Is it better to go to bed early or late, get up early or sleep in? Should society decide that or your biological clock? Are people lazy when they can’t get out of bed before ten? Is it lazy people versus early birds or does everyone have their own biological rhythm? Are you an A-person or a B-person?
Then and now
Throughout the ages, man has gotten up at the crack of dawn and as soon as it got dark, he went back to sleep. Without light and with all the dangerous animals prowling around at night, there wasn’t much choice. It was survival by not letting yourself be eaten at night and going out to hunt yourself when it got light. And over the centuries, man has persisted in this, but everything changes. Nowadays we have electric light, dangerous animals are in a cage and humans have been further evaluated. We no longer walk around in an animal skin waving a club and nowadays we have doctors and healthier nutritional advice, which, among other things, has ensured that the average person lives longer than ever. So why are we still standing next to our beds at half past seven?
The B society
No one even thought about it until the Danish Camilla King founded the B-society. Then suddenly a lot of people woke up. According to Camilla King, there are A and B persons. A B-person is a popular and scientific name for a person who wakes up later in the morning and is unresponsive before 10:00 am. This person is productive until later in the evening and only gets sleep at midnight or even later. Unlike the A-person, who wakes up early, often as early as 6 a.m., and is immediately energetic. But you also feel tired much earlier in the day and are often asleep by 10 p.m. This appears to be because an A person has a biological clock of 23 hours and the clock of B people has 25 to 27 hours.
60% of humanity is a B person
Camilla King fights for flexible working and school hours, so that these times better suit the different biorhythms of different types of people. According to Camilla King, research shows that 60% of humanity are naturally, clearly or partially B-persons. This means that the vast majority of the population does not function optimally during ‘normal’ working or school hours. According to these studies, you work less effectively if you are not in sync with your biological rhythm. These studies also show that B people get much less sleep than A people over the course of a week. B people try to compensate for this by sleeping more on the weekend.
Teenagers
It turns out that most people function as a B-person between the ages of 12 and 20. So most teenagers are B people. During puberty and teenage years, the brain and body undergo enormous developments. Many daily rhythms also change. All these changes mean that there is less energy in the morning and more in the evening. The young person has difficulty falling asleep and does not get enough sleep. After all, they have to get up early in the morning. This sleep deprivation has negative consequences for body development. It would therefore be better for teenagers if school hours would also optionally start at 11:00 am. So that these young people can meet their sleep needs in accordance with their natural daily rhythm. Studies have shown that most schoolchildren and college students score higher on tests that take place in the afternoon than on tests that take place in the morning hours. All this indicates that it is better for health and educational performance to let young people sleep in.
The importance of regularity for a good night’s sleep
Unfortunately, the lifestyle of our current society is based on the A-person, who gets up early and goes to sleep early. And while people talk about ,the importance of regularity for a good night’s sleep,, it is not easy for a B-person to make that happen. Because you can’t force an A-person to keep his eyes open until midnight any more than you can. For example, you can’t force a B person to go to sleep before midnight. Yet the B person also has to be back at his bedside at 6:30 am. While at night he was not in bed before midnight. Not because he doesn’t want to sleep, but simply because he can’t.
The big question
Do B-persons have to adapt to society with all the unpleasant consequences that entails? Such as health problems, more frequent absenteeism, poorer performance in the workplace and poorer learning performance at school. Or, can society adapt better and ensure that there are better working and school hours for A and B persons?
Finally
The definition of the word ‘normal’ is: As most often occurs, as most people do. But now it turns out that getting up early is not ‘normal’ at all. Since most B-persons are evening people. So you see, people who sleep in are not lazy at all, they are just normal.