Staying up all night is actually good for you, says science

Go ahead and ignore your bedtime. According to science, it’s not actually bad for you to stay up late. This is GREAT news for those of us who tend to work best after midnight, and also for those of us who love to put off all homework till the last possible second.

A new study from researches at the University of Madrid suggests that those of us who stay up late are actually more intelligent. Really! The researches studied 1,000 youths, and those of them who claimed they were night owls tested “considerably higher on inductive reasoning.” That directly ties into our academic performances, which means you don’t have to go to bed at 8pm to snag that high test score. So maybe cramming at 1am the night before a test isn’t such a bad thing?

The researches in Madrid aren’t the only ones who think it’s fine to stay up late. Researchers at the University of Alberta noticed that night owls experience “a central nervous system drive, thereby increasing motor cortex and spinal cord excitability.” That basically means night owls get a “second wind” of energy, allowing them to get more stuff done, while everyone else is already fast asleep. And let’s be real for a second: would you rather get up ridiculously early in the morning to finish something, or stay up a few extra hours at night? It’s probably the latter, right? Science says that decision is A-OK. Thanks, science!

While you might be celebrating this news, don’t go and tell your parents that you’re going to start pulling all nighters Sunday-Thursday. You should still be getting a decent night’s sleep, anywhere from seven to nine hours. But science did just tell us not to worry about saying up late so… how about we agree to stay up as late as we want, as long as we make it to first period on time?

Image via here.