Happy sleep
It’s not just how long, it’s when
More sleep is good, but a study published in August 2021 from researchers at University of Colorado Boulder points towards the ‘when’ being just as important as the ‘how long’.
Researchers analysed a DNA database of 697,828 people held by biotech companies UK Biobank and
23andme, and identified the chronotypes and average sleep midpoint of 85,502 people (based on info from sleep trackers and sleep surveys). The results showed that 33% of people identified as ‘morning larks’, 9% as ‘night owls’ and the rest were in the middle. The average midpoint (the middle of a given person’s sleep) was 3am.
Researchers cross-referenced the subjects’ genetic data from the sleep study with genetic data linked to major depressive disorder (MDD) and found that those genetically predisposed to earlier rising were 23% less likely to experience MDD, specifically because their sleep midpoint was an hour earlier.
Whether shifting everyone’s bedtime back by an hour can have positive effects on wellbeing requires further study, but this research does support the long-posited link between earlier nights, good sleep and better mental health.
If you want to give it a crack, try moving your bedtime back in 15-minute increments over the next four days. It just might make getting up that much more bearable.