What Is A Night Owl?
Night owls is a term used to describe people who worked deep into the night and sleep really late. I myself was a night owl, not because my work requires me work deep into the night but because I used to game and study till the dawn to the point that it affects my daily life and performance in school.
Despite sounding really cool, there’s nothing cool about being night owls. There’s also pretty much no benefits in being one (excluding the additional monetary reward given to people working in graveyard shifts). In other words, there are almost no advantages and plenty of disadvantages in being a night owl.
The Danger of Being A Night Owl
The disadvantages of being a night owl have something to do with their sleep, or the lack thereof. As mentioned earlier, night owls are people who worked graveyard shifts and those who slept really late for one reason or another.
A normal person would need at least 8 -10 hours of sleep (at least 6 hours older folks) but night owls usually have 4 hours of sleep, maybe even less. This obviously have negative effect to their physical and mental health.
Higher Risk of Having High Blood Pressure
Many studies suggest that night owls have at least 30% risk of having high blood pressure. This has something to do with their lifestyle, diet, and stress. A night owl’s lifestyle is, putting it lightly, unhealthy. Sleeping really late, eating and drinking unhealthy food, stressful life, etc. which results in high blood pressure.
Higher Risk of Developing Diabetes
A night owls unhealthy lifestyle could result to a variety of diseases including diabetes. Lack of sleep and exercise, and unhealthy diet could put a person at risk and increase the chance of contracting type 2 diabetes. Once a person contract diabetes, there’s no going back. To prevent this from happening, one must have sufficient sleep, exercise, and a balance diet; things that night owls obviously lacks.
Higher Chance of Gaining Weight
People who wanted to lose weight must avoid becoming a night owl at all cost. One of the disadvantages of being a night owl is his or her lifestyle. When a person stays up really late at night for whatever reason, he or she would easily grew hungry and would eat any food he or she could get ahold of, including food high in fat and cholesterol.
This is a way our body tries to compensate for our lack of sleep. Sleeping help conserve energy but staying awake during the hours where we are supposed to sleep forces our brain to use up more energy resulting in an unhealthy eating habit resulting in weight gain. And even if your purpose was to gain weight, being a night owl was not the way to go since it could result to serious health complications later on.
Higher Chance of Becoming A Risk Taker
The effect of being a night owl is not limited to one’s physical health alone but also to one’s mental health. Several studies claims that night owls have higher stress hormone cortisol which some scientist believed to be responsible for high stakes behavior. It was said that a male night owls would often take more financial risk while female night owls became more daring in life. For example, night owls would often engage in gambling, unprotected sex and substance abuse.
Night Owls are Easily Irritable
Night owls have relatively short fuse due to lack of sleep. They would often argue with other people for the smallest things. When their sleep is interrupted for any reason, a night owl would quickly lash out towards the cause of said interruption whether that source was person, animals, or things. A night owl’s irascible behavior is often the cause of conflict within their families.
Night Owls Perform Poorly at Academics
Our brain and body needed proper rest in order to function to its full potential. Night owls’ who sleep less than 8 (or 6) hours would not be able to perform at their best due to lack of energy and stress. Studies suggest that students who slept less have lower point average in comparison to their peers who slept more. This phenomenon was more prevalent to teenagers who due to various reasons like hormonal change, and social distractions were not able to get the right amount of sleep which resulted in poor academic performance.
My Thoughts
Being a night owl myself, I’ve experienced most of the disadvantages I listed above. Before changing my lifestyle, I was overweight, irritable and performed very poorly at school. My short temper and poor behavior often gets me in trouble with other people. My performance in school was so bad that I almost repeat a year. It took the help of a family counselor and a drastic change in my lifestyle to fix the problem.
Honestly, the experience was so bad that I never want to experience any of that again. Although not everything that happened to me was a result of being a night owl (back then I was a rebellious teenager experiencing hormonal change) I did not doubt that my lack of sleep plays a big role in it. Fortunately, even though I was a (former) night owl, and the lack of sleep made me a risk taker, there were still things that I did not dare do like gambling or taking drugs.
Being a night owl is definitely neither natural nor a good thing. For our body to function in its full potential we must not only eat a balanced diet but also sleep in time and allow our body to rest properly.
Anyways, that’s all from me for now. See you all next time.
Image source:
https://pixabay.com/photos/alarm-clock-classic-clock-dial-1867357/
https://pixabay.com/photos/owl-bird-animal-bird-of-prey-50267/
I agree with you though at the moment being a night owl is a thing for me. When the kids are asleep, I can write write write. But of course as you mentioned, I become irritable. I am as well overweight and I plan to sleep earlier than usual.