Are you a Lark or a Night Owl? What your Sleep Habits Reveal About your Health

You’re up at the crack of dawn, raring to go, while your other half is dead to the world. Then, while you’re ready for lights out at 10pm, they’re happy to burn the midnight oil… and some.

Sounds familiar? It’s the difference between a lark and a night owl. And it won’t just affect your social life, for researchers are discovering these characteristics have implications for health, too.

This preference for morning or evening is known as your sleep chronotype, and it affects our waistline, fertility, pain levels and even cancer risk. It also affects personality — a study published last month found night owls are more likely to demonstrate dark personality traits including narcissism and deceitfulness.

Researchers from Sydney and Liverpool interviewed more than 200 people about their personalities and sleeping habits. They suggested the selfishness of night owls might be an evolutionary hangover, because such people are more likely to scheme and steal sexual partners from others, which is best done under cover of darkness.

Whether you have a morning or evening chronotype is dictated by your biological 24-hour clock, explains Dr Tim Quinnell, from the Sleep Laboratory at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge. This, in turn, is heavily influenced by genes.

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