Social jetlag occurs partly because of rising at an "unnaturally" time on weekdays.Type II diabetes is more common in people who shift between night and day shifts frequently.Social jetlag is associated with a greater risk of developing heart disease, depression, or obesity.Check out more stories from Insider's business page.Insider Life: The best in real estate, fitness and travel. Loading Click to sign up for Insider's marketing emails. You also agree to receive partner offers.My alarm clock is a constant annoyance. It doesn't matter what sound it makes, I have tried every possible option: birdsong, my favorite song, or a neutral ringing.The sound is too much for me.I am not a "snooze button-pusher", nor do I leave my smartphone ringing for more than three minutes before switching it off. My alarm clock is the only sound I fear more than any other.I am confident that I'm not alone in feeling this way. I imagine many late-risers feel the same.This is precisely why I would like to find out what it's like not to have an alarm clock during a normal work week.This is not something I do for fun, but I also want to prove something. I wrote an article about how one year of getting up at 7am every morning (an hour earlier than usual) was bad for my health. It prompted people from all over the globe to write me, from New Zealand to the Netherlands.Although some people wrote to me to tell me how whiny they thought I was, the majority felt the same. People were complaining about how their productivity was affected by having to get up earlier.Do not fight your body clockThese problems are not our imaginations. There is a scientifically proven phenomenon called "social Jetlag" that causes them.Every person has a body clock, and each ticks slightly differently.This is why some people are "early birds", while others are "night owls".Negative health effects can result from working against your body clock.What happens when your body finally listens to you?My self-test was inspired by an experiment that Kenneth P. Wright, University of Colorado Boulder, conducted in 2013.For a week, he took 13 people to Rocky Mountains Camp.The study's purpose was to not only get people out of their daily lives and make it easier for them to wake up without alarms, but also to reduce the impact of artificial light.Wright concluded that participants' "social Jetlag" experienced an improvement within a week. Participants' sleep rhythms had changed to sunrise and sunset. (I should clarify that I didn’t sleep in the forest for one week, then went to work every day).This is what I did:I tried to wake up every morning without an alarm clock. I tried to keep light pollution to a minimum (i.e. I avoided using the phone or television after sunset. As little light as possible, I made sure that the blinds were open to allow daylight in the room.I informed my boss and coworkers that I was likely to be late for work, but I assumed that I wouldn't suddenly fall asleep after 11.00 AM the next morning.Or so I thought. I get up around eight every morning. In the past, when I set my alarm for 8.00 AM, I have often woken up before it had even begun to go off. Maybe I was wrong.MondayMy egg is trying to tell me something. Business Insider DeutschlandI slept in at 11.00 and woke up at 8.06 on Monday.A colleague asked me if my experiment had been started when I arrived at work on time at nine o'clock that morning. Many couldn't believe my answer when I told them I had. One colleague said, "You're more punctual that you are getting up with an alarmclock!"In truth, I did cheat a little. I didn't rely entirely on my body clock.I was astonished to see the bright sun rising in the morning when I woke up. I checked the time and flinched.It read 7.05am, so I turned the clock over and slept for another hour. I decided to not check the clock until it was time to get up.It didn't go well the first morning.I couldn't resist the temptation of turning on the lights in my bedroom at night.There are many benefits to avoiding your phone or TV at night. You go to bed earlier because artificial light doesn’t wake you up (or maybe you fall asleep because there is nothing else to do).Our bodies follow a biological rhythm that revolves around daylight. This rhythm can vary from one person to the next, and even between animals and plants."The rhythm of the day is the basis for almost every function in the body. Till Roenberg, a professor at LMU who is considered to be one of the most respected experts on the subject of the internal clock of the human body, says that our body clock regulates all internal processes, including the concentrations of calcium, magnesium, potassium, and the presence of enzymes.Roenneberg differentiates between two types sleepers: larks, which are early risers, and owls, which are more nocturnal people. There are many degrees in between.TuesdayOn Tuesday, I woke up at 8.03 AM after having gone to bed at 11 PM the night before.Although I did cheat, it was not intentional! Half-past seven I woke up briefly, checked my watch, and then fell asleep for half an hour.I'm not sure why I kept getting up. I believe it was fear of oversleeping or not showing up at work by 11.00.It's simple: waking up early without an alarm clock is healthier. The hormone melatonin regulates the body's night-day rhythm.We get tired when the blood melatonin levels rise in the evening. We wake up when it drops again in the morning.Alarm clocks can be a problem because they pull you out of bed even though your body's level of melatonin is not high enough to allow you to get up easily. This is why we feel so broken all day.Although it's only the second day of my "no alarm clock” routine, I feel so much more awake and fresh. Tuesday is also my barre-workout day. It's basically a mix of ballet and exercise.We always do around 100 forms of sit-ups at the end of each lesson and about two minutes of planks.Normaly, I feel exhausted after the last set of exercise and can barely lift my arms. But my workout was much more enjoyable than expected.I know that I won't fall asleep tonight because the dance class is over at 9.00pm. I have this problem with sports in the evenings.WednesdayAfter