Early Bird vs Night Owl

Are you a night owl or an early bird? It is all about a person's circadian rhythm preference - the schedule your natural body clock would set for you. A person's "chronotype" is the natural preferences of the body for wakefulness and sleep; it is influenced by genetics and driven by your circadian rhythm. In addition to regulating sleep and wake times, a person's chronotype has an influence on appetite, exercise, and even core body temperature. It is responsible for the fact that you may feel more alert at certain periods of the day and sleepier at others. Adapting to one's natural chronotype can improve your sleep quality, energy, and mood.

A night owl is partially genetically wired to stay up late whereas early birds seem to automatically wake up at the crack of dawn and fall asleep at an earlier hour. Does being an early bird or night owl affect our health? A growing body of research shows that we may want to pay more attention to our circadian rhythm and chronotype. A new study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that night owls are more likely than early birds to have unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. The report revealed that night owls were more likely to eat an unhealthy diet, exercise less, have a higher body mass index, sleep fewer hours, and smoke cigarettes than early birds.

The report analyzed data from more than 60,000 female nurses who participated in the Nurse's Health Study II survey. Among the women in the study, 11% reported they were night owls, while 35% said they were early birds. The rest, around half, did not identify strongly as either a morning or evening person.

Night owls were also more likely to develop diabetes - about 19% more likely, after the researchers accounted for the impact of unhealthy habits associated with being a night owl. That means that there may be something significant about awake times being shifted later that raises the risk of diabetes.

The study's senior author, Dr. Tianyi Huang, an assistant professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School and an associate epidemiologist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, suspects the risk linked simply to being a night owl is due to a person's chronotype being out of sync with their environment, specifically their work schedule. "Many night owls go to bed late but have to get up early in the day to work," he said. "In our study we found that among people with an evening chronotype who did night shift work there was no association with an increased risk of diabetes."

It is important to note that one major limitation of this study is that it was made up of mostly white women, all of whom are nurses.

While some night owls do manage to switch their sleeping patterns because of life events, such as having children, "they tend to revert back," said Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge, director of the Center of Excellence for Sleep and Circadian Research at Columbia University Institute of Human Nutrition. "You can't fight your body."

A 2020 study published in Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports showed that night owls tended to have less active time than early birds. While it is hard to change your chronotype, reflecting on your sleep and awake patterns is one way to determine the best times of the day for your activity. Are you someone who feels ready and alert first thing in the morning? Try to schedule work meetings at the beginning of the work day. Do you have more energy in the evening? Then scheduling a walk for after dinner may be best. Using your body clock to your advantage will help your social, mental, and physical health!