Bad news for night owls: They may die sooner, but not due to lack of sleep

A major study that spanned 37 years from beginning to end has found something concerning about people who tend to stay up late. These night owls are more likely to die at a younger age but from causes related to smoking and alcohol consumption rather than how late they go to bed.

Around 42.9 per cent of the 22,976 Finnish adult twins whose data was analysed for the study described themselves as "evening types" or "somewhat evening types." Our propensity to desire to sleep or be active at particular times is formally known as our chronotype.

As per earlier research, night owls are more likely to die young and have a propensity towards risky behaviour. This study indicates that a higher likelihood of dying sooner may not be directly related to chronotype but rather to what it leads to.

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"Our findings suggest that there is little or no independent contribution of chronotype to mortality,"Christer Hublin, a researcher at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health told Science Alert.

Instead, "the increased risk of mortality associated with being a clearly 'evening' person appears to be mainly accounted for by a larger consumption of tobacco and alcohol. This is in comparisonto those who are clearly 'morning' persons."

The researchers followed up in 2018, looking at death rates discovered through national registers, after identifying the chronotypes for the study participants in 1981. The analysis took into account each person's level of smoking and drinking as well as factors including their education, BMI, and sleeping patterns.

The researchers discovered that 8,728 of the individuals had passed away by 2018. The likelihood of dying from any cause was nineper centhigher in people who identified as definite (not "somewhat") evening types than in people who identified as definite morning types.

However, among this group of night owls, non-smokers who also didn't drink much didn't have a higher chance of passing away for any reason. The researchers discovered that the additional deaths were caused by smoking and drinking, which can result in diseases linked to alcohol as well as alcohol poisoning.

Even if a poor sleep schedule does not always accompany an evening person, the two frequently go together. Impaired sleep has previously been connected to addictions, such as alcohol or nicotine, and it can cause a variety of mental and physical problems.

"There is a reciprocal relationship between the reward system and circadian system, and the level of alcohol and substance use correlates with the preference to stay up later at night,"the researchers wrote in the paper, reported Science Alert.

The team did not detect any increase in the risk of cardiovascular-related death, in contrast to the earlier study that served as the inspiration for this one. However, there are some changes in the population sample utilised; in the earlier study, adults from the UK were used, and they were typically in better condition than the average adult from the UK population, whereas in the present study, the cohort's health was more in line with that of the general population.

As always, more thorough research,including a larger sample size and researchers from more nations will be helpful in illuminating this connection. However, it appears that there is a need to consider some of the lifestyle decisions that are more likely to occur as a result of those sleeping habits, in addition to our sleeping patterns.

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