Night Owls: Simple Sleep Tweaks Boost Wellbeing

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Night Owls: Simple Sleep Tweaks Boost Wellbeing

Night Owls: Simple Sleep Tweaks Boost Wellbeing

Tweaking sleeping habits can shift people’s body clocks and improve their wellbeing, say scientists in the UK and Australia.

They focused on “night owls”, whose bodies’ drive them to stay up late into the night.

Techniques used included consistent bedtimes, avoiding caffeine and getting plenty of morning sunshine.

The researchers say their approach may seem obvious, but could make an important difference to people’s lives.

Everyone has a body clock whose rhythms follow the rising and the setting of the sun. It is why we sleep at night.

But some people’s clocks run later than others.

Morning-led “larks” tend to wake early, but struggle to stay up in the evening; night owls are the opposite, preferring a lie-in and remaining active late into the night.

The problem for many night owls is fitting into a nine-to-five world, with the morning alarm waking you up hours before your body is ready.

Being a night owl has been linked to worse health.

Arrogance of ignoring need for sleep
Scientists studied 21 “extreme night owls” who were going to bed, on average, at 02:30 and not waking until after 10:00.

Their instructions were to:

Wake up 2-3 hours earlier than usual and get plenty of outdoor light in the morning

Eat breakfast as soon as possible

Exercise only in the morning

Have lunch at the same time every day and eat nothing after 19:00

Banish caffeine after 15:00

Have no naps after 16:00

Go to bed 2-3 hours earlier than usual and limit light in the evenings

Maintain the same sleep and wake times every day

After three weeks, people had successfully shifted their body clocks two hours earlier in the day, the analysis by the University of Birmingham, University of Surrey and Monash University showed.

The results, in the journal Sleep Medicine, showed people still got the same hours of shut-eye.

But they reported lower levels of sleepiness, stress and depression, while tests showed their reaction times also improved.

“Establishing simple routines could help night owls adjust their body clocks and improve their overall physical and mental health,” said Prof Debra Skene from the University of Surrey.

“Insufficient levels of sleep and circadian [body clock] misalignment can disrupt many bodily processes, putting us at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes.”

Source: BBC

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