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Are you a night person or a morning person? – Here’s how they affect your mental health

8:00 pm

Monday 26th September 2022


If you are a morning person, your circadian rhythm is in line with traditional 8am to 5pm work hours and dropout times.

According to CNN, if you are a nocturnal creature, waking up in the morning will be annoying for you, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, according to which your best performance appears during the afternoon and evening, until late at night. .

The study used sleep data collected from wrist activity monitors worn by more than 85,000 participants in the UK biobank study, which includes in-depth genetic and health information on over half a million Britons.

The researchers compared this sleep information with mood self-assessments and found that people with an inconsistent sleep cycle were more likely to report depression and anxiety and have a lower sense of well-being.

“It’s possible that the health problems associated with being nocturnal are due to living in the guise of morning creatures, which disrupts the body’s rhythms,” said sleep specialist Kristen Knutson, associate professor of neurology and medicine. preventive at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. that he was not involved in the study. daily”.

Challenging our internal clock appears to be closely associated with levels of depression, and “more sleep disturbances were associated with more likely depression,” said study author Dr Jessica Terrell and senior lecturer at the University of Exeter. Medical School in the United Kingdom.

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Previous studies, including a study by Knutson, have revealed a relationship between depression and sleep cycles, and “the strongest evidence of this is shift workers,” Terrell said, noting that “some studies have shown that these individuals have a higher rate of depression and a lower sense of well-being ”.

On the other hand, Knutson said the study’s “important new discovery” is that people who like to get up in the morning are less likely to sleep erratically than nocturnal creatures.

“If you’re a morning person, you’re less likely to be depressed and you’re more likely to report better well-being,” Terrell explained. “This could be, in part, because morning people are less likely to have ‘social circadian disorder’.”

“Social circadian interruption” occurs when you go to bed later and wake up later on weekends than on weekdays when you have to get up to go to work. Borrowed from the jet lag we experience when we travel between time zones, Terrell explained, the disruption of the social circadian clock is “the result of the discrepancy between an individual’s biological rhythm and circadian time determined by social constraints.”

Knutson said other possible causes include increased sun exposure in the early hours.

He pointed out that “exposure to light is greater in morning organisms and will decrease in those with greater sleep fluctuations. Of course, bright light is considered a treatment for some forms of depression.”

“Disruption of the circadian rhythm can lead to insufficient sleep and affect sleep quality, which can impair mood and exacerbate mood disorders,” Knutson said.

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