There are two types of people in this world, early risers and night owls. For as long as we can remember, we have heard debates between these two groups of people over who had the better lifestyle.
Those who rise early always felt as if they were getting the upper hand. They would quote old sayings, such as ‘early to bed early to rise.’ People who stayed up late, however, were still getting just as many hours in a day.
This is not an argument that is going to go away anytime soon but there may be some evidence now, thanks to a new study. After the study was published, people were shocked at what they found when they compared the two groups.
Those groups were made up of some 26,000 people who were very similar to each other as far as their intelligence was concerned. When they did the study, they found out that those who stayed up later had an advantage.
In order to get the results, they took cognitive and intelligence tests. The responses and results were surprising and were different than what many people thought.
Survey participants were contacted by academics at Imperial College of London. They were asked to complete a series of tests that put their skills on the line, at least as far as intelligence, reasoning, memory, and reaction time are concerned.
They then looked at a number of factors associated with the subject, including how much sleep they got, the quality of their sleep, and the chronotype of the individual.
The chronotype is similar to the circadian rhythm and is associated with the time of day that a person may feel the most and least alert. All points indicated that those who went to bed later and got up later would perform better on the tests.
This was in contrast to what many people felt historically. Many intelligent people, including Leonardo da Vinci and Barack Obama would sleep late, but others would wake up early and get their day started.
This may help some people to make the switch and start staying up later at night. Even if you do, however, you still need enough sleep during the night to keep your brain function up and running.
According to Raha West, lead author and clinical research fellow at Imperial College: “We found that sleep duration has a direct effect on brain function, and we believe that proactively managing sleep patterns is really important for boosting, and safeguarding, the way our brains work.
“We’d ideally like to see policy interventions to help sleep patterns improve in the general population.”
Despite the fact that this seems definitive, there were also some who were skeptical about the conclusions. This includes some doctors and researchers who have also studied the same thing.
It may not be enough to get you to switch your bedtime, but let’s just say that you need to be you and perhaps you need to jump in on this argument.