Slashdot Mirror
Sleep Less, Live Longer
Linuxathome writes: "The Washington Post carried an article describing the results of a study linking the average amount of sleep one gets per night with his/her life span. It appears that those who sleep less than 8 hours a night, live longer (optimum is 7 hours). The study (link to the abstract) was aimed at looking at the mortality rate of those suffering from insomnia. But rather than associating insomnia with increased risk of death, it appears that sleeping more than 8 hours carries a much higher risk."
...but you'll feel like it ;-)
All this living longer is killing me.
"'None of this says sleep kills people,' said Daniel Buysse, a University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist and the immediate past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. 'You should sleep as much as you need to feel awake, alert and attentive the next day...'"
"Sleeplessness produces health consequences that were not measured in the study,"
"The study relied on people's own reports of their sleeping habits,"
(very few reported that they had "CowboyNeal" hours of sleep)
"'You can choose to eat a Twinkie or a carrot, but I can't choose to sleep 12 hours or six -- I don't have that much voluntary control.'"
I dunno. It seems pretty obvious to me that, all else being equal, people tend to sleep longer when they are unhealthy because they are unhealthy. While I hesitate to use the term... Who am I kidding? I think people who are interpreting this as "Sleep less, live longer" are total Bozos, and I think the popular press is being irresponsible in their desire for a sensational story, as usual.
Sure you will live longer, but you won't remeber it.