Question #32: How does our body know what time it is?
-
- July
- 22
So, the other night I was exhausted. I mean, brutally tired. Just done.
The next morning, however, I had to be up early – like, 6:30 a.m. early – and so I made sure to set two alarms when I finally put my head down just before midnight.
Now, if you’d asked me before I went to sleep, I would have guessed that without an alarm clock to wake me, I would have probably been able to sleep 10 hours easily. That’s how tired I was – I’d only gotten a few hours sleep the night before, had been up early that day and been outside in the sun for much of the afternoon before then going to write a column that evening. So, without interruption, I figured I’d be in for a Rip Van Winkle-style slumber.
Yet when I opened one eye for the first time the next morning, the clock’s red numbers said, “6:25.”
Amazing. My body and brain just knew what time I had to be up. And this happens all the time. Whenever I have an appointment or something in the morning, I just seem to wake up a few minutes before the alarm goes off. Does this happen to other people? And why do we do it?
I guess it’s a good thing. Certainly it’s better than the alternative of sleeping through alarms on a regular basis. Though, frankly, my first thought when I woke up that morning wasn’t happiness over the knowledge that I wasn’t going to be late. No, it was more irritation with myself:
Stupid internal clock. Why did I have to gyp myself out of five more minutes of sleep?
For me, if I have an important reason to be up in the morning, my brain will keep my body … “nervous”(?) would be the best way to describe it. I’ll get some light sleep and wake more readily than I would if I had nothing the next morning. Only if I have had a rough few day*s* will my brain not work like that. One bad night one override my brains ability to make me sleep light. It takes several bad nights or long days for my body to be able to overrule my brain. Don’t know why it does that, but it’s definitely saved my butt on several occassions so I won’t complain.
My body’s internal clock has been heavily damaged. If I don’t set an alarm I sleep past my wake up time by a few hours. I’ve had to wake up at the same time for the last 3 years, and yet my body’s still not used to it. I think my body decided a long time ago that 11am was my wake up time, and anything less than that was sleep deprivation.