Waking up earlier can reduce your risk of depression

According to a new study published last week in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, waking up just one hour earlier could reduce your risk of major depression by 23 percent. Researchers at the University of Colorado, MIT and Harvard studied genetic data from about 840,000 people. They compared this genetic information, including genes for chronotype, or people's biological clock, to medical and prescription data to find diagnoses of major depressive disorder. This study confirms results of previous studies that found night owls are as much as twice as likely to suffer from depression as early risers, regardless of how long they sleep. According to this new study, if you normally go to bed at 1 AM but shift your bedtime to midnight, you could decrease your risk of depression by 23 percent, assuming you sleep the same length of time. Moving it to 11 PM could cut your risk up to 40 percent.