The Morning Myth

CHAPTER 11 Night Owls Are More Relaxed: Getting Up Early Is Stressful (but You Already Knew That)

In the example of 24 circadian rhythms discussed in a previous chapter, you learned that it’s a rush of cortisol—the body’s stress hormone that is produced by the adrenal glands, two walnut-sized glands that sit atop each kidney—that naturally wakes us each day.

The key word here is “naturally”—I personally suffer from a strong sense of anxiety when I have to get up unusually early, and it’s that rush of cortisol, that comes at my body’s natural waking time, that causes it.

I used to belong to a group called the Dallas Business Alliance, and it was so good that I was a member despite the weekly 7:30 a.m. meetings. (Thankfully the meetings were really close to home.) It was also good for Dubya encounters, meaning George W. Bush; his office is in the same building where we met and he showed up at 7:30 a.m. every day. That’s part of how I managed to snag so many selfies with him. I also had Rotary Club of Dallas meetings on Wednesdays, at noon.

However, I was a quivering mess of anxiety on Wednesdays, and I crashed early and crashed hard.

The cause of the anxiety was getting up at 6:15 a.m. in order to get ready and get dressed for my weekly “suit day”; Dallas Business Alliance was held at one of those private social clubs in the Park Cities area of Dallas (read: wealthy) where wearing jeans would cause the entire time-space continuum to collapse while people whose age had to be in ...