London - You’re curled up on the couch watching your eighth consecutive episode.that series everyone's currently obsessed with, repeating the mantra of :just one more” until your eyelids start to grow heavy, your vision blurs, your head sags.
As a way of attempting to finish the session, you take it to your room till early morning. Sounds like something you would do?
Winding down in the evening, it can often be tempting to squeeze in another episode or get to the end of a chapter.
But it might be time to get strict about switching off – as going to sleep just 30 minutes after your usual bedtime is bad for your health, experts say.
A study of sleeping habits among students found those who went to bed even slightly later than their typical bedtime had a significantly higher resting heart rate at night, which lasted into the following day. This was true even if they had the same amount of sleep as usual.
Scientists at the University of Notre Dame in the US – who defined ‘normal’ as the one-hour interval around an average bedtime – looked at data from Fitbit devices worn over four years across 255,736 sleep sessions. They found the later students went to bed, the greater the rise in heart rate – while those who went to bed early also saw a rise.
Professor Nitesh Chawla, writing in the journal Nature, said: "Establishing a healthy routine is step number one. But sticking to it is just as important."