Night owl or morning lark? Better rest is in your genes

Pheelings Media

The early bird gets the worm. Joy comes with the morning. Early to bed, early to rise, makes a person healthy, wealthy and wise.

There are lots of sayings about being an early riser. But almost no one sings the praises of the night owl who toils long after the early birds have called it a night.

Early risers — often called morning larks — can bounce out of bed at the crack of dawn and might even hit the gym before the sun comes up. Since they’re up early, they like to turn in at around 9 p.m., which is just about the time their owl friends rev up.

Like early birds, night owls can accomplish a lot too, but they do it after dark because that’s when they’re most alert and awake. President Barack Obama is famously a night owl, as was Winston Churchill and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Still, the world seems to view morning people as go-getters and night owls as less than wise.

“Society sees getting up early as a sign of virtue,” says Philip Gehrman, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. “We have this prejudice against night owls that’s really not founded.”

Your tendency toward being a morning lark or a night owl isn’t necessarily something you can change. Sleep scientists say a person’s “chronotype” — shorthand for whether you are a morning lark, night owl or an intermediate — is determined in large part by your genes. Your sleep patterns are guided by biological “clocks” in your cells. These clocks operate on a 24-hour cycle, called circadian rhythms, and influence how alert or sleepy you feel.

“This cycle of different genes turns on and off in about a 24-hour pattern,” Gehrman says. “For some people it’s earlier, and for some people it’s later. We know the main genes that are involved, but we don’t know exactly why a variation in those genes leads to being an owl or a lark.”

While genetics plays a big role in your chronotype, many other factors are also at play, such as shift work and your age. Children start out as larks or intermediates, but at puberty their rhythms shift and they become more “owlish,” Gehrman says.

“By their mid-20s, most have moved back into the intermediate range, although some will remain lifelong night owls,” he says.

If getting up with the sun is your thing, you’ll be happy to learn that a growing body of evidence links your chronotype with lower rates of depression and greater well-being.

But if you’re hardwired to be a night owl, you’re at greater risk for depression, Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Studies suggest these issues are tied to night owls’ insufficient sleep and stress from defying their internal body clocks to conform to traditional morning routines.

That being said, should we try to shift our chronotype, or move closer to the middle? Not necessarily, Gehrman says.

“What we think is actually more important is whether you are living in sync with your circadian rhythm,” he says.

• Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association