going to bed at 11.30pm the night before, Wednesday was my first day of work.It was done. I hadn't checked my watch since the morning. I woke up when I felt refreshed and awake and checked the time only afterward.It's a boring experiment, according to my colleagues. I get up every day. This confirms my prediction that 8.00 AM is my time, and I need at most eight hours sleep.To prepare myself for the experiment I took part in a conference about chronobiology.Chronobiology, the study of the internal time clock, has been a serious topic for a long time. For their work in chronobiology, three scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in Oct 2017. They were able to decode the genetic mechanisms that arise from the internal clock in fruit flies's brains.The conference taught me that our internal clock is more like fruit flies than we think. I learned that older people get up earlier and sleep less, and that it works differently for men and women. Even our internal clock determines the effectiveness of medicines.After spending a day with scientists at Harvard, LMU, and Oxford, it almost felt like my entire life was determined by my inner clock. People who fight it continuously are more vulnerable to disease.I am so confident that I will be able get up at 8 o'clock every day without having to set an alarm, that I made arrangements to meet an eBay seller at 9 a.m. the next morning to pick up a vacuum.ThursdayI had been drinking cocktails until the third day, which made it worse for my sleep quality. Business Insider DeutschlandIt turned out that I was a bit too optimistic the previous day. After going to bed at midnight, I woke up at 8.48 AM.I didn't know that I would be joining my colleagues at a bar later in the evening when I made an appointment with the eBay seller.Even if I only drink a small amount of alcohol, it makes me sleep very poorly. Even though I had only one small beer and a strawberry and gin cocktail, I was still in bed and awake well into the night.It was still eight o'clock in the morning when I woke up. Then, shock! It was 8.48 AM. This was not only the first day I got to work after 9.00, but I was also late to get the vacuum cleaner.I washed, got dressed, and applied my makeup in 12 minutes. This is a personal record.The seller was not in a hurry and was still waiting for me.FridayFriday was Friday. I went to bed at 11.30pm and woke up at 8.35am. Although I did sleep a bit longer than the first day of my experiment, Fridays are not that important as I work remotely.Now, I feel like I know when I am going to be awake in the morning and when it is time to get up. It was 8.30 in the morning when I opened my eyes.Perhaps it is also due to getting used to the daylight after five days. I noticed that I felt very tired throughout the week. I usually feel lethargic at lunchtime or late in the afternoon, and I frequently have to yawn.I felt very rested throughout the week and tired at night around half-past ten each day.SaturdayI fell asleep on Friday night around midnight, and woke up Saturday morning at 8.17 AM.Isn't this amazing?Even though it is Saturday, and I can sleep as much as I like, I feel completely rested and awake at 8:17 AM. This was to my boyfriend's dismay. He had returned from Friday's business trip and would probably have preferred a lie in.This Saturday, I will Facetime my family in Austria. Without knowing anything about my experiment, my mother says that I look fresh and that the dark shadows that were under my eyes are almost gone.Day seven was a great day. I was so energized that I went up a 1,668-metre peak. Business Insider DeutschlandIt was a sign that my inner clock has been working for me. I noticed I was waking up almost every morning without an alarm clock. It shows that my lifestyle is compatible with my inner clock, but it's not always.Researchers at the University of Colorado published a March study that found people who switch between night and day work 40 percent more likely than others to develop Type II Diabetes. Studies in the past have shown that social jetlag is associated with a higher chance of developing heart disease, depression and obesity.According to Till Roenneberg, a German researcher, companies should create work time models that are compatible with their employees' internal clocks.SundayThis is not Photoshop. This is me just before I climbed to the top. Business Insider DeutschlandSunday was Sunday. I went to bed at 00.55 AM and woke up at 9:38 AM. Because I had gone to the cinema to see a late show, I went to bed earlier than normal the previous day. Sunday was the only day I didn't get up at nine in the week.My fitness was definitely improved by my week without an alarm clock. My boyfriend and me went hiking in the mountains with our lunch. We decided to not walk but climb 1,668 meters. According to my health app, we covered 580 meters or 170 floors. It was amazing how simple everything was. I was able to climb even the most difficult passages with ease, even though my boyfriend was a little jealous. I had been hiking for the past week and found that hiking trails that were flatter were more challenging.Revert to the alarm clockAfter having slept at 22.15, I woke up at 5.40am. You are now back in reality. After the experiment, I was rudely awakened to get on a train. Now I remember how horrible the alarm clock sounded.It's more than that. After getting up so early, I noticed how tired I felt all day. It feels like the day is blurring before my eyes. Although I look forward to getting back to bed each morning, I feel like there is no escape when I get to sleep at night.I know that I don't need to be up at eight every day, so I am able to rest easy. This time corresponds to my internal clock, as I have seen over the last week.I woke up between 8 and 9 a.m., even without an alarm clock. Weekends were the best because there was no need to get up.I'm sure Till Roenneberg, and other chronobiologists, would criticize me. My self-test is not suitable for publication in a scientific journal.Although I can only speak for myself this week, it has shown me that I am much more productive and fitter when I listen to what my body is telling me.
