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She must be the early-to-bed, early-to-rise type.
The early bird might catch the worm because it sleeps better than the night owl, not just because it awakens earlier.
At least that appears to be the case for humans, according to a new study.
Researchers found that night owls -- “evening-type individuals”-- are significantly more likely to suffer from poor sleep quality, daytime sleepiness and disturbing nightmares than early birds -- “morning-type individuals”-- or folks whose bedtime falls somewhere between the two.
“Evening-type people have more nightmares because of their sleep patterns,” says lead author Yavuz Selvi, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yuzuncu Yil University in Van, Turkey, whose paper was published online Aug. 25 in the journal Sleep and Biological Rhythms.
Staying awake late at night and waking up late in the morning disrupts the relationship between the body’s internal clock and its ability to maintain normal sleep patterns, Selvi explains. In other words, it really screws up your circadian rhythm.
Nightmares usually awaken you, so if they occur frequently, you might begin to fear falling asleep, cutting into your snooze time even more. Epidemiological studies have found that nearly nine in 10 adults reporting having at least one nightmare in the previous year, Selvi says, with 2 percent to 6 percent reporting weekly nightmares.
He and his coauthors studied 264 medical students, ages 17 to 26 years old, who weren’t yet dealing with crazy hours in their training. The researchers administered a battery of tests to assess whether the students were morning or evening types, the quality of their sleep and how frequently they experienced nightmares and how disturbing they were.
The “Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire” taken by the students asked what time they’d go to bed and get up if they were entirely free to plan their day and evening. Other questions touched on such matters as what time they’d prefer to hit the gym and how wide-awake they feel when they get up in the morning.
The test revealed that 59 of the students were evening types, 67 morning types and the rest fell in the “intermediate” range. Men were more likely than women to be night owls; vice versa when it came to early birds.
As a self-described night owl, I wasn’t thrilled to learn from Selvi that the consequences of my sleep habits could go way beyond my morning sluggishness and frequent urge to nap.
“A possible relationship has emerged between eveningness and certain mental disorders, including substance abuse, bulimia, sleep disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, suicidality and mood disorders,” he told me.
One reason night owls tend to get stressed out, Selvi says, is because it’s tough to hold a job or attend classes if your brain doesn’t kick in until noon or so.
Yikes. How about you? Are you a night owl, an early bird or something in between? Would you like to change your sleep habits, or does your pattern work for you?
Related:
- Sleep-deprived Americans nap in some weird places
- Why do we drool in our sleep?
- Hammock naps are the best, research proves
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Leave a Comment:
These studies crack me up! I am a night owl, but rarely have nightmares and am rarely (if ever) stressed out. I'm healthy and have no problems going to sleep once I get in bed. I think the problem comes in when you try to go against what your body tells you to do. If I am tired, I sleep. It just so happens that I don't really get tired until after midnight. I am very grouchy if I try to mess with my sleep patterns, such as by going to bed at an earlier time. I am generally up by 10am or so and feel well-rested! There are plenty of jobs out there that are perfect for night owls and do not require them to get up early.
I was a night-owl out of economic necessity. I worked third-shift in a 24/7 convenience store and was just "too reliable" to be switched to daytime (meaning no one else would show up reliably for night work). I did that for five years and it took a toll on me. I lived in a world where everything was closed and dark (except for a few months in summer). I had to be asleep when everyone else was active, so I had few friends. My sleep was very disturbed. I didn't have many nightmares per se but constant "bad" dreams, usually involving car accidents, losing my job, things I owned being taken away or breaking, or finding I had no money in my pocket or in the bank.
I started making mistakes at work and getting cranky with the customers. I begged for some day shifts, but no one listened; it wasn't they didn't care, but just had no one available (that wanted to work). Finally, a new district manager wanting to make a name for himself decided to fire me (over the protests of my more-understanding store manager, who had to take over most of my shifts). Workplace Darwinism I suppose, but one redeeming feature from having no social life is I have savings to live off of until I get a break.
Stupid study...I've been a "night owl" since I was a child. I never have nightmares and, in fact, rarely dream. (I know..we all dream, some just don't remember them..yada, yada, yada...)
The only time my sleep schedule is a problem is when I go against my OWN internal clock. Not everyone is the same. We don't all have to be in bed by 10 and up at 6...especially since I don't get off work 'til 11 pm. I had to fight to get my shift changed back to the late one...it's perfect!
I've been a night owl all my life (I'm 47), and I do have nightmares all the time. So, maybe the study is correct. But what I'm curious about is why there are night owls and early birds in the first place. Is it genetics or environment that determines a person's preference?
I am naturally a night owl but unfortunately the job I ended up with and love only has day time hours so I had to switch my internal clock. It was very hard and still is at times, especially on the weekends when I want to return to staying up late but cannot because I know if I do it will be hard getting up Monday morning. People who are night owls may have more nightmares but I think it is more damaging to force oneself into a routine their body does not like, but that is just me.
No civilized person gets up and goes to bed on the same day!
I don't think it's possible to have a more messed up sleep schedule than I had last year--I was falling asleep for 5 hours during the day thanks to sleep deprivation and continually going to sleep later and later. I've always been a night person and sleep deprived during school--but I have only had at most 3 nightmares my whole life. And I have plenty of dreams too--sometimes up to 5 a night which I remember, though usually no dreams when I only sleep 6 hours a night. I will say that I have much more anxiety when I am sleep deprived however.
I've always been a night owl. I thought when I got a regular day time job, M-F with the same daytime hours that my system would adjust. Not so. Ten years later I am still a night owl. I'm constantly exhausted because I am forced to go against my natural biorhythms. My deepest sleep period is about 4-8 am, and I am forced to rise at 6:30 am. Likewise, I am most productive after 4 pm. And I can't remember when I last had a nightmare.
