From childhood, we are familiar with the types “owl” and “lark”. And many consider themselves to be the first. In everyday life, this is interpreted as people who go to bed late and get up late, and have a peak of activity in the evening. “Larks” are also called those who get up early, but also early and go to bed, working more actively and harder in the morning.
Scientists conducted a study on chronotype and mortality. As a result of the work carried out, it turned out that there was a slight increase in mortality from diseases of the heart and blood vessels. The study examined the data of 23854 people. True, it was no longer about the fact that the “owl” chronotype is dangerous, but about what affects the health and life expectancy of such people, how they spend their days and nights. Is it dangerous to be an “owl” and what can such a chronotype lead to, aif.ru told Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Associate Professor, Psychoanalyst, Clinical Psychologist of the Highest Qualification Category, Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, Somnologist Aleksey Melekhin.
It is important to understand that in modern somnology there is no longer the concept of “owl” and “lark”. This dichotomy is not used, as it is very primitive, and it is the same as saying that there are introverts and extroverts. In fact, each person, depending on the circumstances in which he finds himself, can be both an extrovert and vice versa, and there are also mixed types.
Each person, depending on his physiological, temperamental, that is, individual, characteristics, nuances of metabolism, mental and psychological characteristics, as well as lifestyle characteristics, has one or another somnic phenotype. In total, there are now 5 of them. Each of them has its own risks of developing certain mental and somatic disorders.
It must be understood that there are no pure “owls” and “larks”. There are both mixed types and situational factors leading to the appearance of such a chronotype.
What dangers can be
If we talk about the lifestyle that is meant by such a chronotype as “owl” (you can call them dysfunctional “owls”), then there really are people who go to bed late and get up late, like to sleep longer, are at greater risk of developing generalized anxiety disorders and depression.
They will also suffer from cardiovascular pathologies or cardioneurosis. Given that they stay up late, they may have metabolic problems – they will suffer from night eating syndrome, gain weight because they constantly sacrifice sleep, have dysfunctional habits, for example, skip breakfast, eat before bed, wake up at night to eat.
People with this daily routine can also suffer from skin problems, such as nighttime itching, itching that appears before bedtime. They have red eyes in the morning and have headaches upon waking that may persist throughout the day. There are muscle pains.
They do not have greater risks of dying in comparison with others. But at the same time, they often burn out emotionally, miss work more often due to somatic disorders, visit doctors more often, and abuse sleeping pills. They are at high risk of disability. But to say that it is fatal – no, you can not. This affects the quality of life more.
Why does a person become an “owl” or “lark”?
It is important to understand that depending on the situation or period, a person tends to one or another model of behavior. Then it becomes a certain feature of the psyche. Someone burns themselves quickly, someone knows how to distribute their own resources during the day, someone recovers faster, someone slower. And for those who have become an “owl” due to circumstances, it is really more difficult to recover.
You can recognize the “owl” in yourself by the following signs. When such people wake up, they need half an hour or an hour in the morning to wake up, they often stimulate themselves with caffeine-containing products, in the evening they often resort to alcohol to fall asleep.
It should be recalled that the division into “larks” and “owls” is a description of the functional state of the nervous system. That is, it was reorganized in such a way as to satisfy some motivational, semantic and value orientations of a person. Previously, it was believed that it was impossible to reconfigure it. Now it is necessary to understand and take into account that if a person refers himself to one or another chronotype, this simply means that the body has been reorganized to meet some mental needs.
Source: aif.ru
