We’re sleeping but they’re working

Long before the sun rises and well before most people even consider getting out of bed, a small group of New Zealanders is enjoying a secret world. Virginia Fallon pours herself a strong black coffee and reports.

If Kotuku Coombe woke up just one hour earlier he’d be a night owl, and not an early bird. Five days a week the 30-year-old’s alarm goes at 1am, and he slips quietly out of the house while his family sleeps. An hour later he’s at work in his truck with the radio for company, a packed breakfast in the passenger seat.

It might sound silly, he says, but sometimes driving the empty streets feels like being in a secret world. It’ll be hours before the joggers, dog walkers, and commuters begin to claim the roads. That suits him just fine.

‘‘It’s great, it’s quiet... it’s a bit of a privilege.’’ While most of us are slipping into our deepest periods of REM sleep, other New Zealanders are sharing Coombe’s early-morning world. Whether it’s for work or trying to make the most of that ofttouted productive time before everyone else is awake, they’re doing away with what humans are programmed to do – sleep in the dark.

Early birds say the rest of us are missing out on the best part of the day by trading it in for sleep we either don’t need or can get during other – less wonderful – times of the day. But while these extreme early risers say their body clocks have adjusted to functioning on a different schedule, one expert warns it’s more likely they’ve just forgotten what it feels like to not be tired. And the risk involved in that isn’t worth all the sunrises in the world.

Coombe says he’s used to it. Initially he had to set four alarms to make sure he didn’t sleep in; these days he barely needs one at all. ‘‘The old body clock just adjusted. My eyes just open, and I’m away.’’

For the past six years Coombes has been working for KAM Transport delivering meat and carcasses to Wellington butchers, and he loves the job.

The early starts are part of the routine: about 7am he stops for breakfast and a drink of water – never coffee – and by 10am or so his day is done. There’s time for a nap before the kids come home from school and most nights he’s in bed by 9.30pm.

This quiet pre-dawn life is something he never considers giving up. That sense of being alone in the world, the companionable flick of another truck driver’s lights as they pass on the road, the ability to pick the kids up just too precious to trade.

‘‘The sunrises are always nice too.’’

An hour after Coombe starts his work day, Michael Gray gets out of bed; tiptoes to the bathroom and slips on the clothes he laid out the night before. His children and wife sleep through the process just like he did when his own dad rose before dawn. ‘‘He was good at sneaking out to work, I’ve inherited that.’’

Back then Gray’s father was off to the bakery his son would later take over, taking on the pre-dawn starts as well. Now his day begins at 3am with a five-minute commute to work and the first of only two daily coffees.

Once at work the most noticeable thing is the silence outside; the occasional sound of a passing car the only reminder other people are about.

‘‘It sounds funny, but there’s a bit of a mystique about being up at that hour. It’s like you have the world to yourself.’’

The early starts are necessary for bakers – nobody wants bread made the day before – but Gray says they also allow him a better lifestyle than many.

‘‘When I’m done I’m walking out into an afternoon of sunshine... that’s priceless.’’

He makes sure to get a solid six or seven hours of sleep a night and believes the common adage of the eight-hour sleep requirement is exaggerated. People adjust, he says, and underestimate how strong the body is.

‘‘Obviously there are downsides – you’re not there in the morning with the kids, but that’s all routine-driven and stressful. It’s in the afternoons when you can actually have fun with them.’’

Professor Leigh Signal agrees, though says other downsides associated with disrupted sleep are dangerous, and it’s high time we started taking our shut-eye seriously.

‘‘Humans are made to sleep at night, and yes, most of us absolutely need eight hours.’’

Consistent sleep deprivation leads to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and early death. Complicating that even further, sleep is devalued by a society increasingly prizing productivity over health.

‘‘It is a complete fallacy we can adjust to getting up at 4am every morning and become accustomed to having less sleep. It’s far more likely they no longer remember what it’s like to be well rested.’’

Measuring how we’re doing by how tired we are doesn’t work because while our level of sleepiness initially increases, it ultimately stabilises even as our functioning plummets.

Ex-shift workers often tell the scientist they didn’t feel fully functional and rested until they reverted to normal sleeping hours for a few months. And while she’s all too aware not everyone has a choice in their starting hours, there are ways to manage them: people

need at least two full nights of unrestricted

sleep to catch up on a sleep deficit.

‘‘We spend a third of our lives sleeping – if it wasn’t important it’s the biggest evolutionary mistake ever made.’’

Afew hours after Gray arrives at his bakery, Mackenzie Tuffin is on the water off Petone beach, her eyes on the 2028 Olympics. It sounds cringey, the 18-year-old says of being out there – the water like glass, the sound of other rowers calling to each other in the dark – but sometimes it feels like she’s somewhere else, somewhere other.

Most mornings the 18-year-old trains for two hours then heads off to college before returning to the water for another few hours. She’s been doing it for the past four years and doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to being tired; it’s just something to manage.

‘‘I’m thankful for my study spells, so I can have a little nap at school. We have beanbags in the common room and my friends will wake me for class.’’

Knowing when to rest is important as is not relying on coffee to fuel her through. What really drives her though are the Olympics, and that time

out there in the boat when the lights of commuters heading off to work shine from the shore.

‘‘You don’t hear the cars, only the water rushing and the sounds of seats moving. When the sun rises, it peaks over the water and it’s so stunning.’’

Ryan Bridge, host of Three’s The AM Show, said while he loves his ‘‘bloody great’’ job, the 2.50am alarm for work five times a week can be gruelling.

‘‘The hardest parts are falling asleep, and staying asleep.’’

He’s been given a lot of advice on what to do and when to do it to make sure he is well rested.

That included having a shower before bed to cool the body temperature and ‘‘don’t have sex in the evening’’.

Having a cool bed also helped prepare for a good night’s sleep.

Summer complicates matters with warmer and brighter conditions. A couple of times a week he sleeps in a separate bed from his partner to reduce the chance of interrupting precious sleep time.

Bridge said he used melatonin, and had been prescribed sleeping pills, which he is reluctant to use.

After the three-hour weekday show finished at 9am, he said there was a meeting and after that he would try and squeeze in a 45-minute nap before heading to the gym. He said that post-nap feeling was similar to jetlag.

Former morning show host Paul Henry gave Bridge some advice and that was to ‘‘wake up and start the day’’ after the morning nap, even though the first alarm went off eight hours earlier.

Sleep was crucial for sharpness on the show, having to pivot from topic to topic, conduct interviews, and interact with co-hosts Amanda Gillies and Mark Richardson.

And sometimes the lack of sleep could manifest itself on the show, he said.

‘‘It gets pretty loose sometimes.’’