Morning diurnal preference is associated with reduced risk of depression: study
medlifestyle.news
medlifestyle.news
Several TL;DR quotes:
>Our data are consistent with results from a recent randomized clinical trial7that shifted the sleep timing of individuals withan evening diurnal preference. The multifaceted intervention targeted sleep timing, meal timing, light exposure, caffeine in-take, napping behavior, and exercise behavior. This intervention resulted in a mean 2-hour advance in sleep-wake timing and advanced the dim light melatonin onset, a circadian rhythm timing marker. There was no effect on sleep duration or the time between sleep onset and dim light melatonin onset timing,which suggests the absence of sleep deprivation or worsening of circadian misalignment as a consequence of this intervention.7Participants allocated to the intervention arm had improvements in the overall Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale score, as well as the depression and stress subscale scores.
>While this trial also lends support to a causal protective effect of morningness on mood,the study was small (n = 22) and did not assess hard clinical endpoints. In contrast, our analysis tested the association with life-long modification of diurnal preference and assessed the clini-cal end point of MDD diagnosis. Taken together, our results suggest that interventions such as those implemented in this trial7may be worth scaling to larger clinical trials
>This 2-sample MR analysis found robust genetic evidence for a protective association between earlier diurnal preference with lower MDD risk, and contextualized this association using an objective sleep timing measure. The findings support further investigation in the form of randomized clinical trials of sleep timing interventions for the prevention of MDD.
Ugh, every time, feels like. Science "reporting" tends to be pretty worthless.
This certainly resonates with me...I've long been quite a night owl, very much so in my teens (with long periods where I was sleeping from 5am to 1pm if left to my own devices) and much less so now in my 30s, but each transition–to college or more flexible jobs–that gave me more control over my schedule and when my days would start also coincided with feeling a lot better about myself.
It is not an exaggeration in the slightest to say that many people will treat you badly, joke about you and mock you to your face if you have trouble getting out of bed before 9 or 10am. I thankfully never struggled with depression around it and have had very flexible work schedules, but I can totally appreciate how the circumstances of being someone whose sleep schedule doesn't line up with society's expectations can really wear on a person.
But it's an amazingly safe bet that the main factor is the part where we treat people poorly and openly classify them as a bad person. This seems pretty simple.
Until the had too much of an effect on my health I medicated myself into a morning person sleep schedule. I felt worse physically, just low key bad all the time, but I miss it so much. Getting treated that much better, with absolute benefit of the doubt given to me regarding everything I did, instead of the complete opposite, was really great.
A more beneficial study than the OP would be to turn off all lights by sun down, and remove all technology. I’d wager folks would naturally wake up with sunrise over time and feel healthier, assuming they know what to do with themselves.
There's a pretty common genetic mutation that causes a delay in the natural rhythm.
https://www.verywellhealth.com/genetic-mutation-night-owl-di...
Rather than bed at 2am, sleep till 10, I wake up at 5:30am and fall asleep at 10 simply by being tired enough.
The result is that I get better sleep, need less caffeine, have more effective creative time for personal projects, and put my stuff first before the brain is full of work stuff. Oh and the girlfriend says I’m less cranky, more pleasant to be around, and she loves that we go to bed together.
The insight that made it happen: If I can switch to a 9 hour different timezone, why not to waking up early? Body just cares which timezone your circadian rhytm is in, not where you are physically.
These days I average 7h/night and I’m ridiculously well rested. In high school and college I could go weeks on 4h/night.
How do you reconcile "it doesn’t matter when" and "The result is that I get better sleep"?
The actual sleep quality depends more on how much regular exercise I get and eating well than it does on timing. Unless I’m literally jetlagged.
No, sorry. I've been "fun-employed" for 3 years and I've experimented with my sleep schedule extensively. If someone wants to tell me they know my biology better than me, fine, but I'll do what keeps me productive and happy.
I still have trouble going to sleep early. I end up staying up too late, and then am tired most of the day the next day. But I still end up staying up too late the next night, too.
I would think I would adjust my schedule, but I struggle with it.
