Sleep at least seven hours a night it removes the risks of getting chronically ill or premature death. The confirmation, which adds to a large group of research on the importance of sleep, comes fromUniversity College London. The research, published in PLOS Medicinesanalyzed the impact of sleep duration on the health of more than 7,000 men and women aged 50, 60 and 70.
The researchers looked at the relationship between each participant’s sleep duration, mortality, and whether they had been diagnosed with two or more chronic diseases — such as heart disease, cancer or diabetes — over the course of 25 years.
The people who reported about sleep five hours or less by age 50 they had the 20% more likely to be diagnosed with a chronic disease and the 40% more likely to have two or more chronic diseases over 25 years, compared to people who slept up to seven hours. Additionally, sleeping for five hours or less at ages 50, 60 and 70 was linked to a 30% to 40% increased risk of multimorbidity compared with those who slept up to seven hours.
Researchers have also found that a sleep duration of five hours or less at age 50 was associated with a 25 percent increased risk of mortality over the 25-year follow-upwhich can mainly be explained by the fact that a short sleep duration increases the risk of chronic diseases which in turn increase the risk of death. Lead author Severine Sabia said: ‘Multimorbidity is on the rise in high-income countries and more than half of older adults now have at least two chronic conditions.’
This is revealing itself a major public health challenge, as multimorbidity is associated with high health service utilization, hospitalizations, and disability. As part of the study, the researchers also looked at whether sleeping too much, such as nine hours or more, affected health outcomes. But there was no clear association between long sleep duration at age 50 and multimorbidity in healthy people.
