Forbes: by Melanie Haiken —
Business travelers, shift workers, college students, and overworked tech workers, beware. Unusual sleep patterns, particularly sleeping during the day and staying up late at night, wreak havoc with the activity of your genes, new research shows.
Researchers at the Sleep Research Centre at the University of Surrey in the UK interrupted study participants’ sleep at regular intervals over three days, taking blood samples to monitor gene function. The findings: Daytime sleeping disrupted the rhythms of up to one third of the participants’ genes.
Using a light-controlled sleep lab, Dijk and team manipulated the study participants’ sleep patterns, postponing their bedtime by four hours a day until the subjects were 12 hours out of sync with their normal day/night biological clock. The purpose was to mimic the effects of jet lag or working the night shift, the researchers said.
Link to source doesn’t seem to be working.
I read in an article about a related study that the most beneficial sleep is what one gets before midnight. So going to bed late and catching up the hours in the morning is not the same as going to bed on time. It reminds me of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w)’s instructions on going to bed right after Isha prayers (i.e. last prayer in the day when darkness sets in). Huzur (s.a.w) also encouraged short nap during the day saying it helps in waiting up for tahajjad (pre-dawn supplimentary) prayers.
A Cardiologist in our Jamaat said there were studies suggesting that waking up around 4am shuts down production of bad cholesterol…thus showing physical benefits of waking up for tahajjad.