The Health Benefits Of Being A Night Owl

A night owl is a person who tends to stay up late at night. Most individuals define “late at night” as past midnight, and some extreme night owls remain awake all night and don’t go to bed until dawn. A tendency towards being a night owl runs in some families, and teenagers and young adults are more likely to be night owls than any other age groups.

Scientists call an individual's waking and sleeping pattern their chronotype. Morning people enjoy the large advantage of having a chronotype that meshes with most work and school schedules – which could explain why they often enjoy better overall health compared to night owls. A night owl who has to follow the usual 9-to-5 work schedule is going to be under a great deal of stress, which doesn’t do their health any favors.

The news isn’t all bad for night owls, though. Night owls, such as former President Barack Obama, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Fran Lebowitz, can enjoy the following benefits of their chronotype. Keep reading to discover why the early bird doesn't always get the worm now.

Higher Intelligence

Some researchers have found that night owls have higher IQs compared to their counterpart, early birds. In 2006, researchers worked with 420 recruits at the United States Air Force. The recruits had to fill out questionnaires about their sleep patterns and then take IQ tests. The researchers found that the night owls tended to outscore their peers.

The science journal Personality and Individual Differences published a 2009 study in which scientists interviewed over 20,000 teenagers about their sleep patterns. Since most youngsters have to go to school in the morning, the scientists made a point of asking them about their habits during non-school days. Researchers then had the participants take a series of IQ tests and found that the night owls generally got higher results than other participants. The researchers noted that people with higher intelligence were more likely to embrace unconventional lifestyles and philosophies than individuals with a lower IQ.

Continue reading to discover how night owls tend to be more creative than early birds.

More Creative

Night owls tend to be more creative as proven in a 2007 scientific study published in Personality and Individual Differences that demonstrated that night owls possessed greater creativity. Researchers at Milan’s Catholic University of the Sacred Heart had 120 volunteers answer a questionnaire about their sleeping habits and perform a series of tests. During one such test, for example, the participants were given images of curved and straight lines. They were told to draw more lines to complete a picture and then give it a title. People who kept nocturnal hours produced more drawings than participants who did not.

The researchers speculated that night owls’ greater creativity was due to their unconventional lifestyle and need to solve problems posed by their preference for nighttime. They also found that older night owls, contrary to the stereotype, were as creative as their younger fellows.

Next, uncover the reasons why night owls are more alert than early birds.

Better Mental Alertness

Night owls have better mental alertness in the sense that they have greater mental stamina. In 2009, a scientific journal published a study conducted at Belgium’s University of Liege. The researchers worked with sixteen morning people and fifteen night owls, who displayed a four-hour difference in their habits. The morning people got up at around 7 A.M. and went to bed at around 11 P.M., while the night owls got up at 11 A.M. and went to bed at around 3 A.M. The researchers administered tests 1.5 hours and 10.5 hours after their subjects had awoken. The scientists hooked their subjects up to machines that measured their brain activity while they took tests that measured their reaction time and ability to concentrate. Both groups were equally alert 1.5 hours after waking up, but the night owls were significantly more alert than the morning people were 10.5 hours after waking.

Keep reading to reveal the physical strength only a night owl possesses.

Physical Strength

Night owls can display a phenomenon called “night strength.” In 2009, researchers at Canada’s University of Alberta tested the leg strength of volunteers who had described themselves as night owls or early birds. They found that early birds showed consistent results throughout the day, but a night owls’ physical strength increased at around 9 P.M. The researchers hypothesized that night owls showed increased spinal cord and motor cortex excitability at that time. By contrast, an early bird's motor cortex, like the rest of their brain, was at its most active in the early morning and its activity thus never coincided with the evening activity of the spinal cord. Night owls consequently find it hard to exercise in the morning, but they perform a lot better and get more out of their exercise regime if they can shift their workout time to later in the afternoon or into the evening.

Next, find out precisely why night owls tend to have better reasoning skills.

Better Reasoning Skills

Night owls also possess better reasoning skills. In 2013, researchers at the University of Madrid worked with nearly 1,000 teenage volunteers. Around twenty-five percent were early birds, thirty-two percent were night owls, and the rest fell between those two extremes. The researchers checked the participants’ reports cards and administered tests of the volunteers’ inductive reasoning skills. They found that the night owls got higher scores in inductive reasoning than did the other two groups. The researchers speculated that intelligent children would have historically been drawn to nighttime activities. Such activities would have been unusual and thus attracted the attention of curious children.