Are You a Morning Person?

You stumble into work two minutes before you are scheduled to start your work day, like you do every other day on the job. Looking around, you see that nearly everyone else is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at this awful hour. Is it just you? You went to bed early and managed the recommended 8 hours of beauty sleep, showered upon waking, and had a small, healthy breakfast. You wonder to yourself how on earth these other people are doing it. It's in their genes, literally.

Research has shown that whether or not a person is compatible with mornings could definitely be hereditary. Whether you are one of the amazingly morning attuned tribe, or of the alarm clock offender variety could be linked to an inherited condition knows as familial advanced sleep-phase syndrome, lovingly coined as FASPS. This syndrome may be to blame for the lack of certain people being able to adjust their bodies to their internal alarm clocks. Per2, a gene known to help control circadian rhythm, is thought to mutate, which causes FASPS.

Circadian rhythm is the 24-hour cycle of biological processes that occurs in nearly all living objects, and in plants. Brain wave activity, cell regeneration, hormone production, and other bodily processes occur during this cycle. When this cycle has been affected by factors that may include shift changes at work, pregnancy, change in time zones, changes in routine, or medications, circadian rhythm disorders such as FASPS occur. Other disorders involving the circadian rhythm are also common, such as jet lag or rapid time zone change syndrome, which happens in people who travel across time zones. Symptoms of this syndrome can be identified by excessive sleepiness during normal waking hours, and lack of daytime alertness.