10pm, watch goes bzzz -> lie down in bed with lights off. Even if you don’t feel like it, even if you don’t wanna sleep yet, even if it seems dumb. Invariably within 20min at most I’m asleep.
The hard part is accepting the boredom of it all. It’s sleep, you’re supposed to be bored.
I need to compensate each day with even more coffee than normally and my head's just spinning by the end of the day because I am too exhausted.
Since my rhytm cannot be forced to the early waking, on average I only sleep 5 hours each night.
It's a constant torture.
Definitely cutting out caffeine at noon helps.
So I always thought, maybe I need to wake up at 3am and fall asleep at 7pm.
There is something about the night that boosts me and fascinates me, it feels like it is my world. And it has been the case since early childhood, even before I can remember according to my parents.
And it is not just about the sun. I love the feeling of being the last one standing, the calm after everyone went to sleep.
I also asked myself the same question about timezones and also DST, why can't I be a morning person when I can naturally adjust to clock change? And I came to the conclusion that there is a lot more than the clock.
I love being the first one standing. Get to the office early for that 30-60mins of quiet and peace. Most productive time of my day.
Anyway, seriously: just because our genomes stir us to it doesn't mean it's good for the individual.
This is exactly why I used to stay up all night and why I now wake up early. Same feeling of aloneness and serenity, except the brain is nice and fresh full of your own thoughts instead of everybody else’s crap. Hardest part is staying away from thought pollutants for the first 3 hours of the day.
Now I am thinking to get some profet help, since others on HN mentioned that this is possible.
At night, I have no distractions and if it's cold I'm already rugged up.
And this sounds ridiculously lazy to physical workers, and even to my former self, when I woke up at 4.30 in Australia to cut the first trees at 6:00 ;) That was the only moment of my life where I wasn’t depressed. Maybe this blue light has a very palpable effect on sleep cycles and depression, after all.
During daytime you have to be ready for a phone / doorbell to ring, a package to be delivered, a package by a neighbor who isn't there being brought to you, an e-mail reaching you, which demands attention, et cetera. It's louder outside. In front of your house kids might play, a dog might bark, traffic is heavier, gardening work is going on,... it feels like a world for extroverts and there is the risk of something demanding your immediate attention while you don't feel like it. There is a "societal" pressure on you to be functioning.
And at night, it's the opposite.
You can finally relax, focus, you know nothing of that will happen. You feel safe knowing that people around you are sleeping. No one expects anything from you during these hours, because it's the designated time for sleep. What you do now is outside of anyone's expectations, it's your time, your time alone. No commitments, freedom, and focus.
So I wonder if night owls are predominantly introverts with some form of social anxiety (whether they realize it or not) and I certainly think there's a large overlap there. I'm speculating, and I am sure it's not true for plenty of people, but it certainly describes me.
Getting at 2-4am, feels great, like there's plenty of time and the hordes are fast asleep, or going to sleep. Finally I have a stretch of time to get some real work done
Getting up at 7am doesn't have any of that benefit. There are too many people around by then.
Waking up at 0600 instead of 0700 is one wasted sleep.
Waking up 0400 means two peaceful hours before the hordes wake up, and I am awake when they do wake up.
No matter how early (or late) I get up, my day is not done until 3-4am when I had time for myself without the bothering of others/society's expectations.
During the week, I'll sleep 5-6h and start to work, on the weekend I'll pay my sleep debt and sleep 10-11h.
As someone else mentioned, if I camped without artificial light I would get tired at eight. So I switched my evening routine to only use lamps, created a wind down routine, and now I get sleepy around ten and don’t feel good if I stay up.
Feel free to stick with your schedule. But if it is causing you trouble you are probably more adaptable than you think.
It has dominated my life choices and I wish there was a way around it.
One thing that made a huge difference for me was managing light levels. My sleep schedule is much more tied to ambient light than I expected. Now I automatically dim the lights in the evening and bring them up in the morning. That leaves me with a solid 10-6-ish sleep schedule. No alarm clocks, no caffeine, and generally solid energy levels.
