You Know You Stay Up Late When...

  • comments
  • print
  • email
Aug 07, 2015 07:11 AM EDT

Staying up late is one of those bad habits that are so hard to break, mostly attributed to the fact that there is vast amount of media content we want to consume on a daily basis. Blame our poor decision-making skills or our penchant for the darkness, but here's some things that will tell you when you're staying up too late too often.

1. Your phone battery won't last the day, from the moment you wake up to that last minute that you finally put down the phone for good. It gets worse when you rearrange your room to place the bed near a socket so you can charge your phone—and thereby be on your phone for longer than you really should.

2. You go to the bathroom to pee 3 to 4 times before you actually feel sleepy enough to fall asleep.

3. You realize you're HUNGRY and that dinner was five hours ago, so you head to the kitchen and grab a snack. No biggie. But then you realize you have to give your stomach time to digest, so you stay up for another hour or so. Just a precaution, though: according to Livescience, a study showed that circadian rhythms play an important role in metabolic regulation. The same study found that people who stayed up late were 1.7 times more at risk for Type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome—high blood pressure, high blood sugar levels, too much abdominal fat and abnormal cholesterol levels. Moreover, late sleepers were also 3.2 times more likely to have muscle loss compared to morning people.

4. You profusely promise to sleep early the following night, which you don't get to do because you haven't caught up with your favorite show, which you end up binge watching til midnight or beyond.

5. You wake up on a weekday and notice really dark circles underneath your eyes. You immediately Google "home remedies for eye bags" and retrieve reviews on the best available eye cream in the market, and you possibly drop by the mall to purchase one before heading home, subsequently lathering it under your eyes every night for the next, say, five days max.

6. You download whale songs onto your phone, or follow a bunch of playlists for sleeping on Spotify and try your best to listen intently as soon as your head hits the pillow. Fun fact: TODAY reports that Ed Sheeran's "Thinking Out Loud" is a song found in most "sleep" playlists created by Spotify's users.

7. You regretfully turn off your computer and other devices because you know that the blue light from these devices prohibits the production of melatonin, the hormone that helps us sleep. In fact, sleep researcher Steven Lockley of Harvard Medical School told the Washington Post in 2014, "The premise to remember is [that] all light after dusk is unnatural. All of us push our sleep later than we actually would if we didn’t have electric light."

The key really is to create better sleeping habits and lessen the temptation for staying up late. Set a time for catching up with your favorite shows, or set a certain number of episodes to watch per day. Log off all social media sites during a certain time of the evening. Most importantly, spend every waking hour with those who matter the most, and not in front of the computer or your phone.

Join the Conversation
Real Time Analytics