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Posts: 379

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Q: Is staying up late really bad for your health?

I hear this constantly from people in China and feel it is largely untrue.

 

However some people insist it is fact...

 

One guy told me his friend died a few months ago and he was only 45. I was sorry for his loss. I gave him the usual perfunctory apologies and asked what happened. He claimed, 'he died because he stayed up too late'. I had to stop myself laughing at the ridiculousness of it. Can you image the coroner giving the verdict. 'I'm afraid he died because he stayed up late'.

 

Someone else told me a relative had a serious illness because they had stayed up late and they should have went to bed before 11.

 

Both were pretty sincere but to me it seems unbelievable like I am being secretly filmed for a hidden camera show where people say the most bizarre and unlikely things to see if I will cave in. 

 

Any thoughts on the matter.

 

  

10 years 31 weeks ago in  Health & Safety - China

 
Answers (17)
Comments (28)
Posts: 3837

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many of my university students REGULARLY stayed up late. They were not shy about telling me they were up late on the internet, shopping, playing games, watching movies. I also see young children out very late at night with parents. So if I want to stay awake after 11.00, whose business is it?

IrvineWelsh:

Well put- yeah I agree no-ones business but your own. 

 

But do you think it is actually bad for a persons health? I mean as long as they get a decent amount of sleep.

10 years 31 weeks ago
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sorrel:

Agreed, everyone needs sleep, but what can be enough for one person, might not be enough for another. Everyone has a different metabolism.

10 years 31 weeks ago
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I am a night owl.  I usually go to sleep at or after dawn.  I worked the night shift for years.  I'm sure staying up late is bad for some people's health, but certainly not mine.  I am more comfortable and energetic at nighttime.   Chinese superstitions and beliefs about health are bewildering, but this is what happens when you're locked away in a closet for decades.  I drink cold water, walk in the rain without an umbrella and I sleep when I'm sleepy.  By Chinese superstitions, I should be dead now.  But in fact, I'm a 47 year old who looks 30.

diverdude1:

thumbs up.

10 years 31 weeks ago
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RachelDiD:

I'm the same way---groggy in the daylight, and I suddenly wake up when it gets dark. If I must work a normal day, I will take melatonin supplements (which work as temporary sleep-schedule setters), but left to my own devises, I'd go to bed at 6am. Some speculate that the different circadian rhyme night owls display emerged evolutionarily--so that some members of the group would be awake at night in case of danger. The superstitions about our health are in the same league as 'hot water/cold water.'

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Posts: 458

Shifu

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NOT getting an appropriate amount of sleep regularly will effect your body negatively. Going to bed late, and getting the appropriate amount of sleep has hardly harmed me.

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If you don't get enough sleep, you'll get sick constantly. I frequently get infections when I don't sleep enough...

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I have never gone to bed early. I seem to have too much energy in the evenings and even if I get tired, I get a second wind. I built my house after work and on weekends, sometimes I'd come home from work and work until morning on the house and then go to my job. Thats tiring. I've never been a morning person, doesn't matter how much I sleep. I drag my ass in the A.M.

 The longest I ever worked was over 100 hours in 5 days at my job and then I just passed out. No uppers either.

IrvineWelsh:

Same boat, mornings are always an ordeal for me. Strong coffee is the only thing that keeps me going!

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Governor

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Would it not be better to ask this kind of question in a health and fitness forum? Just asking...

IrvineWelsh:

It is related to China as it is primarily about Chinese culture and believe.

 

I stuck it down under the health heading.

10 years 31 weeks ago
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DaveP84:

...and yet Chinese health springs to mind. I still think it would have been better left to a health and fitness forum. Purely for the fact that there would be better qualified people to diagnose such a prognosis. Unless of course you don't mind the whole satrical and mickey mouse degree in biology and physiology that so many would claim to have...

10 years 31 weeks ago
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IrvineWelsh:

Aye, I get where you are coming from.

