The Ideal Bedtime for Good Health

New research reveals the best time to go to bed

Robert Roy Britt
Elemental
Published in
4 min readNov 9, 2021

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Image: Pixabay/Hanihakkam

Here’s a bedtime story I think you’ll really like, one that vindicates my lifelong early-to-bed, early-to-rise ways, one I plan to make required reading for my night-owl wife so we can maybe spend more of our waking hours together.

New research reveals the ideal hour to go to bed — or, rather, to fall asleep.

Falling asleep between 10 and 11 p.m. seems to be ideal, based on a study of 88,000 U.K. adults published in the European Heart Journal: Digital Health. People who fall asleep before or after that hour were notably more likely to develop heart disease during the multiyear study:

  • Before 10 p.m.: 24% more likely
  • 11 p.m. to midnight: 12% more likely
  • After midnight: 25% more likely

The findings relate to the simple fact that evolution has programmed us to be active during the day and sleep when it’s dark, a pattern that modern lighting and indoor jobs allow us to break at our peril.

“The body has a 24-hour internal clock, called circadian rhythm, that helps regulate physical and mental functioning,” explains study author David Plans, PhD, a psychology researcher at the U.K.’s University of Exeter. “The results suggest that early…

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Robert Roy Britt
Elemental

Editor of Wise & Well on Medium + the Writer's Guide at writersguide.substack.com. Author of Make Sleep Your Superpower: amazon.com/dp/B0BJBYFQCB