{"id":13881,"date":"2019-06-28T02:06:01","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T02:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/squad\/?p=13881"},"modified":"2019-06-28T02:06:01","modified_gmt":"2019-06-28T02:06:01","slug":"sleep-adjustments-for-night-owls-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/sleep\/sleep-adjustments-for-night-owls-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Sleep Adjustments for Night Owls\u2019 Health"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you work the night shift, your body clock doesn\u2019t align with society\u2019s regular rhythms, but a few small asleep adjustments can help.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Much like jet lag, being a night owl can wreak havoc on your body, including raising your risk for diabetes and heart disease. But scientists from the UK and Australia recently worked together on a study that unearthed some good news: simple sleep adjustments appear to minimize the health risks of night owls.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>The study on night owls\u2019 health<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The researchers looked at the habits of 22 healthy volunteers who, on average, went to bed at 2:30 a.m. and woke up at 10:15 a.m. They had the participants make these four changes over 3 weeks:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Going to bed 2-3 hours earlier than usual and trying to limit how much exposure to light they got before bed.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Waking up 2-3 hours earlier than usual and trying to maximize exposure to natural light in the morning.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Maintaining the same bedtime and waking time daily, even on weekends.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Upon waking, eating breakfast immediately; eating lunch at the same time every day; eating dinner before 7 p.m.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the end of the three-week study, the participants showed improvements in cognitive performance, reaction time, grip strength and physical shape in the mornings. In addition, they reached peak performance in the afternoons instead of the evenings, as they used to do when they were on their original night-owl schedule. The volunteers\u2019 feelings of stress, depression and daytime sleepiness also decreased.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The scientists hope that their findings will help people who aren\u2019t on a typical 9-to-5 work schedule boost their well-being and performance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cEstablishing simple routines could help \u2018night owls\u2019 adjust their body clocks and improve their overall physical and mental health,\u201d says co-author Professor Debra Skene. \u201cInsufficient levels of sleep and circadian misalignment can disrupt many bodily processes, putting us at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you work the night shift, your body clock doesn\u2019t align with society\u2019s regular rhythms, but a few small asleep adjustments can help.\u00a0 Much like jet lag, being a night owl can wreak havoc on your body, including raising your risk for diabetes and heart disease. But scientists from the UK and Australia recently worked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13887,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[692],"tags":[1058,1059,693],"class_list":["post-13881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleep","tag-fatiuge","tag-night-shift","tag-sleep"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}