Morning Person or Night Owl

Growing up, you must have heard the old wives’ tale; “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” But that’s not necessarily true. Several successful people including Obama, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, and Elvis Presley, have reported being more active during night hours. One thing is certain, its just a bluff that night owls are less competent as compared to the early birds.

Professor Jim Horne of Loughborough University conducted a study and concluded that those who rise early are often oriented and end up as civil servants and accountants while those who sleep late are more extroverted and creative types: the poets, artists or inventors. He says “we have looked at morning and evening types and we found that personalities tended to be different. Evening types were more social, more people-oriented. They will probably be good at cryptic crosswords, while morning types go for the more logical ones.”

You’ve probably noticed that you feel more active during certain parts of the day and have lower energy at others. This pattern has to do with your personal circadian rhythm or your chronotype. About 20,000 nerve cells form a part of your brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus which controls your circadian rhythms that affects the way your body works, like sleep patterns, hormones, body temperature, and eating habits.

So what are you? A lark or an owl? Do you like to oversleep and work late at night or wake up early and get done with everything by evening? Answer to this might be easy after observing your daily routine. But why is there such a contrast between individuals? According to a study conducted by geneticists from the University of Leicester, it’s the genes that make you a ‘lark’ or an ‘owl’. The study of nearly 90,000 people who had their genomes sequenced was published in the journal Frontiers in Neurology and has identified 80 versions of genes that are linked to being an early or a late riser.

Researcher Dr. Eran Tauber said “Most people find that their performance is at peak during specific times of the day. A great variation in this diurnal preference is found, from early risers to night owls. The impact of this preference chronotype on health and behavior is well documented, but the molecular basis is largely unknown”.

In the study, researchers used fruit flies, who have quite similar gene clocks to humans, to get a basic insight into the molecular basis of early morning or late night preference. Since this genetic system is slightly identical between insects and humans, there is a good chance that some of the genes identified in flies, would also be significant for diurnal preference in human beings.

The study also states that most of these genes are already present in the mammalian genome and would, therefore, be useful beginning points for research in humans. For instance, a relatively bigger number of genes were associated with a molecular signal pathway known as MAPK which is also present in human beings and is involved in the development of many cancers.

Out of the 15 genetic variants which the study found to be linked to being a morning person, seven of them were near genes that are known to play a role in circadian rhythms while some of these genetics were also close to the ones involved in sensing light from our eyes. The close proximity of such genes suggests the fact that they probably have related functions, specifically telling us when to be wake up or go to bed.

The conclusions revealed quite a lot of interesting patterns. For instance, 48.4% percent of women said they were morning people while 39.7% of men agreed on that. The research also confirmed a previous theory that suggested that older people are likely to rise early, with around 63.1% people above the age of sixty embracing the morning routine while 75.8% of the below thirty age group preferring a late-night lifestyle.

Compared with morning larks, those individuals who identified themselves as night owls showed almost twice as likely to suffer from insomnia and around two thirds as likely to have been diagnosed with sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a sleeping disorder that leads you to repeatedly stop breathing while you’re asleep. In contrast, self-proclaimed morning people were more likely to sleep soundly, sweat while sleeping, and even sleepwalk.

However, the scientists have noticed that people who identified as morning larks tend to have lower body mass index (BMI) as compared to night owls. That is because there was one gene the scientists found to be more common in evening people, known as the FTO gene, which has been linked to obesity. That might be an outcome of late-night snacking and less physical exercise during the night time to burn down those calories.

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