Nadia White wakes up at 4am to make bacon and egg butties for the regular truckies loggers, shearers, boaties and fishers passing through Martinborough.
“We can’t do anything until we have the magic brown juice and once that magical juice is running through our veins and then, then we’re just into it,” she says. (She likes it long, black with a dash of cream.)
Kitchener’s, on the main drag in and out of Martinborough, officially opens at 5am. The family-run café cracks the door open from 2am, when White’s older sister Christy Anne is on site cooking and baking everything from scratch (she is in bed by 4pm, with an alarm set at 1am).
Nadia White (l) with her family who own and run Kitchener’s Cafe in Martinborough.
If you spend any time in the wellness corners of TikTok or Instagram, you’ll see claims women need one to two hours more sleep than men. What does the evidence say?
“[We open] to get those early bird people because they are out there and we’ll make some money before the normal people wake up to go to work,” 43-year-old White says. She’s mainly front of house, meeting and greeting, but she also makes coffees and the occasional slice.
White’s parents have owned the business for 30 years and before that, had a place in Wellington (“we were born and bred into hospo,” she says). White and her sister have been at the helm for two years – they spied the opportunity to catch the early-rising, breakfast hungry crowd.
While she doesn’t worry about her safety, it’s not all lovely locals and friendly faces. Sometimes there are people with no pants. One time there was an intoxicated man who came in soaking wet after crashing his car in the river 5km away.
“Two or three times a year we get the odd crackhead in.”
Kitchener’s Cafe on the main drag in and out of Martinborough.
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When her alarm goes off, White “gets in the shower, gets on with it and walks out the door”. Her partner drops their two young kids off for a hot chocolate before they scooter to primary school.
The café closes at 1pm. By 2pm White is at the gym, then amps up for her second “unpaid job” – running the kids to activities, coaching sports and prepping for an early dinner at 4.30-5pm. She and the kids head for bed after a cuddle at about 7pm and a chamomile “sleepy tea”.
“I put my little eye patches on and have white noise, and I’m out to it by about 8’o’clock probably.
“… I spring out of bed, that’s never been a problem for me. I’m one of these people non-morning people hate,” she says. “I never hit snooze or else I will never get out of bed.”
But she recognises her “crazy start times” aren’t for everyone (“a lot of people would be freaked out”) and in the afternoon she still “feels a million bucks”.
“I credit that just to keeping healthy, keeping fit, just keeping on top of things.”
Is there such thing as a ‘morning person’?
For optimal functioning, most people should wake around 6.30-7am and go to bed about 10.30-11pm, explains associate professor Karyn O’Keeffe from the Sleep/Wake Research Centre.
But, there are a smattering of sleepers at either end of the spectrum who are night owls or “morning types”. Those early birds find it easier to go to bed and wake earlier than the typical person.
However, O’Keeffe says most people who are getting up very early are still cutting into their sleep according to their body’s physiology.
“People can feel like they’ve got used to it and they might develop strategies to cope with getting up early… but it’s still likely that if you have to get up at, say, 3 in the morning to get to work at 4, that you’re still cutting into your sleep need both for duration and for quality.
“So you’re missing out on vital sleep stages. You’re not getting enough sleep, and you might be having poor sleep quality overall if you’re trying to sleep early.”
O’Keeffe says age and stage can also come into play with one’s circadian rhythm – our preferred body clock preferences. For instance, research backs up teenagers as night owls, and that preference can stick around.
O’Keeffe, who has 25 years’ experience working in sleep, is herself a night owl (1am bedtime is the norm).
Sleep researcher Karyn O’Keeffe.
Supplied
Through her 20s she worked as a clinical physiologist at a Wellington sleep clinic diagnosing sleep disorders – rostered on rotating evening and night shifts for five years. Night work isn’t the same as early starts, which she doesn’t think she could cope with given her natural rhythm. But the nocturnal hours took their toll.
“Everything was quite cloudy sometimes in my head. I knew I wasn’t processing information that well, making decisions that well,” she says, recalling a near miss through a set of traffic lights during that time.
“I felt incredibly isolated sometimes when I was working evenings and nights because everyone else was at home hanging out and I was young.”
