Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You're So Tired

Written by Till Roenneberg

Narrated by Grover Gardner

Early birds and night owls are born, not made. Sleep patterns are the most obvious manifestation of the highly individualized biological clocks we inherit, but these clocks also regulate bodily functions from digestion to hormone levels to cognition. By understanding and respecting our internal time, we can live better.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ascent Audio
• Release date: Jan 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781469086392

Reviews for Internal Time

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Internal Time was an interesting read and I learned quite a bit about the internal "clocks" that regulate our lives. Like everyone, I was familiar with the concepts of early birds and night owls, but our internal clocks regulate much more, including how organs such as our livers work. Each chapter starts with a "short story" of a few paragraphs or a page which is used to illustrate the biological/scientific theories or facts that follow. Sometimes the stories were a bit too simplistic or far-fetched; sometimes the explanations were too complex for me to follow completely. But, overall worth reading.

[dazzyj_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A fascinating exploration of a little understood yet fundamental aspect of each of us as human beings in the world. The innovative technique of starting each chapter with a mini story is a bit awkward at times but for a scientist Roenneberg is not a bad author of fiction. And it is an example (like Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow") of how science writing by actual scientists who have researched and thought long and hard about a subject is light years ahead of the lazy science writing that predominates the book lists today, whereby journalists try to scrape a few bucks together by reading a bunch of scientific journal articles on a subject and summarizing experimental procedures to pad out their treatment of the subject.