The familiar labels “night owl” and “early bird,” long used in sleep research, don’t fully capture the diversity of human internal clocks, a new study has found. The McGill University-led study published in Nature Communications found the two sleep-wake patterns, called chronotypes, contain a total of five distinct biological subtypes, each associated with different patterns of behavior and health.
A chronotype is based on the parts of a 24-hour period when a person naturally feels most alert or ready to sleep. Previous research has linked late chronotypes to worse health outcomes, but results have often been inconsistent. The new findings help explain why, the authors said.
“Rather than asking whether night owls are more at risk, the better question may be...
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