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."

Comments

Flawed Study?

[Mattygfunk]

This article from CNN reports the same thing. However, in this article The National Sleep Foundation suggests that the study may be flawed, and will do nothing but cause the public unnecessary confusion and concern.

Re:Argghhh!

[dragons_flight]

I tried submitting the Reuters version a couple days ago.

It's mostly the same stuff, but there are a couple of quotes that I found highly interesting which are missing from the version /. linked.

"...the study shows that longer sleep is a risk factor for cancer as well as heart disease and stroke... Heart disease was the most common cause of death, followed by stroke and cancer."

"...some sleep loss actually acts as an antidepressant."

It's correlation certainly, but at least the other version of the story tells you what lots of sleep has been correllated to.

Here is what THE expert says:

[John Harrison]

Dr. William Dement of Stanford University is recognized as the world's leading expert on sleep and sleep disorders.

I took his class and it was very interesting. One of the most memorable things that I learned is that there is no single "right amount of sleep" for everyone. Some people need more, others need less. The range that he reports is 2 to 10 hours a night. If you need 6 hours a night then that is what you need and 8 is too much. If you need 9 then you had better get 9 and getting less is harmful. Here is what his website has to say on the subject.

One of the other very interesting things I learned in his class was the concept of sleep latency. He has developed tests that can actually measure how sleep deprived a person is. Once you accumulate sleep debt it doesn't go away until you make that sleep up. Thus if you are a person who needs 7 hours of sleep a night and one night you only get 4 hours of sleep you will be sleep deprived until you make up that 3 hours that you missed. You can do the next night by sleeping 10 hours or you could continue to sleep 7 hours a night and run around sleep deprived for months until you make up the sleep.

I would trust his opinion more than some researchers who do not specialize in sleep and merely noticed a correlation while conducting a study that wasn't related to sleep or sleep disorders. On the subject of life expectancy he actually mentioned in class that life expectancy is correlated with the amount on sleep that you need each night. Someone who needs only 4 hours of sleep each night, he used President Clinton as an example, will have a shorter life expectancy. This directly contradicts the study mentioned in this article.