Does time of SLEEP matter?

As title says, as long as you get the hours of sleep needed, does it matter what time you go to bed? Does your body have a natural clock that says it's best to be asleep by dark, or something like that?

you can train your body to go to sleep on a schedule. that's how people work nights and sleep all day

You should try to go to sleep around the same time every night if you can. Your body has a circadian rhythm(referring to the 24hr rhythmic output of the human biological clock) and studies show if you are doing something like shift work where you are sleeping different times every day, your body will definetely suffer.

My brother in law has worked nights for years and he say's it never really feels right to him.

Yea there is a difference between sleeping at night and in the day. Your body is naturally gonna do certain things at certain times of the day regardless of when you go to sleep. This has to do with things such as light exposure. There's nothing you can really do about it.

[QUOTE=3000calories]you can train your body to go to sleep on a schedule. that's how people work nights and sleep all day[/QUOTE]

Yeah the "natural clock" is fixable. And once you do get it changed for a while it's a pain in the ass to try and fix it.


I think only people who always have been "night people" can get away with sleeping during the day without any problems or it "Not feeling right" like someone else said.

by "training" you're saying the body can get around reacting to external stimuli (light) to determine when to release certain hormones for sleep/wake?

I don't think light really has anything to do with it. I think it's more about time. Just like some people can naturally get up at 5am, others at 7am, others at 10am everyday. Or if you normaly sleep 8 hours and go to bed 2 hours later, you might wake up 2 hours later too.