Sleep longer, but not too long and live longer.

We all know that sleep is important, but you may not know how important it is. Something as common as sleep may affect how long you live.

The study reviewed here investigated the relationship between duration of sleep and all-cause mortality (Cappuccio FP, et al. 2010). It was a large study including 1,382,999 male and female participants and the follow up range was from 4 to 25 years.

It is interesting that both short duration and long duration of sleep was associated with a greater risk of death. Short duration of sleep was less than 6 hours and long duration of sleep was more than 9 hours.

7-8 hours would be what most healthy people would need to function their best.

To read the original abstract, click on the reference below.



Reference:

Cappuccio FP, D'Elia L, Strazzullo P, Miller MA. Sleep duration and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies. Sleep. 2010 May 1;33(5):585-92.