Does Sleep Affect Your Life Expectancy?

Can your sleeping habits affect how long you live? Research has shown that it does. If you sleep too much or not enough, then your risk for death greatly increases. There are a couple of reasons this happens, it's either the result of the impact on sleep on your overall health or because there are other diseases that impact sleep duration and longevity.

A group of researchers studied and followed 21,000 twins for more than 20 years. They focused on the twins sleep habits and compared them to their longevity. Twins make great research subjects because they often have the same genetic makeup and have grown up in the same environment. Unfortunately in this case, the researchers pooled the twin data together, which lost some of the benefit in using twins. It is not clear why this was done, but most likely it had to do with data collection.

Each participant was asked questions at the beginning of the study and then 22 years later. The questions involved use of sleep medications, sleep duration, and quality of sleep. Then the researchers collected data on their longevity.

The researchers found that those people who slept fewer than seven hours a night or more than eight hours a night had an increased risk for death. Women who got a short amount of sleep the increase was 21 percent and for men was 26 percent, for those who got a lot of sleep, the increase in women was 17 percent and men 24 percent. Those who used sleep medications had an increase in risk for death as well, women at 39 percent increase and men at 31 percent increase.

During the study, one third of the participants changed their sleep habits from stable to either more or less sleep. These shifts also resulted in an increase in the risk for death.

So the results show that sleep duration is linked to longevity, but there could be an underlying factor. If someone had heart disease that changed the way in which they sleep, then it would in turn increase their risk for death. In other words, sleep is one indicator of overall health. Changes in sleep or too much or too little sleep should be taken seriously. In order to get the right amount of sleep, a person should attempt to maintain a stable sleep schedule and sleep between 7-8 hours every day. This may help keep you healthy and increasing your longevity.