People with anorexia are more likely to wake up early, a study suggests.
Some diseases and conditions are linked to circadian rhythm, with the body clock connected to either the morning or evening.
And while depression, binge eating and schizophrenia are associated with staying up later, a new study shows that anorexics are more prone to being morning people.
It is the first time a link has been found between mornings and anorexia nervosa, however previous studies found connections to circadian rhythm before.
Data shows that people with the eating disorder often wake early and also experience insomnia.
Genetic data from more than 70,000 people looked for links between chronotype and anorexia and found a link between the two.
However, the statistical analysis was unable to determine which way the association goes, and whether it was the morning tendency or anorexia that caused the other.
The scientists called for more powerful and diverse studies to be run in order to shed more light on the topic.
“Our findings implicate anorexia nervosa as a morning disorder in contrast to most other evening-based psychiatric diseases and support the association between anorexia nervosa and insomnia as seen in earlier studies,” said senior author Hassan Dashti, from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), USA, an assistant professor of anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School.
Past research has suggested a possible connection between eating disorders and the body’s internal clock, or circadian clock, which controls a wide range of biological functions such as sleep and affects nearly every organ in the body.
In the new study researchers looked at genes associated with anorexia, the body’s internal clock, and several sleep traits including insomnia.
