The popular saying “He who wakes up early God will help him” now proves the validity of the saying of science. According to a scientific study published in the specialized journal JAMA Psychiatry, those who wake up early reduce their chances of developing depression or mental health disorders by 23%.
These results were obtained by an investigation by researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and the Broad Institute. It consisted in the study of temporal patterns, that is, the probability of falling asleep at a particular moment of a person; It was concluded that it has an effect on depression.
Notably, it’s also the first study to identify the modifications that would normally have to be made to affect people’s mental health.
“We’ve known for some time that there is a relationship between bedtime and mood, but the question we usually hear from doctors is: How much should we change to see a benefit?” said Celine Vetter, one of the research authors.
Stopping sleeping an hour earlier is associated with a significantly lower risk of depression.
“We found that even stopping an hour before quitting was associated with a significantly lower risk of depression,” replied the young scientist from the University of Colorado Boulder.
While there have been other studies on sleep, which have found, for example, that people who live at night are twice as likely to be depressed. On this occasion, it was determined that the middle of people’s sleep was one hour before they woke up or fell asleep.
“We live in a society designed for people in the morning, and often in the afternoon people feel as if they are in a constant state of out of sync with that social clock,” said Idas Douglas, one of the scientists involved in the study.
But what is the ideal time to sleep? According to the study, those who go to bed at 1 am should sleep at 12, to reduce the risk of depression
