Slashdot Mirror
Late To Bed, Early To Die? Night Owls May Die Sooner (livescience.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Bad news for "night owls": Those who tend to stay up late and sleep in well past sunrise are at increased risk of early death, a new study from the United Kingdom suggests. The research, which involved nearly half a million people, found that self-described "evening people" were 10 percent more likely to die over a 6.5-year period, compared with self-described morning people. The findings add to a growing body of research that suggests that being a night owl could have negative effects on health. Many of these effects may be attributable to a misalignment between a person's internal clock, or circadian rhythm, and the socially imposed timing of work and other activities, the researchers said. "'Night owls' trying to live in a 'morning lark' world may have health consequences for their bodies," study co-author Kristen Knutson, an associate professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a statement.
I remember a time on the "old" Slashdot when articles like this never hit the front page. Thr article itself seems to give no indication that we are controlling for diet, excercise, other health factors. Just "welp people who are night owls are more likely to die". annecdotally, the times in my life when I was up until 4 AM and sleeping until 2-3 were certainly not the periods where I maintained my health responsibly.
The researchers found that the evening people were more likely than the early risers to have poor sleep quality and unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, sedentary lifestyles and eating late at night, Kim said. The night owls also tended to be younger, but were more likely to have high levels of body fat and triglycerides, or fats in their blood, than early risers. (Having high levels of fat is usually associated with older age.)
I wonder if any of these factors could attribute to a higher mortality rate? This study simply states that night owls have a higher rate of unhealthy lifestyle choices.
I would be more interested in the mortality rates of night owls who do not exhibit these behaviors. But then again there were only 95 night owls in this study, so I doubt you would be able to determine that from such a small sample size.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Why is the world designed for "morning larks?" We have telecommuting, electric light, etc -- not all jobs need to be done on 18th century farmers' hours. Is this just the human knack for self flagellation?
Early to rise, early to bed
Makes a man poor, stupid and dead.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Reminds me of the book, "Eastern Standard Tribe", by Cory Doctorow.
Since you don't know each others timezones, you might both be waking up at the same time, putting you both in the same tribe.
The headline is also a lie. It's contradicted in the summary itself. This study isn't about going to bed early or late; it's about how much sleep one gets at night (ie: "Night owls' trying to live in a 'morning lark' world"). If the night owls' simply slept in just as much as they stayed up, it would be an entirely different study.
Both cocaine and caffeine constrict your blood vessels. It does eventually self-regulate to a more normal state. That's why caffeine withdrawal headaches happen - the body over-dilates the blood vessels in the brain to compensate for caffeine that isn't there.