Social jetlag and its consequences

Why are most people in industrialized societies so tired? The reason lies in an increasing discrepancy between our body clocks' internal time and the social demands on work/school days (social jetlag). Because we predominately work inside, our body clocks have become later over the years while work times have stayed approximately the same.
Body clocks use the light-dark cycle to synchronize to the 24-hr day, while society manipulates social time (e.g., time zones and daylight saving time) ignoring the internal time of an individual. The signal to fall asleep is predominantly controlled by the body clock, whereas wake-up on workdays is enforced by the social clock. As a consequence, close to 80% of the population uses alarm clocks on workdays. The more "social jetlag" people suffer from, the more likely they are to smoke, drink alcohol, and consume caffeine, and the odds are higher that they belong to the overweight/obese portion of the population.

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  Science & Technology

[exarch404]

Like if you also have a primary AND a backup alarm clock just to help you get out of bed on time?

[Paul Zink]

Good in-depth review of the book at the Brain Pickings website: .brainpickings-dot-org/index.p­hp/2012/05/11/internal-time-ti­ll-roenneber/

[ivavivian]

There maybe something into this, but I am not sure about the smoking-alcohol-caffeine thing. People with social jet lags are often artists, party people and other "crazy" folks who like cigarettes, whiskey, and coffee simply more than an average person. I believe it is not a consequence of irregular sleep patterns.

[Jonathan Gray]

No, that is actually not what is meant by the term social jet lag. That small example shows how the general population could be affected by the mere symptoms of social jet lag with up to a one-hour difference. People actually suffering from the disorder are not able to synchronize their body clocks with the sunrise/sunset, and therefore do not experience sleepiness/wakefulness at the same time as the rest of the population. It's like experiencing actual jet lag but not being able to recover.

[vanchanto]

This is a very interesting theory, and I found this summary and the graphs of the research done by Prof Roenneberg that this is based on very illuminating.

Can't include the link for some reason, but suggest you google 'Brainpickings + Roenneberg'

[Monika Toma]

yeah but its another time zone :) and thats what it all was about that people in the same time zone have to wake up at 6:00 even if the Sun isnt rising at the same time at all places :)

[erkin tek]

Dude we've fixed times according to meridians. So Prague people are not lucky compared to Portugise. We both suffer from waking up.

[Lack042]

Protugal is in Europe too :-)

[NZSambo]

Lie and speculation.

Sun worshiping.

Look at Agios Oros life style - it have own clock.

[Sam Botta]

Click "CC" and select one of the Spanish captions. The translation mechanism utilized by Google's YouTube, are not yet perfect, but the masterminds of Google are constantly improving the technology. Very impressive. If it's not working on your screen, contact me as there are a few translators that will translate anything into Spanish for very low fee because they enjoy helping you and me.