Is It Dangerous To Be a Night Owl?
Do you like to go to bed late and get up late?
There are many reasons to enjoy staying up late; this is a time of day when not much is expected of you, so you can relax without guilt.
Or it may be that you finally are able to catch up on things that you didn’t have time for during the day.
Perhaps the evening is a time to socialize and to enjoy entertainment available at that time.
Others have no choice; their livelihoods depend on working a night shift.
Whatever your reason for being a “night owl”, it is important to be aware of the implications to your health and well-being.
Night owls are associated with poorer mental health, physical health, and general well-being outcomes. They are also associated with certain personality disorders. Here is a list:
Mental health: greater tendency towards depression, anxiety, attention difficulties and aggression
Physical health: more likely to smoke and have a poor diet. Greater tendency towards obesity, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome
Wellbeing: Associated with poor motivation and low mood
Personality: Association with impulsivity, risk-taking behaviour, greater tendency towards neuroticism. However on the plus side, more creative.
Why would the night owl preference be associated with these negative health outcomes?
One possibility is that night owls are simply not getting enough sleep because the rest of society is operating at a different rhythm. Many of these same traits are associated with poor sleep in general. If you are a night owl, you may stay up late and then have to get up too early in order to get to work or to attend a meeting.
Exaggerated preferences due to modern technology
Another possibility is that the preference for going to bed later, which may be genetically baked in, has been exaggerated.
That is to say that, due to modern technology, we can stay up all night if we want to. We have comfortable homes, artificial light and all kinds of entertainment from TVs computers and smart phones to keep us up at night.
Imagine, before the invention of modern artificial light in 1879 - not that long ago, when you think about it, if you were a night owl, how late would you have stayed up? Maybe an hour or two after sundown? Your source of light would have been firelight - or gaslight after the end of the 18th century.
Bedtime procrastination
It could be that this tendency to push to the extreme that modern living affords, is the reason for the correlation with negative health outcomes, rather than a genetic predisposition to a set of negative health, well-being and personality traits.
Typically going to bed late results in insufficient sleep, which of course is associated with all kinds of negative health and wellness factors. Studies show, however that bedtime procrastination in and of itself is related to poor sleep quality.
The fact is that we humans are adapted to living according to the light of day. Our body functions according to these rhythms. When we ignore this, we suffer in terms of physical and mental health, and general well-being.
If you have a late-night preference, consider that you may have exaggerated it because you can. It is easy to procrastinate going to bed. It is easy to watch “one more show” or read “one more chapter” or play “one more game”.
But consider the potential health implications and ask yourself ‘is it worth it?”