These days if I accidentally leave on some manual lights while I'm engaged in something I'll end up staying up way too late. Turns out I'm just not a responsible lightswitch user, so now I try to leave all up to Hue.
I have a pretty annoying sleep disorder called delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD), diagnosed by multiple clinicians. I have impeccable sleep hygiene, quit caffeine entirely, tried lots of OTC and prescription sleep drugs, light therapy, every kind of sleep supplement you've heard of and probably a few you haven't, and I still revert to going to bed around 5am and waking between noon and 1:30pm.
In the times I maintained a "normal" early-bird schedule, I actually consistently fall into a deep depression.
Our circadian rhythms are pretty powerful regulators -- not just of sleep, but of our hormones and regularity (in the poop sense) too. So misalignment wreaks havoc on our bodies in various ways, even if we're able to get enough sleep.
Anyway for some people they're more flexible and trainable than others. I'm genuinely happy for your case, but I mainly wanted to point out that not everyone will have the same results.
I wonder if this is something I unlocked during my digital nomad days. There was a period of 2 years in my mid 20’s when I moved from Europe to SFBA and back every 2 or 3 months. 9 hours difference each way, just enough to really screw up your rhythms.
ed: I should caveat that some people will no doubt be able to do some kind of productive activity while wearing them, I've not yet been able to.
Eg, they probably need money not, or they would be less likely to accept a night shift. Another one is how there is more noise during the day that could affect their sleep, etc...
You are truly a blessed person and are enjoying one of life's greatest treasures.
Realize nearly everyone has bad sleep hygiene and self diagnoses themselves as having a disorder of some sort.
(I am non-24 and have been so my whole life. I have a 25-26h day and slowly drift out and back in to phase with the rest of the world on a few week period. I just woke up (19:00 local), for example.)
I sleep when I am tired, and I wake up when I am done sleeping. I dropped out of high school and have almost never kept a square job, but both of those things sucked when I tried them, so I was glad to be rid of an alarm clock.
Now my winter/pandemic home is in a city with more 24h restaurants and services than any other on the planet, as far as I can tell.
I have also always been a 25-26 hr a day person. But i have found that if I get vigorous exercise that day, then I am actually more like 24.
Doesn't seem to have much effect on my sleep, but I also famously ingest way too much caffeine at all hours of the day.
TBH I prefer to be awake when everyone else is asleep. Crowds and lines and traffic are all pretty terrible, but so is living in low-population-density areas without easy access to goods and services. Being nocturnal in an urban environment is the only mitigation I know of. If I could be "cured" I wouldn't want to be.
This worked well mostly, especially since at the office my boss was OK with me arriving and leaving 1-1.5 hrs early.
This was great for going shopping, as shops here close fairly early (7:30 - 8 PM usually) and leaving work at 6:30-7 just doesn't leave enough time.
But then, that means everything shifts. I'd have to be in bed by 10 PM to not feel tired in the morning, which means having dinner around 7. Which means if I want to see friends or other people with "normal" schedules, I have to "stay out late" which messes with my rhythm.
As I'm not particularly social and don't go out too often, all in all this works out fine, and avoiding rush hour for the commute is absolutely worth it. But the point is this isn't "free".
i don't agree that society was 'made for' i think it's mostly biological / planet rhythm on average
that said i've been alternatively morning dude / night owl.. I have no idea why or how this change
I've never encountered such strong stigma. Sound very specific to the culture you live in.
Lack of sunlight and social isolation contribute to depression, and overall lack of energy.
Before the whole "I talk to plenty of people online"
Sure, but how could you possibly have time to visit productive friends. Or interact with the rest of society physically, getting up past 9 am.
Live with the sun, coming from a guy who used to wake up at 3pm.
"Genetically proxied earlier diurnal preference was associated with a 23% lower risk of depression"
> This means that if someone who regularly goes to bed at 1 a.m. instead goes to bed at midnight and sleeps for the same amount of time, they can reduce their risk by 23%...at 11 p.m...40%...early risers may benefit from waking up even earlier. For those in the moderate or evening ranges, however, shifting to an earlier bedtime would likely be helpful.
