It will be no surprise to those who have known me longest that I am an extreme night owl. My normal bedtime hovers between 2-4 am, and I have long given up on maintaining a semblance of early-morning productivity. If anyone needs to reach me before the pre-noon hours, they understand that they must almost physically come shake me out of bed and pour coffee down my throat before I will respond with all but the foggiest of coherent speech.

Despite this seeming handicap, I am a normally productive member of society (some might even say abnormally productive, given all of my groups, causes, activisms and bouts of creativity and efficiency) who just happens to start my productive phase just a little later than most people.

This tendency toward late-night activity began literally in my childhood. I remember my parents coming in to my room when I was six or seven, admonishing me with cries of "It's way past your bedtime young lady! Go to sleep!" upon finding me ensconced with the bedside lamp on and a favorite book in my lap. This despite my own father's late night reading tendencies. Both of my sisters also exhibit this preference for late evening as well. We were labeled "night owls" and told that it "runs in the family".

As I progressed into young adulthood, this tendency toward staying up late interfered with both school and work. I eventually gave up on high school, preferring to drop out rather than put up with the tyranny of early morning classes. I took on work where I could come in late, first preferring the late shifts at various restaurants and then later apprenticing as a sign painter and finally becoming a graphic artist and web developer. I found that in the information technology field, what knowledge you possess in your head will often trump the idea that you can only be productive on a fixed schedule from 8-9 am to 5 or 6 pm.

Still, I struggled with the stigma of laziness and of being an uncooperative worker at various places which were more rigid regarding the workaday schedule, and for many years tried everything I could think of to try to shift my sleeping habits to be more normal, convinced that I really was lazy or that something really was wrong with me. Told by some doctors that I had insomnia, I tried melatonin, sleeping pills, valerian root, early morning light and other herbal, alternative and medicinal cures. I tried shifting my sleep schedule and minimizing artifical lights at night. Some things worked for a short period of time, but then I would backslide right back into the same old habits. Left to my own devices, I kept a very regular schedule of sleep and wake, and felt productive and happy. Whenever I got a new job, it was always fraught with tension as to whether I would last on a morning schedule long enough to convince my employers that I should be allowed to come in a bit later than normal. Mostly, I was sleep deprived for much of the work week, enjoying long stretches of uninterrupted sleep on the weekends when I could get it.

A few years ago I started to look into insomnia cures again after taking yet another corporate 9-5 type of job, and came across something I'd never heard of before. Most people haven't heard of it, which is a little shocking to me given how common it actually is. Some researchers estimate that a significant percentage of the population of the US is affected by Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (DSPS), and some studies show that there could be up to 3 people out of every 2000 with the syndrome. There is some evidence which links DSPS to a genetic cause, stemming from a mutation of the hPer3 (human period 3) gene. I have personally seen DSPS expressed in my children, where my daughter has many of the same behaviours as I did as a child. She will go to bed and then lie awake for up to 3 hours, attempting to fall asleep even though she is not sleepy.

So knowing all of this and reading research and information about this problem, it occurred to me that there is a missing piece to the puzzle and one which it seems has been overlooked by many in the scientific establishment. It may be a difficult thing to prove, but I believe that it is an important idea which could change the way that people think about sleep cycle variations. After much thought about DSPS, it came to me that there is probably a very good reason that a significant minority of the population of human beings has a genetic variant which forces them to stay awake later than their peers. This reason can be attributed to the very survival of the human race throughout the ages, that has been quietly and mostly forgotten in our modern society.

Throughout history, human beings have relied upon one another to keep each other safe. Even prior to the evolutionary phase of homo erectus, early hominids would have been subject to large nocturnal predators which could have decimated a family or tribal population if allowed to get too close to where they were sleeping. It stands to reason that a few million years worth of evolutionary pressure could have helped produce two sets of genetic mutation that just happen to cover the range of the entire sleep/wake cycle of human beings. In these much more primitive times, there eventually emerged a very special set of persons who were literally tasked with the continued survival of their entire family, tribe or village. These persons would be known today as the Night Watchmen.

