Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise? - Eat well to live a long life!

Urasenke tea master Sen Genshitsu is still active even at the age of 100, and says that his health regimen is to “get out of bed at 4:00 a.m. every morning and spend about 10 minutes doing naval exercises”. As the old adage goes, “The early bird gets the worm.” Waking up early can help you maintain your health and live to be 100 years old, and it may be worth the challenge if it’s true.

The benefits of waking up early are many. Living closer with the sun’s time from sunrise to sunset sets the body’s rhythms to be in tune with the natural world and allows us to better manage our physical condition. It is no exaggeration to say that our bodies are designed to move during the day and go to sleep at night. The hormone melatonin, which regulates the rhythm of sleep and is essential for a good night’s sleep, is secreted between around 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. More precisely, it is secreted around 15 to 16 hours after waking up in the morning and seeing light. This causes peripheral blood vessels to expand, lowering body temperature and induces sleepiness. In other words, if you wake up early and go for a walk to see the sunrise at 6:00 a.m., you will feel sleepy at around 9:00 p.m. and can expect a good night’s sleep.

If you are a night owl, one might think that if you stay up until almost dawn and wake up late, the melatonin is secreted 15 hours later, and the same thing happens. For example, let’s say you play video games until 4 a.m. and wake up at noon. Since you see light there, you should feel sleepy again 15 hours later at 3:00 a.m. You would think that the same thing would happen. However, the human body has a natural biological clock. That clock repeats the cycle in which melatonin secretion is suppressed in response to bright morning light, and full-fledged secretion begins again around 10:00 p.m. Contrary to that routine, prolonged exposure of the eyes to blue light stimulates the body differently from daylight, from items such as computers and smartphones, even when it is normally time to go to bed, causing the rhythm of melatonin secretion to become erratic. This tendency is known to be more pronounced especially in those who lead irregular lifestyles.

It turns out that by getting up early, the laws of nature and the harmony of the human body become synchronized, and humans are able to sleep better at night. This means that staying up late is likely caused by physical ailments. Sleep disorders, depression, and autonomic nervous disorders, which are common among young people these days, are often the result of repeatedly staying up late over a long period of time. Thus, I have never heard of people who stay up late over a long period of time who also live longer. To begin with, as people get older, they gradually get up earlier and earlier in the morning. However, if a person has led an irregular lifestyle and stayed up late from a young age, not only will he or she not be able to wake up in the morning, but many people will also be unable to escape from the trap of sleep disorders. It is not too late. Maybe you could try to wake up earlier?

“The early bird gets the worm” means that there is something good about waking up early, even if there is only little benefit. If you can get a good night’s sleep just by getting into the habit of getting up early in the morning, that is not just a little bit good, but a lot. That’s not all. When you wake up early, you have some free time before eating breakfast. During that time, you can indulge in meditation, read books, or even better if you exercise like Sen Genshitsu. From a medical point of view, daily exercise has been shown to lead to longevity. By exercising, working up a light sweat, and doing flexibility exercises, we can prevent our muscles from stiffening, oxidizing, and aging, thereby keeping us young. Especially since people today are stuck in being caught up in the crucible of a car society, lack of exercise has become a hot topic. That is why we should try to exercise. If we can do it early in the morning, it will surely be a shortcut to longevity.

On top of that, by the time you eat breakfast, you will be hungry because you woke up early in the morning and exercised. Breakfast tastes much better. This is one of the privileges of being an early riser. In other words, waking up early makes breakfast tastier and enables people to make good use of their time in the morning to exercise or enjoy their hobbies. This is a shortcut to a long and healthy life.

With that in mind, I think it’s wonderful that Sound House has its logistics staff start work as early as 6:00 a.m. at the Narita headquarters. They get up a little after 4:00 a.m. to get ready for work. It’s a job where everyone is required to get up early. If they work hard during the day, finish work on time in the evening, and return home, isn’t that the true accomplishment? You will be able to enjoy a good breakfast and a good dinner and you’ll be able to sleep soundly at night. Not only the logistics staff, but maybe I should also challenge staff members in other departments to go to bed early and get up early? I am sure that in the long run, this small change will be a major turning point in your life.