Is Night Owl habit good for your health?

Do you know as being a night owl bad for your health?

Study recently reported that being Night Owl may have a serious Health disease problem and Diabetes Type 2. In review of studies analyzed whether being an early riser or a night owl can influence your health, researchers have uncovered a growing body of evidence indicating an increased risk of ill health in people with an evening preference as they have more erratic eating patterns and consume more unhealthy foods. As we know the human body runs on a 24-hour cycle which is regulated by our internal clock, which is known as a circadian rhythm, or chronotype. This internal clock regulates many physical functions, such as telling you when to eat, sleep and wake. An individual's chronotype leads to people having a natural preference towards waking early or going to bed late.

People who go to bed later tend to have unhealthier diets, consuming more alcohol, sugars, caffeinated drinks and fast food than early risers. They consistently report more erratic eating patterns as they miss breakfast and eat later in the day. Their diet contains less grains, rye and vegetables and they eat fewer, but larger, meals. They also report higher levels of consumption of caffeinated beverages, sugar and snacks, than those with a morning preference, who eat slightly more fruit and vegetables per day. This potentially explains why night owls have a higher risk of suffering from chronic disease. Eating late in the day was also found to be linked to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes because the circadian rhythm influences the way glucose is metabolized in in the body. Glucose levels should naturally decline throughout the day and reach their lowest point at night. However, as night owls often eat shortly before bed, their glucose levels are increased when they are about to sleep. This could negatively affect metabolism as their body isn't following its normal biological process.

One Research confirms that people with evening preference would have 2.5 times higher risk to have Diabetes Type 2 than those with morning preference.

How about those people with night shift?

This also impacts on people who work shifts -- particularly rotating shifts -- as they are constantly adjusting their body clock to fit with their working hours. The researchers found that this reduces their sensitivity to insulin and affects their glucose tolerance, putting them at greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

The review also uncovered interesting trends: 

 1. People's preferences to rising early and going to bed later change at varying points in the life 

           cycle. The morning chronotype is more common in children and can appear when a baby is just 

           three-weeks old. This changes during childhood. While over 90% of two-year-old have a morning

           preference, this declines to 58% by the age of six, and shifts further towards an evening

           preference during puberty. This evening preference continues until an adult reaches their early 

           50's and they then begin to revert back to a morning preference.

       2. Ethnicity and society can also influence your chronotype. For example, studies have revealed

           that Germans are more likely to have an evening preference in comparison to Indians and 

           Slovakians. There can also be differences between people living in urban and rural areas in the 

           same country.  

       3. Another study noted that being exposed to daylight influenced sleep. Every additional hour spent 

          outdoors was associated with 30 minutes of 'advance sleep' and that the noise, ambient lighting and

          crowding of urban environments can make people in some areas more likely to have a morning or

          evening preference.

      4. The researchers also found evidence that night owls would accumulate 'sleep debt' during the 

          working week and would sleep longer at weekends to compensate for this, whereas early birds had

          smaller differences in their sleeping patterns across the week.

Dr Almoosawi, a Research Fellow in Northumbria's Brain, Performance and Nutrition Research Centre, explained: "We have found that your genes, ethnicity and gender determine the likelihood of you being a morning or evening type. In adulthood, being an evening chronotype is associated with greater risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, and this may be potentially due to the poorer eating behaviour and diet of people with evening chronotype. Our review also found that people who have a poorer control of their diabetes are more likely to be evening types.

Dr Leonidas G Karagounis of Nestle Health Science, said: "Scientific evidence is providing increasing insight into the relationship between your chronotype, diet and cardiometabolic health. Overall, cross-sectional studies suggest that an evening chronotype is associated with lower intake of fruits and vegetables, and higher intake of energy drinks, alcoholic, sugary and caffeinated beverages, as well as higher energy intake from fat.

"Further research on the best methods to assess an individual's chronotype and how this may affect their long-term cardiometabolic health can potentially guide the development of health promotion strategies aimed at preventing and treating chronic diseases based on an individual's chronotype."

Source Quoted from  Northumbria University.