When you work the night shift, your body clock doesn’t align with society’s regular rhythms, but a few small asleep adjustments can help.
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.
The study on night owls’ health
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:
- Going to bed 2-3 hours earlier than usual and trying to limit how much exposure to light they got before bed.
- Waking up 2-3 hours earlier than usual and trying to maximize exposure to natural light in the morning.
- Maintaining the same bedtime and waking time daily, even on weekends.
- Upon waking, eating breakfast immediately; eating lunch at the same time every day; eating dinner before 7 p.m.
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’ feelings of stress, depression and daytime sleepiness also decreased.
The scientists hope that their findings will help people who aren’t on a typical 9-to-5 work schedule boost their well-being and performance.
“Establishing simple routines could help ‘night owls’ adjust their body clocks and improve their overall physical and mental health,” says co-author Professor Debra Skene. “Insufficient levels of sleep and circadian misalignment can disrupt many bodily processes, putting us at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes.”
