Genetic Variants Which Make People Early Risers

See:

http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/02/02/031369?rss=1

The study is from 23andme and is using imputation for most of it (statistical methods to infer unobserved genotypes ).

http://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/rise-and-shine/

"Analysing the phenotypic data, the researchers also looked at associations between being a morning person and other conditions such as body mass index, insomnia, depression and sleep duration. They found that a morning person is much less likely to have insomnia, less likely to require eight hours of sleep and less likely to suffer from depression than individuals who reported being “night owls.” Taking into account of the effect of age and sex, morning persons are also more likely to have lower BMI, according to the research. The researchers also found that morning persons were less likely to be on the extreme ends of body mass index, meaning they were less likely to be obese as well as less likely to be underweight."

There's also this:
"shows clustering along time zones — especially among the states in the mountain time zone — Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Montana. And, according to 23andMe scientist Kasia Bryc who did the analysis, some of the states with the highest proportion of morning people also tend to have older populations. But there are many anomalies, making it difficult to draw conclusions. At the same time the map illustrates that as with most traits, it’s not just genetics that plays a role."

The states mentioned have higher percentages of early risers. It's also higher in far northeastern states like Maine, and states like New Jersey, Rhode Island, etc. are also pretty high for it. I don't know if ancestry plays a role in this, but I think the age of the population would also be a factor.


The only snp on the V3 platform is this one:
rs9565309

I'm TT. When I was younger and more carefree I would fall asleep the instant my head hit the pillow and I never needed an alarm clock...I was up by 6:30 the latest every morning. My father was the same. I could never nap or sleep during the day even if I'd been out till 3 or 4 AM. I always envied people who could do that. My mother must have had the other allele. She wandered around half the night and then had to struggle to get up, although she did. Most nights I bet she only got about four or five hours sleep. She was also thin as a greyhound her whole life, so there goes that theory.

i dont think genes have nothing to do with it, it works the same for all

day and night cycles are more important then people think, our bodies are attuned into doing stuff in different times, from activity and from body chemistry perspective, like excretion of different hormones in different times of day.
So when timing of your activities are not in tune with hormonal excretion, shit starts to happen( as example you are under stress or working out, when your hormones are set for relaxation)

Also 'night owls' usually dont see sun that often, and sun is important for many different factors, including providing body with vitamin D which is a basic human need, and probably bunch of other stuff we are not aware as of yet.

I'm TT on this snp, I love my evenings and sleep in the morning is most enjoyable, well, when it happens, lol. I never had problem with being overweight and don't stress much.

I wonder if these bulk stats are skewed by including stressed people, who usually can't fall asleep and belong to late nighthawks? They should test only the natural nighthawks and natural early risers, for snp and health problems.

I think there was a study recently claiming that tenagers are natural nighthawlks and for that reason schools should avoid tests in the morning.

I can't understand anything written in the study. I wish they just gave allele frequencies of mourning vs night people. Giving the crazy complicated-statistics which tells you whether there's a correlation is second-hand info and hard to understand. It looks like there's a strong correlation with their SNPs and Mourning people. The most easily understood info is in this picture.

An interesting stat to me from that picture, is if your Dad is a mourning person you're 2x more likely to be a mourning person. That's a big correlation and could mean it's passed down Father-children. This is consistent with my family.

Yes, I read that about teenagers too.

As to the study, I know that obese people have trouble sleeping, but that's only one factor. To get accurate results, I think they need to factor out anxiety. No matter what your "setting" for cicadian rhythms, if you're a naturally pretty anxious person going through a life crisis, you're not going to sleep very easily or well.

I wonder about the evolutionary forces at work. A lot of prey animals are nocturnal. Would it be more advantageous or less advantageous to naturally be sleepy when the sun goes down or not? If you're in a hidden place, a cave perhaps, with a fire burning at the entrance, it might be helpful if you sleep easily in the night and are up at first light to go hunt them when they're asleep or drowsy. On the other hand, perhaps being hyper-vigilant even at night would have been an advantage.