Dr. Michael Breus

Now, we can't tell everybody to wake up at the same time who goes to bed at midnight, and then some people are going to bed at 10, 9, 8.

So let's take a look at your friend here.

I would argue that if we knew what his or her chronotype is, and we told them which one of these swim lanes, if you will, to swim in, here's what ends up happening.

They don't need as much sleep.

This is going to sound crazy, but what happens is sleep consolidates.

A lot of people, once I get them figured out which one of their four chronotypes they are, they only require about six and a half to seven hours of sleep.

So their sleep need drops because they're within the zone of good sleep for their biology.

So what ends up happening is you don't have to change anything.

You just have to know when.

That's why the book is called The Power of When.

That's the third book.

of when to do things, right?

And so here's where it gets interesting is this chronotype works for every activity you do awake or asleep because it's based on hormones.

As an example, if you're an early person, like you said that you are, here's what has a tendency to happen.

As you're sleeping, your core body temperature begins to rise earlier than people who are a night owl.

I'm a night owl.

So as an example, your core body temperature would rise up around 435 o'clock in the morning and you would wake up.

My core body temperature as a night owl or what I call a wolf, my core body temperature doesn't rise until seven o'clock.

So if I'm trying to wake up at 630 and my melatonin is still going until seven, that makes it really hard to wake up.

That's the rub is once you know your chronotype, if you sleep within your chronotypical timeframe, you actually require less sleep and the quality of your sleep improves.