Image: 23&Me
Feel Like You’re A Night-Owl Or Early-Bird By Type? Crowds To The Rescue!:
Health-tech darling & FDA sparring-partner 23&Me has just published a study that will make it unfortunately no easier to find excuses for your boss come Monday morning.
So, in the process of sequencing your DNA for things like potential diseases and national origins, etc. 23&Me also pulls down other data on you too.
And now, according to a self-reported survey of about 90,000 people, they’ve found another connection between genetics and behavior.
Because your genetic profile just might determine, in spite of you, if you are good at mornings or not.
Image: 23&Me
An Algorithm Pulls 15 Rabbits Out Of 14 Million Hats:
Out of the 1 million regions they can directly measure, and an additional 14 million they can infer from statistics, 23&Me’s big-data analytics have found about 15 sites in your code that show your genetically-preferred sleep-habits.
At least 8 of these are tied directly to regions known for their connection to Circadian Rhythms, including many measured by a British study last year. A few more of them are related to the brain’s ability to use ambient light signals that are pulled in by your eyes.
Image: 23&Me
Clusters Of Similar Indicators Can Work Better Than Individual Ones:
And while any one or two of these regions taken individually might not shift your proabability that much, all 15 examined together increased the prediction rate to about 200%!
And for your own personal guesswork, Here are a few of the trends the study teased-out:
Slightly more people considered themselves Night Owls. 56% vs 44%.
Women were 20% more likely than Men to be morning people.
Morning people were less likely to be either obese or thin.
You’re almost 3x as likely to be a morning person if you’re over 60 versus someone under 30.
Image: 23&Me
Night Owls Need Their Sleep!:
Night owls had almost 2x the Insomnia of morning people.
Night owls were 25% more likely than early birds to need more than 8 hours of sleep. They were also about 20% less likely to sleep soundly, and 20% more likely to sweat in their sleep.
A tenuous connection between early-risers & obesity was found.
And finally, if your father is a Morning Person, you are at-least 200% more likely to be one, too. -Almost 250% if you’re his daughter.
The study does have some downsides in it’s self-reporting which is less-accurate, and that season & geographic region were not examined. But overall, the trend still seems to be solid.
Image: 23&Me
Predictive-Medicine & Everyone’s Expanding Profile:
No word on if this new indicator will be available in your profile if you’ve already been sequenced there.
But with the power of better surveys, huge server farms, and ever-sophisticating analytics & possibly even AI, 23&Me might just reach the future of predictive-genetic medicine, one crowdsourced-project at a time.
Check out the geeky details over at the Links:
Links:
• Source: 23&Me-Rise & Shine | Full Infographic
• via: PBS
• More Coverage: TheVerge | PopSci
• Source Study: Nature-GWAS of 89,283 individuals identifies genetic variants associated with self-reporting of being a morning person
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