Is there an established strict definition of "night owl" that supports this conclusion? I always thought a night owl meant anyone who for whatever reason prefers to stay up late and sleep in, which doesn't really presuppose a genetic cause.
"Circadian rhythm sleep disorders are characterized by a persistent or recurrent pattern of sleep disturbance (difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep and excessive sleepiness) due to alterations of the circadian timekeeping system and/or misalignment of the endogenous circadian rhythm and the external environment." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3523094/
Key part of this being "persistent or recurrent". In other words, people who have been struggling with this for a long time and have it reoccur after trying out different strategies.
Adding a distinction could help. Perhaps "voluntary night owl" vs "involuntary night owl".
The key part is that it's related to the circadian rhythm and time keeping. That it's persistent and recurrent doesn't in itself distinguish it from other sleep disorders that may cause delayed sleep schedule, such as sleep-onset insomnia, or "bad habits" as you call it.
> Adding a distinction could help. Perhaps "voluntary night owl" vs "involuntary night owl".
If you want to address people affected by e.g. DSPD, and not "night owls" in general, it is perhaps just better to simply address them as such.
That certainly fits the description of "night owl," but I don't think there's anything clinical about it. My particular manifestation is more of a lifestyle choice, and based on what I observe in the tech field I'm hardly alone in making this choice. Folks who do have a sleeping disorder causing night owl tendencies to manifest (especially when they'd prefer, socially, to rise early) are in a different boat altogether, and I'm... honestly not qualified to classify them. It's an interesting space.
A personal example is shortness of breath. My friend and I both had that when we were kids. However, I had it because I got bronchitis for a bit. He had it because he was asthmatic. Imagine if I said "Oh, I don't understand what the problem is. All I did was rest and it went away". Well, that won't help my asthmatic friend, will it?
For me, it was about establishing new habits, setting up an environment conducive to sleeping by midnight, and having some external pressures like a work schedule, etc. I've heard this validated by external testimony as well.
Can't say there are no biological factors at play that impact individual inclinations, but it's a bit hard to believe that we're hard-wired for one over the other.
How is this harder to believe than the huge amount of other human characteristics that are directly affected or even effected by the genes?
Now the idea (somewhat supported by the article) is that night owls have a natural cycle longer than 24h. It means they are in a constant state of jet lag. The (unrealistic) solution to get in sync with the rest of the population would be to always go west.
Early birds are in the opposite situation. They have a natural cycle shorter than 24h. It is just that for some reason, waking up and going to bed early is not seen as a problem in our society, while the other way is.
It doesn't last.
guess what? drinking 6 cans of redbull per day fucks up your sleeping schedule.
You read the same thing whenever there's a discussion on clinical depression. People push their anecdotes about mindset changes but fail to acknowledge they were never clinically depressed in the first place.