> “This study definitely shifts the weight of evidence toward supporting a causal effect of sleep timing on depression,” Daghlas added.
> Dr. Vetter gives the following recommendations to individuals who desire to go on an earlier sleep schedule...
They are explicitly recommending that people change their sleep schedule, even though the study did not explore changes in sleep schedule.
This bullshit shouldn't have been published in the first place.
My wife doesn’t really get it, and it bothers her quite a bit frankly. But I’ve come to crave waking up early, and doing so is almost like the first accomplishment of the day. Before cleaning my sleeping area, coffee, anything - I made the effort to respect my time and my day, setting myself up for success. I know I’ll sleep better that night, and give myself proper time to accommodate what I need to do that day. It feels right.
I do wonder sometimes though, where is the head and tail of it? Is it a purely psychological phenomenon or do I actually benefit from waking earlier, regardless of time spent asleep?
Is it a learned thing, or am I actually sensitive to my needs?
Sleep is a hard one to understand. All I know is I need a lot of it.
Conversely, if I wake up late, I feel like a failure.
This is kind of unfortunate, because I can wake up anytime I want and start work, I don't have to start working at any particular time. I also physically feel pretty shitty when I wake up early. But I can't just shake the feeling of being a failure when I wake up late.
I've always thought it to be purely psychological, but maybe that's not the case.
The only thing I can recall before external influences was waking up early as a child and playing in the grass and woods around my home, feeling like the days lasted forever. I associate waking early with those feelings, too.
When staying up late I was basically just wasting time, but when I get up early it feels like I'm able to get a lot done in that extra time. I don't think that's actually true, I believe I could actually be more productive when often staying up late to grind programming for example, but it feels that way.
I think in the past I squandered mornings more often, but now they're kind of like a sanctuary. I might read, lift weights, work on a project around the house - regardless of what I do though, I tend to do it well and with ease. It's often fairly focused and high quality time where I get to be a human being I can recognize and enjoy.
Except, correlation does not imply causality.
And some people are night owls by choice and can easily change their behavior to conform, and some people have fairly severe sleep disorders and really can't.
This is a bit like showing gay and trans people are often depressed, so if you just got them to stop they'd be happier.
Complete with a bunch of people in this comment thread who were bi in college and later settled down heteronormatively so clearly everyone else can, too (all the people who were nightowls when they were younger but easily moved their schedule).
I’ve suffered with depression on and off myself and I really think there is something to the article’s claims.
The full text says their data are consistent recent randomized clinical trial that shifted the sleep timing of individuals with an evening diurnal preference.[1] But that study seems to be about making an unnatural schedule more bearable.[2] It should be compared to accommodating people's natural sleep cycles.
[1] https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/correlation/2021-daghlas...
> that shifted the sleep timing of individuals with an evening diurnal preference
> But that study seems to be about making an unnatural schedule more bearable.
That's sounds like something akin to telling a depressed person "why can't you just be happy?" and then making them watch comedy?
It's likely you have something interesting to do or something to keep you occupied in days you're waking up early. You might feel happy those days, but lack of sleep might actually be worsening your depression in the long run. Not saying this is what's happening necessarily, but it's possible.
That said, the article isn't even talking about sleeping less, it's talking about waking up early. But I remember seeing interesting studies that are actually studying the link between sleep deprivation and depression.
I would not recommend it btw, even if you have that little extra energy boost at the beginning.
That's not what it means at all. It means that people with the genetics which causes them to naturally sleep earlier might also be genetically less at risk of depression.
You'd need to make an experiment where you take depressed people with genetics that causes them to naturally be night owls and force them to sleep earlier somehow (find a way where they can actually start to fall asleep sooner and all), and then measure the impact on depression to prove that it means what they claim it means, otherwise it is just correlation, not causation.
I can't say I would recommend either extreme, it's pretty ridiculous going to bed when it's broad daylight half of the year and waking up at such an ungodly hour. But I love mornings now, and it's so nice essentially being done with basically everything you have to do by noon, an extreme version of eating your frogs early.
