Staying up late is linked to poorer heart health. Here’s what night owls need to know
Night owls were much more likely to have unhealthy habits or risk factors
By Lily Hautau, CNN
(CNN) — If you’re someone who thrives after dark, you might want to pay extra attention to your heart health.
Night owls — those who naturally stay up late — may be more likely to develop heart disease, a new study has found. But experts say there are steps you can take to protect your health.
Middle-aged and older adults, especially women, who are more active in the evenings may have worse heart health than those without a strong morning or evening preference, according to a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
This study analyzed data from more than 322,000 adults who participated in the UK Biobank, a longitudinal study that included participants from England, Scotland and Wales.
Participants self-identified their chronotype — their natural preference for sleep-wake timing — and were categorized as morning, intermediate or evening types. (The study did not assign specific wake or bedtimes to these categories; classification was based solely on self-reported preference.)
Chronotypes reflect “a person’s natural preference for sleep timing and daily rhythms,” whether they are early birds, night owls or in between, said Dr. Sina Kianersi, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Adults with an evening chronotype and potentially even those who wake up early could be at high risk due to their internal body clocks not matching up with work schedules and other external factors.
Many earlier studies focused on a single risk factor such as smoking or blood pressure, but the new research used the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8, which outlines ways to improve and maintain heart health. Those eight factors are eating healthy, being active, not smoking, getting high sleep quality, and managing weight, cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure. Each component is scored from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating better cardiovascular health. These are averaged to create a composite score for each person.
Kianersi said the strong association between being a night owl and having poor overall cardiovascular health was most surprising. Night owls were much more likely to have unhealthy habits or risk factors such as poor diet, less exercise or smoking. The connection was even stronger for women.
Compared with the intermediate category, “evening types/night owls were about 79% more likely to have an overall poor cardiovascular health, and they also had a higher risk of heart attack or stroke during follow-up,” he said.
Daily routine matters, too.
“Being an evening chronotype is often associated with other factors that can increase cardiovascular disease risk, such as more irregularity in the timing of sleep, meals, and light exposure,” said Sabra Abbott, an associate professor of neurology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. She was not involved in the study.
Night owls had a 16% higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease, such as heart attack or stroke, compared with intermediate chronotypes, over a period of almost 14 years of follow-up.
People who identified as early birds were 5% less likely to have poor heart health and habits compared with those in the intermediate group.
Because his research focused on middle-aged and older adults, Kianersi said that more studies are needed to determine if the same patterns apply to younger people. He also noted that, as an observational study, the findings cannot prove that chronotype directly causes poorer cardiovascular health or increased cardiovascular risk.
Next steps for night owls
There is still hope if you are a night owl, according to Dr. Kristen Knutson, an associate professor of neurology at the Feinberg School of Medicine’s Center for Circadian and Sleep Medicine. She also was not involved in the study.
Cardiovascular disease “is not inherent or inevitable for night owls,” said Knutson, suggesting that people prioritize sleep and don’t smoke.
The study suggests that interventions that target these modifiable risk factors — such as improving sleep, quitting smoking and maintaining a healthy lifestyle — could help reduce the risk for night owls.
Abbott agreed that night owls should not try and change their chronotype but focus on those controllable factors.
Kianersi’s advice? “Focus on the basics: aim for enough sleep, keep sleep and wake times as consistent as possible, and try to get some morning light exposure,” he said via email. “Regular physical activity also matters, and it helps to stay on top of routine checks for blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar. And if someone smokes, quitting remains one of the most powerful steps for protecting long-term heart health.”
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
