New research shows that waking up one hour earlier each day decreases the risk of depression by 23%. Undertaken by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the study examined 840,000 people, providing strong scientific evidence that a person’s chronotype can influence their mental wellbeing. “We have known for some time that there is a relationship between sleep timing and mood, but a question we often hear from clinicians is: How much earlier do we need to shift people to see a benefit?” says senior author Celine Vetter, assistant professor of integrative physiology at CU Boulder. “We found that even one-hour earlier sleep timing is associated with significantly lower risk of depression.” Source: JAMA Psychiatry, 2021