HIGHLIGHTS:
• In young individuals who have shortened sleep, staying up late may be better than getting up early, new research suggests.
• This study showed that trimming sleep time in the first half of the night was associated with better performance and mood the next day compared with going to bed early and getting up after 4 hours.
Presented at SLEEP 2019: 33rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.
THE ISSUE WE ARE DEALING WITH:
Sleep deprivation has been shown to have harmful effects on health and cognitive performance.
THE STUDY:
Led by Rammy Dang, the investigators tested whether early or late short sleep provides better functioning in a convenience sample of 52 healthy adults ages 20 to 30 years old.
After two baselines “habituation” nights in a sleep lab where participants had the opportunity to sleep for 8 hours (11 PM to 7 AM), they were required to adhere to two different 4-hour sleeping schedules over 3 consecutive nights.
In the early sleep (ES) protocol, participants slept from 11:00 PM to 3:00 AM and in the late sleep (LS) protocol, they slept from 3:00 AM to 7:00 AM. The researchers used polysomnography (PSG) to record electrophysiology of participants during wake and sleep periods and gathered subjective and neurobehavioral data.
RESULTS:
Results showed that participants felt worse after the ES protocol, reporting feeling significantly more lonely (P < .001) and less carefree (P = .007). After the ES protocol, they also performed significantly worse on the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) used to assess vigilant attention during the waking hours. However, there were no differences in sleep electrophysiology.
Study also pointed out that it is important to note that these were healthy young adults and that further study is needed to explore the relationship between age, sex, and the timing of reduced sleep.
CITATION:
Better to Stay Up Late Than Turn In Early?
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health. Dang and Shah have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
SLEEP 2019: 33rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies: Abstract LBA3. Presented June 10, 2018.