I'll bet you the night owls experience more nightmares and disturbed sleep because they're trying to wrench their circadian rhythms into sleep-wake times that don't naturally work for them! And they're probably keeping inconsistent sleep-wake times to make up for the sleep deficits that occur.
I'm a night owl, although I've spent the past year and a half struggling to keep an 11-7:30 sleep-wake schedule for work. It took rigorous sleep hygiene (same bedtime and wake times every day including weekends, no bright lights or screen time at home in the evening, no exercise in the evening, no caffeine, no alcohol, dark cool room, ear plugs, melatonin, etc.) plus a light box every morning to shift my sleep schedule. It took 6 weeks for me to not feel like I was going to die from being a walking zombie, and about 6 months to be able to stop using the light box. But I still can't fall asleep without melatonin and I can't sleep all the way through the night. I keep impeccable "sleep hygiene" weekdays and weekends alike. Basically I'm a night owl trying to wrench my natural schedule into an unnatural schedule!
I will tell you that I've THREE sleep studies in the past few years -- two of them at Stanford in the last year -- and I've come to realize that sleep doctors do not really fully understand the nature of sleep at ALL. They just look at data and make conclusions. No one could explain why I have the circadian rhythm that I have -- why I am raring to go after 10pm at night. Why it doesn't matter that I keep this rigid sleep schedule. I felt great when I was unemployed and could sleep from 2am-10am every night. I've never felt so rested in my life. Being a night owl is a misunderstood situation in a poorly understood field.
I too have been a night owl all of my life. So are my two sons, and two grandsons are shaping up to be just the same way. We all have struggled to adapt to a day person's world, and it can be done, but it just isn't natural for us. I tell my kids that it's evolutionary. Back when humans lived in caves, not everybody could go to sleep when it got dark. Some had to stay up all night to tend the fire and watch out for wild animals. That was us!
These days I have a good job that allows me to work at home on more or less my own schedule, so I can listen to my body and work at my most productive times. I have rarely had nightmares anytime after childhood. I fall asleep easily and sleep soundly almost every night. The nights I have trouble sleeping, it is almost always because I have to get up early the next morning!
I`e never been a good night sleeper, and I know I dream when I do sleep. But the only dreams I can recall are nighmares. There must be others, i``m sure but I never recall them. I worked mostly swing shift, but I did put in a stretch of10 years on nights. I adjusted, but there are a lot of peopla who just can`t. I used to tell people that it was an acquired taste.
i find this study very interesting. i'm a night owl, i work the graveyard shift, and i am a light sleeper. there are city ordinances that prohibit people from doing noisy stuff like throwing a party, lawn mowing, etc during the night, but none for the day. As a result, I have a VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY hard time sleeping. And when I do, I have lots of nightmares, sometimes multiple ones. And they do awaken me and make me too scared to fall asleep. But I prefer working overnight, because there are a lot less people to stress you out. I used to work during the day but people would do annoying things and stress me out, and I'd have trouble sleeping anyway. So it's the same result either way.
I am a night owl and I find this interesting. I thought I was going crazy. Terrible nightmares.
i agree with deadbuggy; i dont think that nightmares come from being a night owl, but instead just messing with ur natural sleep schedual. Normally i usualy never had nightmares in my early childhood, then as i grew older and started to get realy busy (espesialy with school) i kept having to keep changing my sleep schedual; resulting in nightmares becoming very common.
I agree with most of the above resonders who are admitted "night owls". I am by nature more responsive and alert later on in the day-by that I mean 9 or 10am-not noon or 3pm. As a pharmacist who has worked all three shifts(day,evening, night); I adapted most to evening the best-due to my preferred circadian cycle. I am not prone to nightmares at all. More often I might wake up periodically during the night, which affects my restfulness in the during the day. When I was asked to work the night shift-that was a problem.
Clearly, the researcher needs to vary her/his sample population to include a population from various careers(they used medical students?too limited) Also, are larger population N>500. Asking someone to flip their natural circadian rhythms can definitely cause sleep disturbances such as nightmares, restlessness, etc.
If I dream, they tend to be nightmares. I've become the early to bed, early to rise type enforced by the last decade of manual labor. I lucked out that this schedule seems to prevent me from nightmaring because I would rather stay up all night than have my dreams...and...I have.
I'm sure this is God's way of not having the entire planet consumed by every living soul on Earth at the same time. The Staggered approach. Could you imagine what the day would be like with the entire population going and coming at pretty much the same time every day? I have been a night owl since a little baby. my mom said she used to have to lay on me to get me to go to sleep and wake me up cuz I wouldn't wake on my own. A baby that slept past 8 a.m.!!! I do have nightmares and get frustrated because I can't go to sleep, knowing I have an agenda in the morning.
I have been a night owl for as long as I can remember. It's always been hard for me to go to bed and get up early for school, work, or whatever. I now work second shift (4:00pm to 12:30am) and I LOVE it! I don't really have nightmares per se, maybe five my whole life, but I do have a lot of weird, vivid dreams, many of which I remember in great detail. Some I will never forget.
I agree that it is a matter of one's own personal internal clock. I wonder, has anyone done a study on what time of year nightowls versus morning people were born? That would be interesting.
I too have always been a night owl. I work 3rd shift now and love it. For years growing up I had to be a day person and I was sooooo tired sometimes I wanted to cry. When I found eves I was thrilled but mids is better. I have no issues sleeping except for the occasional neighbor's mower on the weekends. I was born at night and mom said I was up all night as a baby. Hasn't changed either as an adult!