The joys of an early start

Once upon a time, I'd have bluntly refused the proposition of an 7:50am appointment for a blood test. "Offer me a slot at some civilised time," I would have said. The clinic is 40km (25 miles) away in Wola, a district to the north-west of central Warsaw. 

But having shifted my sleep routine ahead the spring time-change, I thanked the clinic's receptionist for the chance of an early visit, knowing that getting up before sunrise no longer poses a challenge.

And so indeed it proved to turn out. 

I went to bed at nine pm, woke up at 05:07, had a shower, made a thermos of coffee and a packed lunch (or more accurately packed breakfast, as the blood and urine samples had to be on an empty stomach). I fed the cats, and was ready to leave home at six. I caught the train from Chynów to town at 06:18 (below), reaching W-wa Wola station just after seven. Then I took an eastbound tram four stops and walked a bit to the clinic, arriving there at 07:25. 

No one around except the receptionist and the nurse. I got everything done within a few minutes, beating the queues. Beating the queues? Thrashing the queues. Soon I was back on the tram to W-wa Wola and the train back to Chynów. Home before ten (below), with nine thousand paces on the clock.

The sun was shining brightly throughout. A brisk northerly wind put a light chill into the air as I set off to the station, but the sense of aliveness was all-powerful. Sleeping in is no longer an option for the summer months. Grab that dawn!

Think about the terms 'midday' and 'midnight'. The original meanings have slipped, distorted by modern life. 'Midday' is the time when the sun is at its zenith, its highest position in the sky on a given day. Midday is midway between sunrise and sunset. And 'midnight' is halfway between sunset and sunrise. Yet for nowadays, 'midnight' is a time shortly after most folk go to bed. 

Modern humans have been around for 300,000 years give or take, but it's only in the past 100 or so of those years that we've had universal access to electrical lighting. Radio and television have been entertaining our species for slightly shorter, clocks and wristwatches have been informing us of the time for slightly longer. This is the tiniest slither of time in terms of mammalian evolution. 

Our circadian rhythms – our body clocks – have suddenly been thrown out of kilter. The  result is all manner of psychiatric disorders which our rationalist, materialist paradigm says need pharmacological treatment.

But how about changing your sleep patterns instead? Make midnight the middle of your night?

Granted, it can be hard when you're in the nine-to-five. Assuming your midday (sun overhead) is at 12:00, an eight-to-four working day makes more sense... and then there's the whole issue of time change. Clocks going back in the autumn exacerbate the psychiatric effects of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), while the clocks going forward in spring lead to a huge spike in heart attacks and strokes (a 24% jump in cardiac-ward admissions in the week after the time change). 

However, our legislators have shown unwillingness to tackle the issue of daylight-saving time changes. We seem stuck where we were; an overwhelming majority of people across the EU  want to see an end to the spring and autumn time changes, yet the legislators seem unable to act. The European Commission proposed abolishing clock changes in 2018. The European Parliament voted in 2019 to end them (originally by 2021). But the crucial body, the Council of the European Union, has never agreed a common position. And so an indefinite delay is entirely plausible under current conditions. Countries disagree on permanent summer time vs winter time. If countries choose differently, Europe risks a patchwork of time zones, which is politically and economically awkward. Covid, the war in Ukraine and now in Iran have all pushed the issue down the agenda. And so, the EU is not waiting on science or public opinion – it’s waiting on member states to agree with each other. Until that happens, the system persists by default.

So it's up to us as individuals to deal with this each in their own way. In a working world of flexitime and hybrid work, we should be able to get around this.  Of course, much depends how far from the equator and how close to the poles you are. Daylength is the same (just over 12 hours) all year round at the equator, while the two cities nearest the North Pole (Tromsø and Murmansk) have almost no daylight in midwinter and almost no night in midsummer. Warsaw, London and Berlin have (to the nearest hour) seven hours of daylight in midwinter and 17 hours of daylight in midsummer.

The way we sleep depends not only on the time of year, but how far north/south we live. Human sleep timing is governed by the circadian system, centred on the suprachiasmatic nucleus, and the hormone melatonin. Darkness lengthens the melatonin secretion window; light shortens it. Longer nights mean a longer biological 'night signal'. People living close to the equator will tend to sleep the same number of hours all year round, whereas by the time you get as far north as Warsaw, people should be sleeping half an hour more in winter (roughly eight and half hours) and get by with half an hour less in summer (roughly seven and half hours).

The key thing is to aim to keep midday at the middle of your day, and keep symmetrical the times between waking up and sunrise and sunset and going to bed. Ideally, this would mean (for Warsaw, 52° North, 21° East) in summer time (solar noon at 12:30) waking up at 4:45 am and going to bed at 8:45 pm, awake for 16 and half hours of the day, with seven and half hours of sleep, and in winter time (solar noon at 11:30) waking up at 3:45 am and going to bed at 7:15 pm for eight and half hours of sleep. 

This might sound extreme when considering one's social calendar (and the TV schedule for those who still watch), but the above times reflect how things were for the whole of human history until the recent past. Not practical today, to be sure, but a target to keep in mind. An ambition.

Overcome the owl, be more like the lark, for that is our biology. Ah yes. Teenagers and young adults are exempt – their body clocks have been biologically tweaked for a more nocturnal bias, at least until they have found a mate.   

Having said all that – would I readily accept a 7:50 appointment in Wola in midwinter? Not readily, no. It would mean waking up nearly two hours before sunrise. Still, by spreading my eight-and-half hours of winter sleep between quarter to eight in the evening and quarter past four in the morning, straddling the midnight hour equally, it could theoretically be doable...

This time nine years ago:
Changes in Nowa Iwiczna

This time ten years ago:
Tracks to Tarczyn

This time 11 years ago:
Translation and cultural differences

This time 13 years ago:
The demand for Park + Ride keeps growing

This time 14 years ago:
Cycle-friendly London

This time 15 years ago:
The end of the Azure Week