Do night owls decline cognitively faster than early birds?
Because we are getting older, there are more and more people with dementia. Within a large national study, the BIRD-NL project, the UMCG, together with many partners, is researching ways to prevent dementia. ‘The fact is that your brain deteriorates after the age of 40, says Wenzler. ‘We study which lifestyle or other factors can reduce the risk of dementia.’
What is your chronotype?
Wenzler's area of research is sleep. 'Using Lifelines data, I look at people's sleep rhythms. Are you an early bird or a night owl? It's hard to adjust what your biological clock - your so-called chronotype - is, but you can adjust your life to it as best you can. In my research, I looked at whether your chronotype affects your cognition through behavior.'
Based on questionnaires that Lifelines participants filled in about their sleep times, Wenzler was able to determine the extent to which people are extreme early or late sleepers, and everything in between. She then looked at the results of a cognitive function test over a 10-year period: how did early scores differ from scores 10 years later?
More frequent unhealthy behaviour in the evening
The conclusion: evening people decline cognitively faster than morning people. ‘Unhealthy behavior such as smoking, drinking and unhealthy eating happens more often in the evening’, says Wenzler. 'In our study, we also saw this: evening people smoke and drink more often and exercise less. 25% of the risk of cognitive decline can be explained from our research by smoking and poor sleep.' Interestingly, the difference was found mostly in higher-educated people. 'That probably has to do with their sleep rhythm. They are often people who have to go back to work early in the morning and are therefore more likely to sleep too short, giving their brains too little rest.'
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