How Many Hours Of Sleep You Really Need To Be Getting
BuzzFeed • • health
Key Points:
- A new study published in Nature identifies the optimal sleep duration for healthy aging as between 6.4 and 7.8 hours per night, challenging the traditional eight-hour recommendation.
- Both insufficient sleep (less than six hours) and excessive sleep (more than eight hours) are linked to accelerated aging in multiple organs and increased risk of conditions like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, and anxiety.
- Researchers developed organ-specific aging clocks to assess how different organs age at varying rates in relation to sleep duration, highlighting the complexity of sleep’s impact on overall health.
- Excessive sleep may indicate underlying health issues such as sleep disorders, inflammation, or sedentary lifestyle, which contribute to poor health outcomes, according to experts.
- The study also suggests women may require slightly more sleep than men, potentially due to hormonal fluctuations and greater emotional and cognitive demands.