Do you prefer staying up throughout the night instead of adopting a day schedule? Then chances are you could be a night owl–a trait also shared by the likes of Thomas Edison, Hunter S. Thompson, and Elvis Presley.
However, now new research says that night owls have a harder time staying fit–a fact that could cause long term damage to their health.
The research was reported this week at the SLEEP 2014 meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“We found that even among healthy, active individuals, sleep timing and circadian preference are related to activity patterns and attitudes toward physical activity,” says Kelly Glazer Baron, Ph.D., an associate professor of neurology and director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. “Waking up late and being an evening person were related to more time spent sitting, particularly on weekends and with difficulty making time to exercise.”
What Researchers Discovered
Looking at 123 health adults who slept at least 6.5 hours daily, researchers measured their sleep quality and how it varied by performing wrist actigraphy, along with tracking other variables such as how much they exercised and how they felt about exercise. The good news: Many of the participants got an average of 83 minutes of exercise per week, though how they felt about it depended on if they stayed up during the day or night.
For instance, night owls felt it was harder to maintain a normal exercise schedule, or felt more compelled to have a more sedentary lifestyle.
“This was a highly active sample averaging 83 minutes of vigorous activity per week,” says Baron. “Even among those who were able to exercise, waking up late made it and being an evening person made it perceived as more difficult.”
In turn, researchers also found that night owls were more likely to get less exercise than those who maintained a more normal sleep schedule–therefore putting them at risk for diseases caused by inactivity, such as diabetes and obesity.
For Baron, she believes these findings show that exercise isn’t simply a motivation thing; maintaining different sleep cycles can also influence how active you are.
“Sleep timing should be taken into account when discussing exercise participation,” says Baron. “We could expect that sleep timing would play even a larger role in a population that had more difficulty exercising.”
How to Change Your Sleep Cycle
Unfortunately, changing your sleep cycle when it’s something you’ve followed for years isn’t easy. Doing so involves changing your personal circadian rhythm–something that can take months to correct.
For a temporary solution, however, experts say people can correct their sleep schedule by setting their alarm clock back 15 minutes each day until their reach their desired time. Natural sleep aids such as melatonin can also help eliminate wakefulness during the night.
Readers: Are you a morning person or a night owl?
Sources:
Study: Night Owls More Likely to Be Sedentary – EurekAlert.org
Night Owls Are More Sedentary; Less Motivated to Exercise According to New Study – UniversityHerald.com
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