Night owls tend to die younger (but smoking and alcohol are to blame) – breaking latest news

Night owls seem to be more likely to be at risk of dying at a young age, but in reality it would not be the fault of their chronotype but of the greater aptitude for alcohol and smoking. This conclusion was reached by a large Finnish study published in Chronobiology International which for 37 years analyzed the data of 22,976 Finnish adult twins aged between 18 and 24 years. Owls (late sleepers) have been found to have a slightly higher risk of dying prematurely than skylarks (early wakers), but the impact would actually be lifestyle.

At night more alcohol and smoke

Previous studies had suggested that night owls have a higher risk of mortality and a tendency to prefer riskier behaviors . In this research it seems that a greater possibility of an early death is not directly due to the chronotype, but to what life as a night owl entails. ‘The increased risk of mortality associated with being a night owl appears to be mainly due to alcohol and tobacco consumption compared to morning people,’ says lead author, Christer Hublin, of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki.

The risks of night work

There is increasing evidence that the length and quality of sleep and night work affect health. Previous studies have linked night owls at a higher risk of diseaseespecially of the cardiovascular type. In fact, data published in 2018 by the UK Biobank, looking at people over six and a half years, found that those who by necessity or choice live more at night have a small increased risk of dying from any cause, including disease cardiovascular. It was precisely this research that inspired the new study just published: the authors wanted to analyze some aspects that had not been measured, namely the consumption of alcohol and smoking and not just the chronotype.

nonsmokers who didn’t drink heavily in this group of night owls had no increased risk of dying from any cause. The team found that smoking and drinking (which lead to leg

I study

In the study it was seen that compared to early risers, night owls were younger and drank/smoked more. In addition, night owls more often reported having slept less than 8 hours.

Of the total participants 8,728 had died by 2018 and death from any cause was 9% higher for night owls than early risers. However, the study found that smoking and alcohol largely caused these deaths, not the chronotype. In fact, it was seen that non-smokers who did not drink heavily in the night owl group did not have a higher risk of death than early risers. While being a night sleeper doesn’t necessarily mean bad sleep habits, the two often go together. Impaired sleep can lead to a range of mental and physical problems and has even previously been linked to addictions, for example to nicotine or alcohol. Dr Jaakko Kaprio, co-author of the work explained that in their study the health of the participants was no different from that of the general population, while the volunteers from the English biobank were healthier than the average. The limitation of the research is that the data were self-reported.