A new study published this week has identified a link between sleep duration and some of the world’s biggest killer diseases – obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
The study published in Social Science & Medicine has found that 7-8 hours of sleep per night is ideal and anything less or more than that was “significantly associated” with these four diseases.
In fact, sleep problems are a stronger indicator of these diseases than other common predictors:
“In most cases, the relationships between short or long sleep duration and these four outcomes were even stronger than better-established predictors of these chronic metabolic/CVD outcomes.”
The study points out the need for sleep problems to be addressed in order to solve other health problems:
“Increasing the proportion of the population achieving 7-8 hours of daily sleep may reduce chronic disease risk in US
adults.”
Sleepio’s sleep expert, Professor Colin Espie commented on the findings:
“Although the amount we sleep may vary from person to person – some need more sleep than others – there appears to be significant health advantages to having a good nights sleep of 7 or 8 hours,” he said.
“Clearly sleep is not a trivial issue but an important predictor of disease; too little or too much poses a risk for serious illness. For example, the association between short sleep or long sleep and cardiovascular disease is similar in magnitude to psychological distress – so it does play a huge role in our overall health.”
If you want to check how well you are sleeping, take the Great British Sleep Survey. You may need to seek medical advice if you aren’t getting the optimal amount of sleep per night.
Read the full journal article here – Short and long sleep are positively associated with obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease among adults in the United States
Posted in Insomnia Information, Science, Sleep News | Tagged: insomnia, Science, sleep, study
