How Much Sleep is Enough Sleep?
Take it from me, I know what it’s like to survive on very little sleep. I get just about 5 hours, maybe 6 a night. Sleep at 10 and up at 3, I do get a nap most days so that’s helpful. So I wasn’t happy to find out that, according to a new study, it may be killing me. If I needed any more proof that I need more sleep, I got it with a long-term study out of the United Kingdom that was recently published in the journal PLOS Medicine.
Researchers for the study tracked almost 8,000 people over the course of 25 years who were 50 years and older. They found that getting five hours of sleep or less causes a greater risk of developing multiple chronic diseases than those who are getting a good night’s sleep. They tracked these thousands of folks for a quarter century and checked their health several times throughout the study.
The study showed that those “who were aged 50 or older were found to have a 30% higher risk of health problems from obesity to heart and kidney disease or multimorbidities, and the older they got, the higher the risk.” At 60, it jumped to 32% percent for those who were sleep-deprived, and at 70, the risk shot up to 40%.
The same risks for health problems that were observed were not found in those who managed 9 hours every night. However, the scientists said that they just couldn’t find enough test subjects who actually slept that long to adequately make a comparison.
The reason for the study was because, “multimorbidity is on the rise as reflected in over half of older adults having at least 2 chronic diseases in high-income countries, making multimorbidity a major challenge for public health.”
The results of the study suggest that we should shoot for 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night, which is also recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
7 to 9? That’s not happening, maybe on the weekend.
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