Why being an owl is bad for health

Imagine that every day you have a jetlag: this is the way people live who tend to go to bed late and wake up late. There is a possibility that this affects their health, writes Vox.

Фото: Depositphotos

It is most comfortable for each of us to fall asleep and wake up at a certain time. By this time, the chronotype of the person is determined, and the individual biological clocks are responsible for it. There are three chronotypes: early ("larks"), late ("owls") and something in between. Scientists are increasingly interested in the lives of people whose biological clocks are not synchronized with the daily routine of other people.

Researchers are trying to figure out what it is like to be an “owl” in the world of “larks”

Different scientists come to the same alarming conclusion: the tendency to fall asleep after midnight and wake up late really has negative health consequences. Moreover, the late chronotype may increase the risk of early death.

Scientists at Northwestern University and the University of Surrey observed more than 433 thousands of British adults over a period of six and a half years and found the following correlation: the probability of dying by “owls” is by 10 percent higher than that of “larks”, and this is true for both men and for women in all age groups.

The results of the study do not mean that all the "owls" will certainly die early.

Nevertheless, the results are alarming. Scientists have discovered that diabetes, cardiovascular and gastrointestinal diseases, as well as diseases of the respiratory system and mental disorders are more common in owls.

It is difficult to understand exactly how all these risks are interrelated. There is no clear answer to the question of why late bedtime entails a health hazard.

However, there is a rather convincing hypothesis: if our biological clocks are not synchronized with the routine by which society lives, all biological processes are disturbed, and many aspects of life bring more stress. The “owl” chronotype is an endless jetlag that adversely affects your health and well-being.

The more science learns about the biological clock, the better we understand how to smooth out these negative effects. The mere fact of the existence of different chronotypes makes it clear that some people just like to fall asleep at a later time - and this is absolutely normal. You need to take this into account and respect the needs of such people.

Chronotype is the most comfortable time for sleep.

People who cannot fall asleep until three in the morning are as rare as people taller than two meters tall.

Most people - around 50% - are right in the middle of the bell-shaped curve of the normal distribution of chronotypes. The sleep of an average person lasts from 11 hours of the evening to 7 in the morning, plus or minus an hour.

In men, the chronotype varies more strongly than in women. This means that women are more likely to have an “average” chronotype: this is noticeable in the tallest column in the diagram.

But a very early and very late dream occurs in both men and women. Only one of 500 adults — about 0,2 percent — is chronically unable to go to bed early: this condition is called sleep phase delay syndrome. When it is impossible to fall asleep until three in the morning, or even later. This syndrome is much more common in adolescence, and most people pass over time.

Some adults are at the other end of the spectrum: one percent of the population has a sleep phase advance syndrome. Such people fall asleep around eight in the evening.

In addition, research shows that our internal clocks are genetically determined, so they are incredibly difficult to change. If you are not a “lark”, then most likely you will never become one, at least until old age. Over the years, the biological clock begins to hurry, forcing earlier to wake up.

People of all chronotypes need regular sleep for seven hours or more. Do not think that the "owls" sleep longer than the "larks": they just prefer to sleep at another time.

To understand why some people wake up later than others, it is necessary to understand the work of the circadian system.

Our body is a single orchestra of organs, each of which plays its own part, and the circadian system is similar to a conductor.

It is important to understand that the task of the system is not only to cause drowsiness at the right time.

Our body follows a strict regime in order to save energy during the day. Since people usually have breakfast immediately after waking up, the greatest amount of insulin is produced in the morning. The body is ready to digest food even before food enters the mouth. In the pronounced "larks" and "owls" all processes controlled by the circadian system, occur ahead of time or delay.

The circadian system is effective, but not perfect. “Our biological clocks are not set to the 24 hourly cycle: in the day of our body approximately 24 hours and 20 minutes,” says Philip Herman, a somnologist and practitioner at the University of Pennsylvania. “So every day they are“ transferred ”a little bit to schedules.

For the most part, the Sun takes care of this. The impact of bright light gives a signal to the main clockwork mechanism - the suprachiasmatic nucleus - to “translate” the biological clock to those twenty minutes ago.

Фото: Depositphotos

In the body of owls, the process of converting hours makes it difficult for several factors at once.

The first factor is genetics. Suprachiasmatic nucleus - the main, but not the only clock of the body. There are watch genes in every cell of the body: they turn on and off periodically throughout the day. Like the body as a whole, cell metabolism is tuned to an economical distribution of resources throughout the day. Hourly genes regulate the expression of 5 – 20% of all other genes in a cell.

It is believed that information from these genes enters the body’s main clock and helps them function. Scientists have discovered that small changes in these genes lead to changes in the rhythms of animals, and are close to establishing the genes responsible for similar effects in humans.

It is also possible that the owl has a longer biological clock. In order to adjust it, the suprachiasmatic nucleus must make much more effort. If nothing happens, the dream is postponed to an increasingly later time.

Thirdly, "owls", most likely, are more sensitive to light at night. A bright light at any time of day gives a signal to our body that it is time to stay awake. Previously, when there were no more sources of light besides the sun, there were no problems. Nowadays, the light from computers and televisions makes some “owls” stay awake longer.

Of course, these three factors can act simultaneously, and it is possible that the matter is not limited to them.

Lack of sleep caused by a violation of the regime may harm our health.

For the phenomenon in which our biological clock is not synchronized with society, scientists have come up with a special term - social jetlag. Remember the feeling on Monday morning. On Friday and Saturday we went to bed late, and now we have to rise a few hours earlier. It looks like a flight to a different time zone. To experience this regularly is stress for the body, and stress adversely affects health.

In a strictly controlled laboratory study, 24 of healthy people took part, whose sleep was artificially shifted by one hour, imitating a jetlag. Three weeks later, they showed signs of a metabolic disorder preceding diabetes. The metabolic rate of experience participants decreased by 8%.

With a social jetlag, people often try to make up for the lack of sleep on weekends. However, it also leads to dissonance in the body, and getting up on Mondays only becomes more difficult.

In 2012, European researchers conducted a survey among 65 of thousands of Europeans and found that “a social jet significantly increases the likelihood of being part of a group of overweight people.” There are also studies showing a correlation between chronotype, tendency to depression and bad habits.

However, the point is not that the chronotype itself causes these negative effects, but rather that it does not fit the daily schedule.

In 2015, a middle-aged 447 sleep study was conducted during the week. It confirmed this alarming suggestion. It was found that social jetla correlated with insulin resistance (which is a sign of prediabetes), lowered “healthy” HDL-cholesterol, elevated triglyceride levels, wider waist girth and higher body mass index. This correlation is valid even if the results are corrected for behavioral patterns, for example, playing sports, smoking and drinking alcohol.

“In my opinion, our results show that it is very important for a person to work, sleep and make up the daily routine according to the individual biological schedule,” said Patricia Wong, one of the organizers of the study, in an interview with 2015 of the year.

When the “owls” try to get up early, they face two difficulties at once: their regime still does not correspond to the generally accepted one, which leads the body into a state of stress, and at the same time they suffer from lack of sleep. From the study it is clear the following: an insufficient amount of sleep leads to an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, metabolic disorders, diabetes and obesity.

Translation: Newochem

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