Not an early bird? Then it pays to become one. Getting up earlier reduces the risk of depression, a new study shows.
Getting up one hour earlier can already reduce the risk of major depression by 23 percent, according to a large study, published in the professional journal at the end of May. JAMA Psychiatry popped up.
hour earlier
Researchers from the Universities of Colorado Boulder, MIT and Harvard studied the genes and data of 840,000 people and come up with some of the strongest evidence yet that the time you get out of bed affects your risk of depression.
“We’ve known for a while that there’s a relationship between sleep time and mood, but the question we often got was, how much earlier should someone get up?” says researcher Celine Vetter. “We found that even getting out of bed an hour earlier has a big effect.”
night owls
Previous studies have shown that night owls are twice as likely to suffer from depression as early risers, regardless of how long they sleep. But because mood disorders can disrupt sleep patterns, it was unclear what is cause and what is effect.
The new research shows that if someone does not go to bed at 1 a.m. but at 12 a.m., the risk of depression decreases by 23 percent. If you go to bed at 11 p.m.
Society
There’s no real explanation yet, but some studies suggest light exposure has something to do with it. Who gets up early gets more daylight and that results in the production of hormones that influence the mood.
Others think that an abnormal biological clock in itself affects mood. “We live in a society designed for morning people. Evening people constantly feel that they are out of step with society’s clock,” said study leader Iyas Daghlas.
