People who burn the midnight oil score worse in six out of eight parts of this critical assessment. Here's what experts say to do about it.
If you’re someone who feels most alert after sunset, your night owl sleep schedule may be doing more than clashing with early morning alarms—it could be nudging your heart health in the wrong direction, too.
In a large, long-running analysis of adults from the United Kingdom, people who reported feeling most alert in the evening hours were 79% more likely to score poorly on Life’s Essential 8—a widely used measure of cardiovascular health—compared with people with who feel most alert around midday.
Created by the American Heart Association, Life’s Essential 8 is a 0–100 score that reflects eight pillars of heart health: diet, physical activity, nicotine exposure, sleep, body weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar. A lower Life’s Essential 8 score suggests that someone has poorer cardiovascular health—and may have a higher risk of heart attack and stroke.
The research, published in last month’s Journal of the American Heart Association, followed more than 320,000 middle-aged and older adults to understand how their natural bedtime predispositions impacted scores. They split participants into groups called “chronotypes,” which describes a person’s natural inclination to sleep and be wakeful at certain times of the day.
It concluded that those who self-identified as night owls (which researchers classified as definite evening chronotypes) in a survey had “markedly poorer” overall heart health. This group also displayed a higher likelihood of poor scores in six of the eight Life’s Essential 8 components, excluding only heightened blood pressure and cholesterol measures.
Just how many people are in this high-risk group? About 8% to 11% of middle-aged and older adults are true night owls, while roughly 24% to 35% are morning types. Most people report falling somewhere in between.
Why night owls tend to have poorer heart health
Circadian misalignment—a difference between the body’s internal clock and external schedule—is likely to blame, the researchers say. When this occurs, routines get messy, causing a cascade of changes to one’s health habits and metrics.
When your body clock is out of sync with your daily schedule, it can throw off your routines and how your brain responds to rewards, the authors write. This makes unhealthy habits more likely—like not sleeping regular hours, eating poorly, drinking too much alcohol, or smoking.
This mismatch can also disrupt stress hormones and metabolic processes that help regulate blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol. Researchers note that circadian disruption is also linked with higher rates of depression and anxiety, which are risk factors for heart disease that aren’t directly included in Life’s Essential 8.
How night owls can improve heart health
If you often find yourself burning the midnight oil, there are ways to offset your increased heart risk—even without shifting your bedtime schedule. As Kristen Knutson, PhD, FAHA, points out via the American Heart Association: “Evening types aren’t inherently less healthy, but they face challenges that make it particularly important for them to maintain a healthy lifestyle.”
The researchers emphasize that those with an evening chronotype stand to gain the most from prioritizing Life’s Essential 8 through targeted diet, exercise, and reduced intake of alcohol and nicotine.
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