Night owls are half as efficient at work as early risers. It is the result of a Finnish study published in February 2021. This is the first time that researchers have made a link between our biological clock and the world of work. Have you ever tried giving a presentation to a customer or going to the factory to screw bolts after a short night? Obviously, we are less efficient. But is it because of a lack of sleep or because we are not early in the morning? Researchers at the University of Oulu in Finland wanted to know if there was a biological rhythm more suited to the world of work.
Scientists questioned nearly 6,000 people aged 46 between 2012 and 2016 on their professional life, their health and their sleep patterns in order to determine their chronotype: that is, their preference during the day to do certain activities. . They have shown that night owls more often consider themselves less efficient than others in their work. They even retire earlier due to disability. Their aptitude for the professional world is half as good as that of morning people, regardless of their gender or the duration of their sleep or even their working hours, according to the analysis published in the journal. Occupational and environmental medicine.
The chronobiology, that is to say, the study of the biological rhythms of our organism, has only really progressed in the last ten years. We have understood that our body respects a circadian rhythm, that is to say over 24 hours, mainly linked to the presence of light. For example, at the end of the day we start to secrete melatonin, this hormone that will help us fall asleep, and in the morning our body temperature is lower. This has an impact on many of our biological functions: our cardiovascular system, our immune system. Three American geneticists, Young, Rosbash et Hall even won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2017 for identifying genes linked to our circadian rhythm. But our Finnish researchers don’t claim the Nobel, they just think their research will allow every employer and employee to find the best time of day to perform at their peak.
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