We all have our preferred time to sleep — body clock. There are “morning people”, “evening people”, and all the rest. Our preferences, when to sleep are referred to as chronotypes. And increasingly, researchers are studying what happens to people whose body clocks are not synchronized with the rest of society.
That is: what happens if you’re a night owl living in an early bird world?
Scientists circled around one answer is that this is very concerning: what is real and negative, health consequences to be more a late chronotype (sleep long after midnight and picking up later). It can even put you at a higher risk of early death.
This week, researchers from northwestern University of Surrey have published a huge study in the journal Chronobiology International, more than 433,000 adults in the UK, which is being studied for an average of 6.5 years. He found a correlation: those who reported that a later chronotype (people who are “owls”) have a 10 percent higher chance of death compared with people who had earlier chronotype. And it was true for people of all ages in the study, and for both men and women.
It is always important to note, similar studies on the risk of mortality by 10 percent indicates a relative increase in the risk of death. The actual risk of a person dying in any year is not enough. Of the 430,000-plus subjects in this study, only a small part — 10,500, or about 2% died during the study period. These results do not mean an early death is inevitable for those who are late risers.
But it is still relative. As the authors note, “increasing” risk of death “deserves attention”. The analysis also showed higher rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, respiratory diseases, gastrointestinal issues, and psychological, among evening-type persons in distress.
It is difficult to understand how these risks interact with each other, and there is no clear answer as to why there may be a health risk to be late getting up.
But convincing hypothesis: when our biological clock is not in sync with society, our entire biology thrown, and many aspects of our lives become more stressful. Very late chronotype, it’s like living in a constant state of jet lag, which affects the body.
Understanding of the science of chronobiology can help us live a healthier life. Or, at least, it helps us to recognize that some people just like to sleep later than others. And it’s really good to be this way — we must accept and respect it.
Chronotypes are our preferred sleep times
As it is quite rare for a person to be 7 feet tall, it’s pretty rare for some people to not be able to sleep until 3 am.
Most people — about 50 cent — get right in the middle of the chronotype of the bell Curve. The average sleep is between 11 PM and 7 am, plus or minus an hour.
Below see the results of the chronotypes of 53,689 Americans scheduled for 2017 study in plos one. The term “dream world” on the x-axis just means that people halfway through their sleep at night. In the middle of a dream 0-Midnight, mid-sleep 4:00 is 4 am, and so on.
Men, as a rule, more dependent on the chronotype than women. It just means that women are slightly more likely to have “average” chronotype than men, as you can see in the highest line in the middle of the above diagram.
But there are men and women, the extremes on both ends. Only about 0.2 percent of the adult population 500 — have a condition known as delayed sleep phase, which is the chronic inability to go to bed early. People with this disease often have trouble falling asleep until 3 am or even later. The condition is much more common among teenagers, whose clock is to move progressively earlier as they age.
Some adults are at the other end of the spectrum. About 1% of the population has what is known as syndrome advanced sleep phase. These people prefer to sleep around 8 PM.
You can learn the chronotype, Morningness taking-synthesis of research paradigms in the questionnaire (to find the online version here). Basically, he asks: if you could plan your day as you like what time you go to bed and what time you would prefer to Wake up? (Recent researchers in the UK have used simplified, one question version of this test.)
In addition, research has shown that our internal clocks affect genes and incredibly difficult to change. If you’re just not a morning person, you probably never will, at least until the effects of aging kick. As we get older, our clocks push us to Wake up earlier and earlier.
People in all chronotypes will require about seven or more hours of sleep per night. People with later chronotype do not have to sleep more hours than the previous one. They just prefer to do it at different times.
To understand why some people naturally sleep later than others, we need to understand the circadian system
The body is an orchestra of organs, each of which provides an important function. In this metaphor, the circadian rhythm is the conductor.
The most important thing you need to know about the circadian system is that it is not easy to control when we are sleepy. “Each of the neurotransmitters, hormones and chemicals in the cycles of the organism to circadian rhythm,” Philip Gehrman, a sleep researcher and Clinician at the University of Pennsylvania, said in an interview with 2016. “It’s not just people; even single-celled organisms follow a circadian rhythm. It really seems to be a fundamental property of life.”
Our bodies work this hard schedule to try to keep up with our actions. Since we usually eat after waking up, we produce more insulin in the morning. We are primed to metabolize Breakfast, before even taking a bite. It is more efficient this way. For people who are still morning and evening-oriented, all of the circadian control system delays and synchronization.