 

Good point about the Mickey Mouse degrees, mines is a Donald Duck one. Seems a bit more valuable in the long-run...

 

Tweetie Pie degrees are also good but too expensive these days when you factor in the cost of living.

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Posts: 660

Shifu

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"Early to rise and early to bed, makes a man healthy but socially dead" - Yakko, the Animaniacs

IrvineWelsh:

Excellent!

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The most important thing is to have a regular sleep pattern, all 7 days per week. So if you go out on Friday, you will ruin your sleep pattern.

A grown up person needs 6-8 hours of sleep per day, Many Chinese seems to think that 10 hour + 1 hour nap is needed, they are wasting their life. 

Sleep is important for both mental and physical health. During sleep the immune system regenerates and your mind is cleaning out garbage.  

If you read about it you will see that people working night shifts are more prone to cardiac disease. Sleep is most efficient during nighttime (I am guessing because it is easier to sleep when it is dark and quiet) 

Scandinavian:

No matter what. The best health tip is to "Not be in China"

10 years 31 weeks ago
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Scandinavian:

No matter what. The more you sleep the less time you have to do stupid things

10 years 31 weeks ago
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IrvineWelsh:

Good answer.

 

Yeah I've read these studies, or least reports of them, that claim nightshift workers die on average a few years younger. 

 

But do you think it is actually possible to die from staying up to late?

 

And if not why are 'doctors' telling people this. My only guess would be complete incompetence.

10 years 31 weeks ago
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Scandinavian:

I don't think staying up late can ever become more than a contributing factor, especially as long as your body and mind gets the rest it needs. Your grandmother proably had more to do with it that how much you sleep. When your mother was growing inside your grandmother, the egg that became you was created. This means your grandmothers behavior, environment etc. impacts the quality of your mothers eggs. There is a lot of good data on this from Europe from the second world war when lots of people starved, those whose mothers were conceived during specific period of poor nutrition today suffer from generally poorer health than others born the same years. Look up Professor David Barker.

10 years 31 weeks ago
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IrvineWelsh:

Interesting, very interesting. I will check this out, thanks.

 

Just added Prof Barker to my reading list.

10 years 31 weeks ago
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Scandinavian:

There is a BBC Documentary about it. "The 9 months that made us" (I think, a title something like that) 

10 years 31 weeks ago
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IrvineWelsh:

Ahh a fellow Horizon fan. Pretty decent docs. Thanks, I will download it today.

10 years 31 weeks ago
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Scandinavian:

Actually I found this by mistake trying to mend the gaping hole that is the biology education in China. My wife had no basic ideas about what would happen during a pregnancy. This particular show doesn't shed too much light on that, but it is enlightening. 

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You heard this in China? I heard this in America too. What I heard was that you should sleep early and get up early to be healthier...

IrvineWelsh:

Tripe...

10 years 31 weeks ago
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TedDBayer:

You're so funny, love how you keep pretending. When were you in America.?

10 years 31 weeks ago
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10 years 31 weeks ago

There are cookies, bookies and too many rookies for me to sit here trying to be a hooky! Looky Looky don't call me a wooky. Touchy Touchy Feely Feely Spicy Spicy Nicey Nicey & that's what the doctor Ordered!!

 
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Governor

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Internal clocks,

when its night time here its day time in the UK, so if everyone she be sleeping by 11 oclock chinese time (because of course china is the center of the world, hense "zhong guo" middle country) the rest of the world would have died out.

 

but in reality its internal clocks and what you do, if you sit on your ass for 15 hours a day, you can and eventually will get a clot in your ass and die from it. However if you move around in different positions, then the blood will keep flowing and you will be fine.

 

 

I recently clocked up how much time my 13 year old students slept.

1 1/2 hours during lunch, and 11 hours at night... they spend more than half their lives sleeping. with survival of the fittest, they are lucky westerners were not in china 5,000 years ago or the chinese would have been wiped out as westerners tend to slepe 6-8 hours a night and no napping during the day.

