At night at 3 in Germany
"I am in a trance and yet highly concentrated"
For me, the best part of the night starts now. People danced really well, are relaxed, get fully involved in the music. I can carry them through my sound like a wave up and smoothly surf down again. A powerful feeling. Some party guests scream in ecstasy on the dance floor. Also, I am like in a trance and yet highly concentrated. Filled with adrenaline, I dive right into the music.
And then? So around five o'clock in the morning my performance is usually over. Many party guests come to me and want to talk. I'd rather be alone for a moment now, but I keep small talk because I do not want to come across arrogantly. Shortly before sunrise, I like to dance myself, too, in order to slow down. When I finally get home, I'll go to bed, but I can not sleep deep and long. I get up at noon. The day went by, great energy to go to sports or make friends, I do not have anymore. Basically, I'm not a night owl at all. On the contrary. I am a sleeping bag - during the week I often lie in bed at nine in the evening.
Is that healthy? Early risers during the week, night owl on weekends - that's a pretty blatant change for our inner clock. It is as small as a grain of rice and sits about the height of the nose, behind the eyes in our brains, but brings our whole life into the right rhythm. "Our internal clock controls a lot in our body," says Till Roenneberg, professor of chronobiology at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. The release of hormones, the physical fitness, the temporal activation and deactivation of individual genes, the blood pressure, our desire for sex. She works around the clock, is quite conservative and likes to go to bed at the same time. But of course she forgives us dancing nights and little sleep.
"Do not get up for another three hours - the thought makes me so happy"
At 3pm Julia Schulters, 25, a journalist, turns on the alarm clock. Just because.
Okay, maybe a bit crazy, my quibble might be. But I am not alone. The group "I calculate at night, how long I can sleep" has 83,791 members at StudiVZ.
I sleep so deeply, as if someone had missed me an anesthetic injection, and at the latest after ten seconds mattress touch, I'm gone. That's a pity. For this moment, when the body becomes very heavy, when one gives in to tiredness and gently slips into sleep, that is pure happiness for me. A beautiful feeling that I would like to enjoy more often. That's why I put the alarm clock at three o'clock at night.
And then? I lie there for a few moments with my eyes open and feel the peace of the night. The knowledge that I do not have to get up for at least three hours makes me happy. But before I really enjoyed this beautiful feeling, I fell asleep again. Unfortunately, I can not follow my alarm clock too often, because with my friend, the nocturnal ringing sets everything else, but certainly no happy hormones free.
Is that healthy? No one sleeps through the night. Everyone wakes up about four to five times, even if we do not notice. Waking up consciously once you enjoy it is therefore perfectly okay. Only those who do not fall asleep again after that and get stressed out should better resist this fun. Incidentally, in the first half of the night, we go through quite a lot of deep sleep in several stages. "A sleep phase lasts about 90 minutes." Deep sleep is especially important for concentration, memory and mental alertness, "says Prof. Svenja Happe, sleep doctor from Bremen. In the second half of the night, from about four o'clock, the sleep becomes restless, now we dream a lot. One knows from the latest sleep research: This time is especially important for our physical fitness.
"I can be anywhere - preferably over the clouds"
At 3 o'clock, stewardess Özgül Göcer, 26, finally enjoys a cup of tea.
Thailand, South Africa, USA - I often fly long-haul, to all regions of the world. A tight sleep rhythm is not in my job. At three o'clock at night I can be anywhere - especially over the clouds on my favorite track, the night flight from Miami to Dusseldorf. We leave Miami at 5pm local time, in Germany it's 11am. Before the start I take a little nap, then I feel fitter. We take care of more than 300 passengers during the flight, because you are constantly on the back and forth. Here is a glass of water as a blanket. In between, serve food and clear away trays.At three o'clock in the morning we are already six hours on the road and we are crossing the Atlantic. All we have left is nightlight, and many passengers are trying to get some sleep. Now it's time for me to sit down, have a cup of tea and relax a little.
And then? We land in Düsseldorf at about eight o'clock in the morning. I have been up for almost 24 hours. The hardest thing is that I have to go home by car now. Good that I am only 15 minutes away. Because sleep deprivation makes me feel drunk. At home I still try to stay awake the whole day long and go to bed until the evening. That's the only way to get back into German rhythm. This lasts about one to two days, then a new shift follows, and my inner clock comes again into skidding. I do this job, which is sometimes very stressful, for three years, and I do not want to miss it.
Is that healthy? Özgül Göcer is virtually in permanent jet lag. Their biorhythm is completely confused. The best way to deal with it, if you are only a few days in a different time zone: "Retain the original rhythm, do not adapt to the new time zone," says sleep doctor Svenja Happe. Incidentally, the time difference makes night people less to do than early risers. As a rule of thumb, we get used to one hour per day. And: Time shifts to the east (eg Japan) are harder to cope with than west, because eastwards we fly against our internal clock.
"Do not wake up now"
At night at 3, Svenja Happe, 40, a sleep doctor, is reluctant to have children's wishes, and she thinks, "Do not wake up now."
I am a night person and go to bed very late. At three o'clock I am usually in the middle of a deep sleep. My children (now one and three years old) only rarely wake me up at this time. Luckily, because of the quality of sleep and the recovery that is unfortunately particularly unfavorable to be awakened just from the deep sleep. The body is then full of sleep hormones, it is very difficult wake up and comes out of bed bad.
And then? If the children wake up at this time, because they are sick, of course, then I have to get up. I try to make no light as possible. So I can fall asleep quickly and am rested the next morning reasonably. And I get enough sleep overall. That's because I synchronized my babies' sleeping time with my rhythm as quickly as possible. For me as a night owl that meant, I always waited for the last breastfeeding around one o'clock and afterwards I'm going to bed. So I pretty soon had four or even five hours of sleep at a stretch.
Is that healthy? To be reasonably fit the next day, it does not matter how long we sleep, but that we have at least three to four hours in a row, that is, without interruptions. Otherwise, sleep deprivation is not good at all in the long run and causes us to be less efficient physically and mentally and to feel stressed out. The relationship with couples also suffers, according to an American study. The good news for parents of small children: There seem to be certain protections that help especially young parents to get along for a while with little sleep.