While our bodies keep a good time, they’re not perfect. “Our watch does not work accurately on a 24-hour cycle,” Gehrman explained. They are closer to 24.3 hours. So every day, our body clocks will need to roll back, just a little bit to stay on schedule.
For the most part, the sun will take care of it. Exposure to bright light stimulates the brain to master clock — the suprachiasmatic nucleus is to collapse these three-tenths of an hour.
With the all-nighters, a few things stand in the way of the reset process.
1) genes: suprachiasmatic nucleus is the master clock of his body, but he’s not the only one. Each cell in the body has clock genes, DNA fragments that are simply switched on and off throughout the day. As the whole organism, the cell metabolism is scheduled for efficiency. The clock genes regulate the expression of between 5 and 20 percent of all other genes in the cell.
The effect of these genes, as suggested in the master clock of the body and will help to establish its date. Scientists have found that small variations in these genes lead to an earlier or later rhythms in animals, and begin to identify the genes that cause the same effects in the human body.
2) it’s also possible that evening-type people have an internal clock that runs longer than average. More hours means that the suprachiasmatic nucleus has to work harder to make the adjustment. When he is unable to adapt to sleep times drift later and later in the evening.
3) in the future may be more sensitive to the effects of light at night. Bright light at any time of the day and tells our body it’s time to be awake. This was not a problem back in the old days, when the sunset is over exposure to light during the day. In modern times, the light from our computers and TVs pushes some evening-type people to stay awake longer.
And, of course, the true answer may be some combination of all three of these reasons — and perhaps some yet to be discovered.
Sleep less from desync can hurt our health
Scientists have a term for when our body clocks are out of sync with society: social time zones. Think of how you feel on Monday morning. After a weekend to sleep late, you will have to Wake up a few hours earlier; it’s like jumping into the new Time zone. If you experience that every day, it can put stress on the body, undermining the health.
In a strictly controlled laboratory study, 24 healthy participants that their sleep is shifted by one hour each day (simulated jet lag) began to watch prediabetic after a three-week trial. Their level of metabolism the rest decreased by 8 percent. “In the absence of changes in activity or food intake,” which “could translate into ~12.5 pounds of weight gain within one year,” the study, published in science translational medicine in 2012, was completed.
When people experience social jet lag, they often try to compensate for the sleep deficit on the weekend. But it is too sharp for the body and makes waking up on Monday more difficult.
In 2012 scientists of Europe analyzed self-reported data set of 65,000 Europeans and found “social jetlag increased the probability of belonging to the group of overweight participants.” There is also a correlation study that late chronotypes may be at a greater risk for depression, and that they are more prone to risky behavior, like Smoking.
The hypothesis here is not that the chronotype inherently causes these negative outcomes, and the fact that the discrepancy between chronotype and daily schedule to do.
Research 2015 sleep tracking 447 average age for a week also picked up a disturbing picture. He was found in the social jet lag correlates with insulin resistance — a precursor to diabetes — reduce the level of HDL cholesterol (the good kind), increased triglycerides, increased waist circumference and high body Mass Index. These relationships remained even after adjusting behaviors, such as exercise, Smoking and alcohol consumption.
“What I think we show here that there are some important, about us, convenient to operate, Wake up, and coincide with our schedule as best as we can to what we are biologically adapted to that,” Patricia Wong, researcher at the laboratory on the 2015 paper, said in an interview in 2015.
If late sleepers want to Wake up early, they often strike a double blow. They will be synchronized with the society, which stresses the body and underslept. Research a little clearer on this: short sleep appears to be a significant risk factor for heart disease, metabolic disorders, diabetes, and obesity.
Late sleepers are tired of discrimination
In 2016, when I first reported on the science of chronobiology, I spoke with several people with delayed sleep phase, a condition that puts people at the extreme end of the night-owl chronotype. These people have difficulty falling asleep until 2 or 3 am and prefer to sleep until noon. There is nothing wrong with the dream, other than their schedules for her move.
These late sleepers are tired of being judged for behavior they can easily control. If they can’t change their sleep, maybe society should be more tolerant of him. We tend to assume that late wakers several parties, those losers who are so irresponsible they can’t keep a basic schedule. The people I talked to found these assumptions personally damaging.
We need to follow common sense solutions. People should have the opportunity to sleep when their bodies require. Given the potential health impact of ignoring our biological clock, it seems harmless enough to try.
Sourse: vox.com
