June 16, 2023 – People who stay awake late have a 9% increased risk of early death, mainly because they usually tend to smoke or drink alcohol, based on a brand new study.
The researchers found that simply being an evening owl doesn’t pose a risk. People who reported being a night person but didn’t drink or smoke had no increased risk of early death.
The study was published on Friday within the magazine Chronobiology InternationalNearly 24,000 people in Finland who participated in a previous large twin study were asked the query: “Try to estimate to what extent you are a morning person or an evening person.”
Nearly 30% described themselves as “definitely a morning person,” 28% were “somewhat a morning person,” 33% were “somewhat an evening person,” and 10% said they were “definitely an evening person.”
People who preferred the evening tended to be younger, slept lower than eight hours an evening and smoked or drank alcohol more often, based on a Summary from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, where lead creator Dr. Christer Hublin works.
The researchers described individuals with evening preferences as individuals with “eveningness,” and other people with morning preferences as individuals with “morningness.”
“The increased risk of death among people with an evening lifestyle appears to be mainly due to higher tobacco and alcohol consumption than among people with a morning lifestyle,” they write.