 

 

Scandinavian:

this starts as a really poor answer but you turn it around at the end, a thumb up from me

10 years 31 weeks ago
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Flemingo:

A 13 year old is a bad example of someone who sleeps too much, they are presumably going through puberty, which similar to the growth spurt between ages 0-6, puts their bodies and immune systems under a lot of added stress. 

 

Just like with the toddler, they do need that additional sleep to mature and to grow, they need to compensate for all of the extra energy being used. 

10 years 31 weeks ago
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Scandinavian:

true, but 12½ hours is still insane for a teenager. 

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I don't think going to bed late will affect your health at all, unless you have to get up early the next day. We need sleep, and as somebody has already stated 6-8 seems to be the optimum amount for an adult, but if we restrict that to 5 or less a night continuously we will see it have negative effects on our health, such as becoming ill, craving foods that are bad for us, or drinking drinks high in caffeine etc to keep ourselves going, we will basically get 'run down', and feel lacklustre, and most probably look like crap too.

Don't get me wonrg though, a few late nights/early starts wont do a damn thing (health wise). We've got lives right, and some of the best moments are to be had when it's dark.  

 

IrvineWelsh:

I agree, a few late nights does no-one any harm at all. 

 

As long as you don't burn the candle at both ends 

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slice_999_k:

Only just sometimes right :P

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I'll sleep when I'm dead.  Plenty of time to sleep then, perhaps something like,,, hmmmm,,,,, Eternity ?

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I used to be a night owl. It did hurt my health. Now I go to sleep before 12:00 pm. Hope you will not get hurt from unhealthy habit.

IrvineWelsh:

Thanks, but why is it unhealthy in your eyes?

10 years 31 weeks ago
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chinacoolie:

Because the life circle is out of normal order.

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I've never heard that from a Chinese person, but at home on several occasions I have seen news articles and similar that link not sleeping at night time with increased cancer risk. 

 

Some were related to too few hours of sleep, but some were about light, saying you need to sleep in the dark to make some vitamin or hormone, kinda the opposite of vitamin D I guess.

 

All said, I don't believe that a late night here and there is going to kill you, and none of these studies say that either.

 

If the coroner did put the cause of death down to a late night, still probably not the strangest or worst thing to come out of a Chinese doctor's mouth.

 

I'm a morning person anyway, I struggle to sleep past 7 and if I wake up once the suns up, doesn't matter how late I got to sleep, I can't go back down.

IrvineWelsh:

Cheers, so in a roundabout way there could be some truth in it. 

 

Food for thought.

 

I am a little envious of your fixed schedule- I have not been up that early in well over a year.

10 years 31 weeks ago
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Scandinavian:

step one

get an alarm clock

 

step two

get up when it ringe, never use snooze, have the alarm set at the same time all 7 days of the week. if you have a Sunday where you have zero things to do in the morning, make up some activities until you have gotten used to getting up early. After some weeks it will start to feel less horrible. 

One slip and you are back to square one. This is no different than beating a drug addiction. Consistency !!!

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I hate night shifts. You never adapt to being up all night and trying to sleep in the day.

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In China they adhere to conflicting thoughts. Students are often made to stay up until 1:00am studying. And then they have to wake up at 5 or 6 in the morning for class. 

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Well, like others here, I think the sentences "he died because he stayed up too late" sounds ridiculous, but...

 

My partner did six months of night shifts a while back, and that certainly counts as 'staying up late' and there's no question that it had a terrible effect on his health and wellbeing (and even worse on his personality generally, and if I'd killed him that would certainly have been bad for his health, but I digress). 

 

Actual scientific studies, which I can't be bothered to find links for, have shown definite links between consistently disrupted sleep/shift work and all sorts of nasty long term health effects, especially for people who work at night and sleep in the day. 

 

So your friend kind or, sorta might have had a point

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