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Product Details
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Harvard University Press; Tra edition (April 30, 2012)
First off, I am not a subject matter expert in the realm of "chronobiology". But what Ronneberg describes in this short and very readable introduction to our internal body clocks was my life for the last third of my 30-year military career. As a result, while I can't recommend the book from the researcher angle, I can highly recommend the book from the subject angle. In short, I'm a fan and HIGHLY recommend this book.
Bottom line, Ronneberg's thesis is this: our body clock(s) is(are) real, performs(perform) very important calibrating functions and messing with it(them) has very serious consequences. And from personal experience, I would have to agree. I violated pretty much every "rule" in his book and I wound up paying a very heavy price. Fortunately (though it didn't seem so at the time), mandatory retirement arrived and an inability to go back to work in a second career provided an opportunity to get my clock(s) resynchronized (though not having yet read the book, I had no idea what I was doing other than following what my body was telling me I needed to do).
So what did I do wrong? Well, my work generally entailed long hours in a windowless, fluorescent-lighted, office (no connection with the natural light/dark cycle); too-often, middle-of-the-night phone calls (interrupted sleep cycles); frequent trips across up to 8-10 timezones where I was expected to be at work "bright & early" the day after travelling (unending two-way jet lag); and meetings/events at all hours of the day lasting anywhere from one hour to all day ("social jet lag").Read more ›
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
There are some books that immerse you in a topic and you come away feeling wiser and inspired. Then there are other books that lead you to the edge of learning, throw you a few tasty morsels and then turn off the lights and send you away. For me, Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag and Why You're So Tired, sits squarely in the latter category.
This is a book about the science of sleep. According to the science, sleep is not something that is governed entirely by choice. Instead, it is something deeply rooted at our cellular level. While we have control over when we want to wake and sleep, at our core there is a mechanism that has preset when we should wake and sleep. Not only does this impact on how we feel, but also how we digest, think and function. This sleep preset is, however, not fixed, rather it follows a natural pattern over the course of our lives - varying with age. There is also a divergence between male and female sleeping patterns.
As the book clearly sets out, how we should sleep is profoundly affected by our need to conform to social expectations, whether those are preconceived notions of effectiveness ("the early bird catches the worm") or simply by the fact that we are required to be at work or school at a proscribed time.
The book is set out in 24 chapters (yes because there are 24 hours in a day) and each one begins with a case study/story and then goes on to explain the science behind it. The chapters makes for fascinating reading and there were plenty of sections that I found enlightening and highlighted to come back to. I read this book quite quickly because I was looking forward to getting to the advice section - "Here's how to manage sleep/jet lag/chronotypes etc" - except that part never comes.Read more ›
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
The author takes scientific studies and data, and makes them highly accessible. He transforms their results into clever postmodern parables about how we live our lives, to show why so many of us are out of sync with the itinerary of our minds and bodies. He looks at what makes some folks 'morning' people and others 'night' people; why and how we sleep; how our internal time clocks affect the degree to which we experience pain, when we feel like eating or being intimate; and why many of us are barely making it through our day jobs.
Roenneberg also tackles the unreasonable expectations of our culture, what really happens to us when we travel, and how people and animals respond to changes like Daylight Savings Time. The book was so fascinating, I couldn't put it down!
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I saw a link to this book in a science blog and ordered it. It is a fascinating read - the author illustrates his points about different chronotypes with stories of people's sleep patterns. There is a scientific basis for morning people and night people. And not surprisingly, the factors that go into a person's chronotype are complex and range from genetics to season to stress levels to a person's age. One part I found particularly interesting was the author's examination of the fact that we live in a world of (ideally) 8 hours of continuous sleep followed by 16 hours of being continuously awake. The author shows how this crono-phenomenon is the result of industrialization, electricity, and the modern work force; this has not been the norm for most of our species' existence. I also enjoyed some of the descriptions of different sleep experiments. One of the better books out there on sleep, cronotypes, and our relationship to sleep/time.
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This item: Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You're So Tired
