If you’ve ever pulled an all-nighter or tried to get by on just a few hours of sleep, you know it doesn’t leave you feeling great the next day. But new research suggests the effects are worse than dark circles and brain fog. A new study finds there’s a sweet spot for sleep and getting too much or too little can age you faster than you think.
We’re not just talking about wrinkles here, but biological aging across the body. Researchers looked at how the amount of time you sleep connects to biological aging in multiple organ systems.
- They analyzed 23 biological “aging clocks” from more than half a million participants ages 37 to 84.
- Each clock’s data from brain and organ scans, blood proteins, and chemical byproducts in the bloodstream was used to determine if their brain, lungs, liver, immune system, skin, heart, pancreas, fat tissue and more, were functioning older or younger than their chronological age.
- And it turns out, both too little and too much sleep are associated with speeding up biological aging compared with people who sleep a specific amount.
- That sweet spot for sleep is between 6.4 and 7.8 hours per night.
- Getting more or less than that seems to damage the body in different ways, according to the study. Snoozing less than six hours is linked to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, kidney disease, and psychiatric conditions, including depression and anxiety.
- On the flip side, sleeping longer than eight hours is connected to brain-related conditions like major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
- To put it in perspective, short sleepers had a 50% higher risk of death from any cause during the study’s follow-up time frame, while long sleepers’ was 40% higher. But people who slept in that window of 6.4 and 7.8 hours per night outlived both the other groups by a significant margin.
Source: Vice