We¡¯ve all heard the saying, early to bed, early to rise makes us healthy and wise. However, now a new study has revealed that waking up just an hour before their usual schedule could reduce the risk of major depression by 23 percent.
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This is according to an eye-opening (see what I did there) study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry involving 840,000 people by researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.?
The study puts forth the strongest evidence that a person¡¯s chronotype -- the time a person sleeps every day -- massively influences depression risk.
Researchers teamed up with DNA testing company 23 and Me, looking at DNA data as well as biomedical database UK Biobank. They then implemented a method called ¡®Mendelian randomisation¡¯ that makes use of genetic associations to help find the cause and effect.?
Lead author Iyas Daghlas explains, ¡°Our genetics are set at birth so some of the biases that affect other kinds of epidemiological research tend not to affect genetic studies.¡±
Over 340 common genetic variants including the clock gene dubbed PER2 are known to affect a person¡¯s chronotype. Moreover, genetics collectively explains 12 to42 percent of our sleep timing preference.?
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Researchers looked at deidentified genetic data on these variants from up to 850,000 individuals. This included data from 85,000 individuals who wore sleep trackers while sleeping as well as 250,000 individuals who filled out sleep preference questionnaires.?
From the largest samples, around a third of the surveyed subjects self-identified as morning people, 9 percent were late night owls and the rest were somewhere in the middle. Overall, the average sleep midpoint was at 3:00 AM -- they went to bed at 11:00 PM and got up at 6:00 AM.
With this data, researchers looked at a different sample which included genetic information along with anonymised medical and prescription records and surveys about diagnoses of major depressive disorder.?
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With all this info, and the help of statistical techniques they asked whether those with genetic variants which make them wake up early also had a lower risk of depression? As a matter of fact, it did.
Each one-hour earlier sleep midpoint corresponded with 23 percent lower risk of major depressive disorder. This basically means that if someone who normally goes to bed at 1:00 AM goes to bed at midnight and instead sleeps the same duration, they could cut their risk of depression by 23 percent; sleeping before 11 could cut this by 40 percent.?
Researchers highlight that it's unclear if those who are early risers already could benefit from getting up even earlier but people who are in the intermediate range could surely benefit from this.