Larks and owls
NB: This is not an accurate word-for-word transcript
Dan: Hello and welcome to this week’s 6 minute English. I’m Dan Walker Smithand today I’m joined by Kate.
Now Kate, would you say you’re more of a morning or an evening person?
Kate: I’d say I’m definitely a morning person. I love going to bed early and gettingup early.
Dan: OK, well that makes you a lark. People who are better in the morning arek nown as ‘larks’, after the famously early-rising birds. And people who arebetter at night are sometimes known as ‘owls（猫头鹰）’ or 'night-owls', after the birds which tend to come out at night.
Kate: That’s an interesting theory. How about you? Are you a morning or a night person?
Dan: I’m definitely an owl. I go to bed very late and I love staying in late in themorning. I just don’t deal with daytime at all.
Kate: Oh, so we’re complete opposites(对立) then.
Dan: Yup.
Kate: Well, apparently around half the world’s population are naturally co-ordinatedto wake up early or late. It’s in our genetics or make-up, like our eye-colour orheight.
Dan: So this week’s question to you Kate is: on average how many hours do adults sleep each night? Is it:
a) 6 and a half hoursb) 7 and a half hoursc) 8 and a half hoursKate: Well I think that the recommended amount of sleep is somewhere betweenseven and eight hours. But I’m sure that most people don’t get that amount, soI’m going to go for a, six and a half.
Dan: OK, we'll see if you're right at the end of the programme.
Kate: Now, a person's natural rhythm of sleep is known as their body clock. This is what regulates(规定，调节) what time you wake up and when you feel tired. Variations inyour body's temperature affect tiredness, so some people are naturally morealert or awake during the morning hours, and others are more productive late atnight.
Dan: Before we had electricity, our sleeping patterns were basically decided by thesun. We would get up at dawn, when the sun rises, and fall asleep at dusk,when the sun goes down.
Kate: But now unfortunately the pressures of work and society mean that most of usdon't follow our natural body clocks or the rhythm of the sun, so we often don'tget enough sleep.
Dan: Now we're going to hear now from sleep specialist Professor Till Roennebergon how modern working life is affecting our sleep patterns. You'll hear theword optimally, which means 'in the best way' and also the words internaland external.
Kate: Internal means located inside, and external refers to anything happening onthe outside – in this case inside or outside the human body.
So have a listen. How are people who naturally stay up late affected by modernworking hours?
Extract 1We have to be aware of the fact that the very late people are actually on a permanentshift working schedule, because they have to get up against their body clock and theydon’t perform optimally, and so forth, very often they don’t get enough sleep.
Because what’s happening is that the signal that allows people to fall asleep comes fromthe internal body clock, whereas the signal on work days to get up comes from anexternal clock.
Dan: OK, so owls - people who naturally wake up late and stay up late – can often feel tired because they're working against their body clock. They don’t performoptimally because they haven't had enough sleep.
Some people compare the experience to jet lag – what do they mean by that Kate?
Kate: Well jet lag is the tiredness you feel after you've been on a flight and havetravelled to a different time zone. So when Professor Roenneberg here calls theexperience of living on a different cycle to your work companions a 'social jetlag', he means it causes the same sort of tiredness that you get after a longflight.
Extract 2If you fly from New York to London, you are in a completely new light/dark cycle;you’re flying somewhere else. And that earlier sunrise will make your clock adapt toexactly the London time. But with a social jet lag, it’s your internal and external timesthat are out of sync, and nothing in the conditions of light or darkness will change. Andtherefore you will stay like this all your life.
Kate: It sounds miserable; you're essentially not co-ordinated – or out of sync – withthe time zone you're in, so you're tired all the time. Sync is short forsynchronised, which means to happen at the same rate or speed. So if something's out of sync(不同步), it's happening at the wrong pace.
Dan: We also heard the words internal and external again, this time referring totime-zones.
Now the best way to adapt your body clock to a new routine is with light. Ifyou're not great in the mornings, try to get out into the sunlight as soon aspossible. And if you get tired in the evenings, you should try to spend sometime outdoors then.
Kate: So here's the British sleep scientist Russell Foster talking about the affect of light on our body clock. Can you tell me how much brighter sunlight is thanartificial light?
Extract 3 If we look at the average amount of light in the home environment or the officeenvironment, it’s extremely low. So, for example, shortly after dawn, natural sunlight,even in the UK, is some 50 to 100 times brighter than average office-lighting or homelightingconditions. And by noon natural light is some 500 to 1,000 times brighter.
Kate: So it would take an awful lot of artificial light to adjust your body clock in thesame way sun can.
Dan: OK we’re almost out of time, so let’s go over some of the vocabulary we’vecome across today:
owl and larkbody clockdawn and duskinternal and externaljet lagsynchroniseout of syncDan: And finally Kate, back to today's question: I asked you how much sleep adultsget to sleep each night?
Kate: And I went for a, six and half hours, because I’m sure people don’t get enoughsleep these days.
Dan: Well I read that apparently it’s seven and a half hours. But I certainly don’t getthat and don’t think most people do either.
Kate: Interesting. Well I aim for about ten, but I rarely get that either.
Dan: Well, from all of us here at BBC Learning English, thanks for listening, sleepwell, and goodbye!
Kate: Goodbye!(本文由在线英语听力室整理编辑)
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