Why being a night owl is bad for your health

With their love of partying into the small hours, followed by skipping breakfast to get a few more minutes in bed, it is perhaps no surprise that their health suffers.

Night owls are more likely to develop diabetes than early birds – even when they get the same amount of sleep, a study found.

It is thought that their nocturnal lifestyle disrupts their body clock and eating habits so much that their health deteriorates.

More than 1,600 people in their 40s and 50s were quizzed about their sleeping habits to determine whether they were early-rising ‘larks’ or late-night-loving ‘owls’.

The men and women also gave blood samples and underwent scans of their body fat and bones.

Those who said they routinely stayed up late tended to be younger – but their health was worse.

They had more body fat and more unhealthy fats in their blood.

Men who were night owls were three times as likely as larks to have diabetes. 

And they ran almost four times the risk of sarcopenia, an age-related condition in the muscles gradually weaken, affecting strength and mobility.

Female night owls, in contrast tended to have pot bellies. 

They also had more metabolic syndrome, a group of symptoms that greatly increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes and diabetes.

The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism said the results couldn’t be explained away by the night owls getting less sleep.

Researcher Dr Nan Hee Kim, of Korea University College of Medicine, said the explanation could lie in their ‘tendency to have poorer sleep quality and to engage in unhealthy behaviours such as smoking, late-night eating and a sedentary lifestyle’.

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