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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."
There are many potential confounds for this study that can provide these results, most notably their use of cancer patients as subjects. Most studies to date indicate an average need for approximately 8hrs of sleep per night are needed for an adult. However, those folks that have poor quality of sleep caused by factors such as sleep apnea or pain management issues among others where the architecture of sleep and quality of sleep are radically altered would need to spend longer amounts of time "sleeping" or more appropriately time in bed to acheive the required rest due to poor quality of sleep. These causes of longer "sleep" times are themselves responsible for higher morbidity and mortality.
Finally it should be noted that for a long time it has been known that there is a high degree of variation in the amount of sleep required by people and most of the variation is due to self reporting inconsistencies. (in other words people underreport the amount of time they actually sleep for a variety of reasons) Actual sleep recording or polysomnography narrows this variation considerably.
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I think perhaps you have assumed a certain statement from someone before he ellicited it. No one is guilty of confusing correlation with causation. The Washington Post Article deals with this point of yours head on; although it does allow some room for speculation. The study explicitly states your point. With the exception of a few trolls the comments thus far have been stating your point. And the /. summary doesn't make the assumption of causation either. The line "it appears that sleeping more than 8 hours carries a much higher risk" may connote a causation but its denotation is completely supported by the study. If people in a category are more likely to exhibit a symptom then if you are in this category you are in fact at a greater risk of carrying this symptom, unless there is additional data stating otherwise. The only place where causation is truly suggested is in the four word article title "Sleep Less, Live Longer." But this is clearly a throw away title designed to gather interest and not to carry useful information. Really there is no reason to chastise anybody in this case. Please save your criticisms for actions that actually demand such a response.
Babies sleep 12 hours or longer per day while old people sleep 6 hours or less per day.
If you do the study this way (asking people at different ages how long they sleep, then look at mortality) you get obvious result that long sleep = early death. People who died at age 2 slept probably more than 12 hours/day.
If you look at it the other way and ask for the rest life expectancy you would get exactly the opposite result: People sleeping longer have statistically a longer rest life expectancy (because they are younger, but this study ignores age, so we can ignore it, too)
I believe it's the third Dune book where, after spending the entire night talking and debating with Duncan Idaho, Stilgar looks out at the rising sun and says, "To stay awake all night is to add a day to your life."
(Okay, Stil, how come it's 4 in the morning for me, I can't sleep, and I feel like a fukkin corpse? :-) Blah, I hate insomnia.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Another recent study showed that sleeping less would increase insulin resistance, which would definitely shorten lifespan. And that study actually showed probable causation, unlike the 'study' referenced above.
It continually amazes me what passes for science in the fields of nutrition and sleep. Most of the studies I've read in these two areas would not get a passing grade in a high school science class.
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Anyone looking to buy stock in Jolt cola in hopes they found the fountain of youth should read the final line of the abstract.
Causality is unproven.While it is an interesting finding and deserves to be looked at further. The big problem is that data was originally collected as part of a Cancer study and like most cancer studies it only looks at data over a relatively short period of time (6 years). So the tagline should more accurately read,
People who sleep more or less than 7 hours per day are more likely to die in the next six years.
Going back to the original point, the only mechanism they propose to account for more sleep causing correlating with increased death is that people with sleep apnea (stoping breathing while asleep) have higer mortality rates. However they also point out that people with sleep apnea do not necessarily sleep longer.
So basically they have no clue as to why.