Learning to be a morning person
Sourdough prepper Euan Welsh started as an apprentice baker at 18, and despite 11 years on the tools, has not got used to waking up hours before the sun rises.
Euan Welsh is the head of sourdough preparation at Daily Bread.
RNZ
“It’s abnormal behaviour for sure. You’re working parallel to society.”
Welsh is the head of the mixing department at Daily Bread HQ, in Auckland’s New Lynn. He’s in the kitchen prepping up to 1500 sourdoughs, 400 focaccias and stacks more rolls and loaves from 4am (2am on Thursday and Friday).
“My dad has said to many people, out of all the jobs in the world, he didn’t expect one with the earliest starts possible would be for me.”
Welsh admits when he first began waking at 4am as an apprentice at Countdown he “missed quite a few early starts”.
Now, he sets his first alarm (of many) 90 minutes before he really needs to be up, with stacks of snoozing, but sleep-ins can still happen.
“I’ll set like four or five different alarms. The first one will be maybe an hour and a half before I need to get up. And sometimes, no matter how many you set, you still miss them all.”
Euan sets a whole roll of alarms – and sometimes can still sleep through.
RNZ
Welsh kicks off by smashing a filter coffee at work, then fasts until his shift ends at 2.30pm. He goes without food for weight control, but he also he finds food makes him feel sluggish and steals focus.
Once home at about 3.30pm he will often crash out straight away (“and hopefully sleep all the way through”).
“But sometimes you wake up and you’re just kind of stuck where you you’re not tired anymore and you can’t fall back asleep and that’s a nightmare.”
O’Keeffe reckons Welsh’s circadian timing could still be set to night mode “which means that every morning when that alarm clock goes off, their body says you should still be asleep right now”.
She explains: “It’s possible when they try to go to bed early to get enough sleep that some nights they can get off to sleep because they kind of crash – their pressure for sleep is high. But other nights they find it really hard to fall asleep, because if they’ve got enough sleep for a couple of days, then it might have worn off that high sleep pressure.
“They’re basically trying to go to sleep on their natural timing, which is a bit later and so then their sleep’s cut short overall, so they can’t fall asleep, alarm clock goes off and then they have to get on with their day.”
O’Keeffe admits she must set multiple alarms herself “because I cannot get out of bed, and I get up at a normal time”.
“Some people use alarms as a way, like a process to wake up. There’s nothing wrong with using an alarm if you need it. I think sometimes there’s that bit of a judgement that comes with, oh, you just set your alarm and just get out of bed. But not everyone’s able to do that.”
Welsh says for the last seven or eight years he’s felt like “I’m just getting by, like I’m just managing to make it work”. Now, he’s not “absolutely destroyed” at the end of each shift and wants to ensure this job he loves has some longevity. He sees a therapist weekly, is focused on eating better and trying to kick off a regular routine that allows some social life to slide back in.
The best tip O’Keeffe has for people who want to become an early riser is exposure to bright light as soon as the sun rises – but that’s not easy if you’re starting work before the world wakes up.
“It does sound like I’m saying there’s not a lot of options, but in essence there aren’t. Like you’re working against your physiology … it affects your whole quality of life.”
To figure out how much sleep you need, O’Keeffe suggests considering your routine on holidays – that’s the quota of ZZZs you should aim for on working days.
“It might be that it’s more strategic to have a bit of a nap when you first get home and then get back into bed a bit later,” she says. This would also allow some room for social life to slip back into the calendar.
“It does suck that you have to sort of be very careful with your sleep over, you know, somebody who can just do what they like nighttime. But to feel at your best, it might be the better way to go.”
In terms of eating – she says light snacks during odd wake hours is better for your physical health than heavy meals. Exercise in the late afternoon can help shift the circadian rhythm and improve sleep quality.
In the short term, O’Keeffe says poor sleep can alter one’s ability to make decisions, stay safe, and get on with others.
“All that cognitive or brain function is all wrapped up in your quality of life and therefore your mental health as well.
“… Mental health impacts the ability to sleep well and then not sleeping well impacts your mental health. It’s a vicious cycle kind of thing.”
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand