Becoming a morning person — or at least training yourself to wake up earlier than usual — can lower your risk of depression, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The study showed that waking up just an hour earlier can reduce risk of major depression by 23%. That’s a big number, and worth a try — especially if you are prone to depression.
The CU-Boulder/MIT/Harvard genetic study published May 26 in the JAMA Psychiatry journal included 840,000 people. It “represents some of the strongest evidence yet that chronotype — a person’s propensity to sleep at a certain time — influences depression risk,” states a CU-Boulder press release.
Thus, our propensity to (or willingness to) be early birds (early sleepers, early risers) or night owls (late sleepers, late risers) can affect our chance of developing mental health issues such as depression.
I would be more skeptical if I hadn’t changed my sleep habits drastically in recent years. I started waking up around 5:30 a.m., mainly because my dog makes me (55 pounds of not taking no for an answer!), and honestly felt less anxious than before, and more ready to weather the challenges and life changes brought on by the pandemic.
I was a late-to-sleep and late-to-rise person most of my life until I adopted my dog, Lola, two years ago. She needs regular exercise (and, incidentally, so do I), so we started going for a walk first thing in the morning. Waking up at an early hour became a habit, so ingrained that I no longer need an alarm clock.
I used to be that person who eyed with disbelief those people who would rise before dawn and exercise, starting their day earlier, with seemingly more energy and in good spirits. Now, I’ve joined their ranks, and it has been good for me, good for my work, my mood, and, of course, good for my pup.
“We have known for some time that there is a relationship between sleep timing and mood, but a question we often hear from clinicians is: How much earlier do we need to shift people to see a benefit?” said senior author Celine Vetter, assistant professor of integrative physiology at CU-Boulder. “We found that even one-hour earlier sleep timing is associated with significantly lower risk of depression.”
Night owls are “as much as twice as likely to suffer from depression as early risers, regardless of how long they sleep,” the release states.
“Put another way, if someone who normally goes to bed at 1 a.m. goes to bed at midnight instead and sleeps the same duration, they could cut their risk (of depression) by 23%; if they go to bed at 11 p.m., they could cut it by about 40%,” the study states.
There might just be something to the old saying attributed to Benjamin Franklin, “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
I’m not wealthy, and wise is debatable, but I do feel healthier with my new early bird tendencies. However, I won’t say that it’s always easy for me to wake up early. Instead of hitting the snooze button on the alarm clock I no longer need, I often plead with my dog now for “just a few more minutes.” She’ll have none of it.
But once I’m up and out the door on that dog walk, I feel alert and awake and ready for the day. Most days.
Now that many of us are headed back to the office to a more regular workday, perhaps this waking up a bit earlier thing is worth a try .
To shift to an earlier sleep schedule, Vetter suggests using light as your guide.
“Keep your days bright and your nights dark. Have your morning coffee on the porch. Walk or ride your bike to work if you can, and dim those electronics in the evening.”
Here’s the caveat: Don’t expect a “night life” of any sort if you make the switch. The “early to bed” part becomes habit, too.
Editor of this publication and the other three Pikes Peak Newspapers weeklies, Michelle Karas has called the Pikes Peak region home since 2015. Contact her at michelle.karas@pikespeaknewspapers.com.