The Health Benefits Of Being A Night Owl

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.