a sliding scale.

This is useful evolutionarily as it means someone is always able to watch over the tribe. If everyone was the same and had to sleep 11-7 then that’s 8 hours no one is watching the tribe.

There’s a whole lot more that could be said but the circadian rhythm and so on isn’t really eli5. What I could add is that ‘Why we sleep’ by Matthew walker is a good book about this for further info.

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