Study: Lifestyle, Rather Than Being A “Morning” Or “Evening” Person, Affects Longevity

A 37-year study involving around 23,000 Finnish twins indicated that lifestyle decisions, such as whether to drink or smoke, had a greater impact on health than one’s propensity to be a “morning” or “evening” person or chronotype.

Even while the study indicated that staying up late had little effect on how long “night owls” survived, evening personalities had a slightly higher risk of passing away than morning personalities.

“Our findings suggest that there is little or no independent contribution of chronotype to mortality,” said author Christer Hublin, from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki.

“In addition, the increased risk of mortality associated with being a clearly ‘evening’ person appears to be mainly accounted for by a larger consumption of tobacco and alcohol. This is compared to those who are clearly ‘morning’ persons,” said Hublin.

The Finnish Twin Cohort study at the University of Helsinki studied 22,976 men and women aged 24 from 1981 to 2018 while accounting for education, daily alcohol intake, smoking status and amount, BMI, and sleep duration. This study was co-led by Jaakko Kaprio. The article appears in Chronobiology International.

At the start of the study, the twins were asked to pick from four possible responses: ‘I am clearly a morning person’; ‘I am to some extent a morning person’; ‘I am clearly an evening person’; ‘I am to some extent an evening person’. In 2018, when the study ended, the researchers checked with the nationwide registers for participant deaths.

Study revealed that night owls (9,853) were younger and smoked/drank more than morning types (13,123 participants).

Moreover, ‘Definite’ evening individuals (2,262) reported receiving less hours of sleep.

By 2018, 8,728 of the total participants had passed away.

While the researchers discovered that ‘definite’ night owls had a 9% higher risk of dying from any cause than early birds, smoking and alcohol had been the major contributing factors to these fatalities, not chronotype.