EARLY BIRDS AVOID ALLERGIES

Teenagers who prefer to stay up late and wake later in the morning are more likely to suffer with asthma and allergies compared with those who sleep and wake earlier, according to a study published in ERJ Open Research. Asthma symptoms are known to be linked to the body’s internal clock, but this is the first study to look at how individual sleep preferences influence asthma risk in teenagers.

The study was led by Dr Subhabrata Moitra from the University of Alberta, Canada. “Sleep and the ‘sleep hormone’ melatonin are known to influence asthma, so we wanted to see if adolescents’ preference for staying up late or going to bed early could be involved in their asthma risk,” says Moitra.

The researchers found that the chance of having asthma was about three times higher in teens who prefer to sleep later compared with those who preferred to sleep earlier. They also found the risk of suffering allergic rhinitis (runny noses and sneezing) was twice as high in late sleepers compared with early sleepers. “Our results suggest there’s a link between preferred sleep time, and asthma and allergies in teenagers,” says Moitra.

“We can’t be certain that staying up late is causing asthma, but we know that the sleep-hormone melatonin is often out of sync in late sleepers and that could, in turn, be influencing teenagers’ allergic response. It could be that encouraging teenagers to put down their devices and get to bed a little earlier would help decrease the risk of asthma and allergies. That’s something that we need to study more.”