I feel like I've lived a whole day by the time people roll out of bed, though of course that also means I'm sleeping like a small child when people are enjoying their evenings. Definitely not conducive to a healthy family life, but as a bachelor I'm enjoying it for now.
This is as bad as "drink chamomile tea" and will be insensitively passed around from relatives to people with serious chronic behavioral health issues. However honestly the chamomile tea has more weight behind it than this.
That seems to work for me. Couldn’t do that, going into an office, so WFH FTW.
I often get more accomplished by 8AM, than I used to get done in half a day, at the office. I find that my bug-hunting is best done early.
And I mean, then it's a "study reaffirms what we already know" headline.
Finally they spoke to one of their preceptors. The advice? Double up your shifts for a week and grind yourself down until you absolutely are sleep deprived (they are all generally sleep deprived in this program, but have stretches of 3 or 4 days off). It seemed almost sadist to me, but they did it.
We were all surprised when it more or less worked. I would say it bought them a month here, a month there when needed. It seems like a terrible strategy over the long term but something was definitely going on. They called it a "big reset" and also insisted that they had an overall sense of euphoria for a week or so following each "dosing".
They don't do it anymore, after trying a few different medications a particular SSRI really seemed to click and it's been 20 years now without a major recurrence.
It sounds like a legit factor in a malpractice lawsuit.
People report feeling good despite taking a depressant, and self-medicate their depression with alcohol.
Worth noting that "depressant" in the drug sense is anything which slows down the action of the central nervous system, it doesn't have anything to do with the mental state of depression.
Some of the drugs most known for bringing on a state of euphoria are depressants (eg; opiates).
The mania triggered by this story should have been just as concerning as the depression.
I do this too but to scrape the bottom of the barrel on philosophy problems. It's basically like doing drugs.
Luckily I only did it for about 4 years before I snapped out of complete lack of appreciation from my employer and realized that if _I_ didn't take control of my life and demand appreciation, respect, and time off, that I was going to waste my entire adult life. Took my dad about 40 years to realize.
I mean, yeah, if you work 60 hours a week, commute 2 hours a day and drink 3 beers a night, you spend Saturday recovering, Sunday wishing you had energy for side projects and then Monday hits, cool, we didn't have to think about crushing depression. This is what happiness is, right fellow Americans?
I think this is the key is the daylight, not the regular amount of light, but the strong brightness in the early morning that trigger hormone affects not only our mood but our immune system as well.
Personally, I don't think it's related to a sleep schedule. it's more about the light. I've been recently listening to the Andrew Huberman podcast. He's a neuroscientist and has a weekly episode. And in one of his episodes, he mentioned that regular human being needs to be exposed to sunlight at least 30 mins a day. Not just a light, but the strong brightness coming from the sun which triggers hormones increase our alertness by raising the amount of cortisol in the body.
of course, this means more productivity, more immunity, and controls the mood. There's another way to do it, an ice bath for example but the light is actually more important than we think.
Waking up early does boost confidence/ ego a bit though.
So the article appears to be bullshit.
That said, if you suffer from depression, trying to alter your sleep pattern is a worthwhile experiment - there is a good chance it could work for you.
Googling the first paragraph points me to other farms, with this Yahoo News article maybe being the original source, although it's also sourced from some random Indian media site called ANI:
https://news.yahoo.com/waking-just-one-hour-earlier-03290806...
Edit, a more legitimate URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/05/210528114107.h...
[1] https://www.colorado.edu/today/2021/05/27/want-reduce-your-d...
People with no mental illness get a good night's sleep, are more productive and therefore get up early in the morning.
People with Depression and/or Anxiety have trouble falling asleep and sleeping, so once they fall asleep late at night, they will wake up later in the morning after 4-5 hours of sleep.
How can we use this conclusion to oppress minorities? Eugenics isn't in favor at the moment.
I didn’t really get it despite reading the explanation three times. I’m not convinced but that could just be down to this article rather than the paper itself.
I just don’t get how they accounted for something like “depression causes people to sleep later and for longer”.
This is a misleading headline to say the least. On par with "just stop being sad."