Now, if you noticed, I mentioned two sets of genetic mutation. In my reading of the current sleep research, it emerged that there is a complementary genetic mutation of a similar clock gene (hPer2) that produces a syndrome which mirrors DSPS, but in which the individual wakens at a very early time of day, usually between 3-5 am. This sydrome is called FASPS or Familial ADVANCED Sleep Phase Syndrome, and the persons who have this mutation awaken much earlier than the normal population, and consequently, will be falling asleep between 6-8 pm. Obviously, this overlaps the sleep/wake period of the DSPS individual neatly, allowing one shift of Night Watchmen to retire as the other awakens. However, even among sleep researchers and professionals, there is a bias towards treating DSPS as something which can be overcome, if only with enough medication and willpower, although FASPS has been studied as a genuine genetic disorder and labeled as a normal variant of sleep. There is also the myth that has been perpetuated by many researchers that artificial illumination (and most recently, computer screens) is the cause of DSPS, despite the accounts of famous night owls throughout history such as Charles Darwin, who kept the midnight oil burning well before the advent of extremely bright indoor artificial lighting or computer screens.

The Night Watchmen would have been tasked with keeping their friends and families safe from harm that could come in the night in any number of ways, from marauding animals to warring tribes, from natural disasters such as floods, fires or mudslides to the more prosaic perpetuation of the species as babies are born or as individuals fall sick. In our modern society, this role has been taken on by people such as the late-shift police officer, doctor, nurse, taxi driver, security guard, midwife and so on.

The answer to this seems simple enough, encourage those with DSPS to take on a night shift type of job, and of course many affected with this syndrome eventually end up doing just that. However, many who struggle with DSPS may not have a situation where they can pursue night shift jobs. One reason may be that many night shift jobs can be woefully underpaid in comparison to other careers, and it may also be difficult to adapt a night shift job to the needs of a family. Many DSPS people may also chose occupations before they fully understand that their tendencies may have a genetic basis, or have simply relied on sheer willpower to force themselves to adapt to a 9-5 schedule.

In our modern information-driven society, there is little reason to force knowledge workers to adhere to a schedule which has it's roots in the industrial revolution, and many companies have understood and adapted to the needs of their workers, with many in the IT field given more leeway to produce their work on their own schedule. However, without education regarding this condition, many employers are reluctant to make allowances for a DSPS individual, and may not understand the need to work with their employees' sleep requirements, or may pass over a "slacker" who consistently comes in to the office late for someone who can adhere to the company's required schedule, regardless of their fitness for the position.

In addition to employers who may not understand the syndrome, there are likely many people who have DSPS who do not realize that they have a genuine disorder of the circadian system. Since it was only discovered and defined beginning in the early 1980's and there has not been a great amount of research devoted to it, good information for both patients, doctors and employers is hard to come by. There are some pages describing various "cures" for DSPS, but a few doctors and researchers are finally beginning to admit that these are mostly ineffective in the long term, and that the syndrome is not a curable disease, but rather a normal variant of the human sleep cycle.

In my view, this is one of the most important things that people affected with DSPS can come to understand, that they are not stupid, unmotivated or lazy, and that they need to work with their sleep cycle rather than fighting against it. Because many people are reluctant to admit their sleep habits if they are still convinced of the stigma related to them, it is possible that the frequency of DSPS in the population goes vastly underreported.

I have not mentioned the struggles of the FASPS individual, merely because although they awaken extremely early, their sleep pattern goes mostly unnoticed because of the fact that they are within the "normal" range of expected behavior, although their friends may find them a bit more unwilling to take on activities that stretch too late into their normal bed-time. FASPS individuals are even frequently lauded as being a good example to other workers, if they have a tendency to arrive at work two to three hours earlier than the normal shift workers arrive.

So this is my manifesto, my declaration of empowerment. People with DSPS are not disabled or in need of "curing". We are the children of the Night Watchmen. From the beginning of the human race we have needed people to watch, protect, serve and keep vigil over our loved ones, friends and family during their most vulnerable time, that of sleep. In our current society, many of us do not have the ability to have that role, but we can still be productive, creative members of society. Since I am just beginning on that path of understanding as well, I decided to write this article in hope that it will help others with DSPS to better understand themselves, and also to encourage people with DSPS to join advocacy groups which can help spread the word that DSPS is a normal, understandable thing and not an illness to be treated.