Comments about ‘Early rising may be bad for health’

What's important is not what time you get up--it's what time you go to bed and the amount of sleep you get in between.

I agree with Wayne. If you sleep at 9pm and get up at 4:30 in the morning, you are getting a good 7.5 hours of sleep, which is pretty good for an adult with 3 kids under 12.

It is all relative. What matters is the proper amount and quality of sleep. If one gets up too early and feels groggy all day then obviously it is not good for one's health. If one sleeps too much that is not healthy either. Proper sleep and sleep times are a custom fit, some people are morning people and others like myself (12:10 am right now and I'm wide awake) are night people.

Funny the most commented article early in the morning in the whole newspaper. LOL. It does matter what time you get up. It is very healthy to get up earlier, but yes you have to go to bed earlier too.

Ok- I can use this somehow to hold over the heads of my kids- right? I am up by 5 every weekday to get kids out the door. One leaves at 5:15 so he can start work at 6 while attending college, 2 leave at 6 for early morning high school classes that start at 6:30. As far as getting to bed earlier with teenagers- HA! So one more thing to add to the column of the things a mom sacrifices for her children. Good thing we love them! I'll remind them of this if I make it to old age when they have to take care of me!!!

Just another article proving that if you wait long enough, science will help you rationalize any point of view. Remember when milk caused cancer?? I agree with the article, don't get up before 5 am.....if you went to bed after midnight!

If Bush and Congress would stop toying with Daylight Saving Time, we'd all be on a better sleep cycle.

This study is bad news for early morning seminary students among Mormons who live outside Utah, Arizona and Idaho.

I go to bed around 1am and get up around 8am. I go to the gym, I have school, I work full time. I wouldn't say I'm in poor health either. I think the "early to rise" myth needs to be put to bed itself. The amount and quality of sleep is far more important than the time of sleep. That said, sleeping through the sunlit hours can be detrimental to your health, since the body is aided by sunlight.

"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."

Or my favorite...

"Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, but socially dead."

It's fairly easy to find coorelation between seemingly unrelated events or behavior. For example, there might well be a statistical correlation between how much cheese I eat each year and the number white yaks born in Tibet but does that prove anything?

I just have to wonder what we're supposed to do with this sort of information? Have the researchers established a cause and effect relationship? If so what is it? What was their methodology? Did they control for the many other factors that might affect blood pressure and heart disease?

The pressure that researchers are under to publish buries us with this kind of useless information. I can only hope that newspaper editors would be wise enough to ignore this sort of study until they provide a plausible explanation for their results.

I heard at Education Week the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve wake up at 4:45 am. The reason? To be close to the spirit.

The times when I get up before 5am are because I can't sleep. I am nervous, depressed, anxious, worried, or sick. Any of those conditions contribute to heart disease, etc.?

It seems that all they found was a correlation, not a cause. I would be willing to bet that there is a significant correlation between those who get up before 5 and those who experience a lot of stress in their lives.

I am a die-hard insomniac. I chose to become an insomniac over 30 years ago because I hated beeing a sheep and sleeping every night like everyone else. I can't remember the last time I slept more than 15 minutes at night. All this talk about waking up early being bad is a bunch of gobbledygook. Since that study wasn't done in america I wouldn't give it a whole lot of credit anyways. Who knows how they came up with that crap? I could whip any of you who sleep all night and I never sleep!!! That's proof right there that they dont know what theyre talking about!

Yawn

So only studies done in the US are reputable? The Chinese and Japanese are so far ahead of us in most things it isn't even funny. But props to you for sleeping so little every night. Just stay out of my neighborhood while driving. Thanks.

personally I feel wonderful when I get up at 7:30 to 8:00 AM any earlier I feel fatigued all day long I go to bed around 11:00 to 11:00 PM I exercise earlier evening

I knew it! I knew getting up that early was bad for my health.

Kerry,

It's well known that the press often oversimplifies and botches findings from scientific publicatons; as a scientist with work that has been 'covered', I know this well.

But I presume that you haven't read the actual scientific article that this popular press coverage is based on. You ask:

""what we're supposed to do with this sort of information? Have the researchers established a cause and effect relationship? If so what is it? What was their methodology? Did they control for the many other factors that might affect blood pressure and heart disease?""

Finding and reading the actual paper might help answer your questions! (But are these questions, or simply statements begging for your presumed conclusions that the science is crap?)

I'd imagine that the authors clearly state that there is no clear causal relationship; it's just an interesting finding that might help guide future investigations, and help us ask the right questions (for instance, as others here suggested, is it something to do with these folks generally being under greater stress?).

The general public really has a problem digesting scientific findings: either they want something really big and profound (how will this affect my life?), or they question the science if it doesn't conform to their beliefs (while at the same time believing without proof far more difficult propositions: God; heaven; Joseph Smith and the golden plates; parting of the Red Sea!). Science is just like figuring out any other problem; you observe, make conclusions, test those conclusions, observe again... It's usually a patient and slow path, but leading to real conclusions. If you have preconceived notions and can't face the hard facts, you'll get nowhere. Praying and a still small voice are not acceptable proof of scientific conclusions.

NOW, AT LAST, I CAN STOP FEELING GUILTY FOR NOT GETTING UP EARLY, AS I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A NIGHT PERSON!!