A recent study done by researchers from University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom has found that 5 hours or less of sleep increases the risk of chronic disease in people aged 50 and above.
According to study, sleeping for five hours or less each night if you’re 50 or older increases your risk of developing two or more chronic diseases as you age.
On October 18, the study was published in the PLOS Medicine journal (pdf below).
7,864 men and women who worked in the London offices of the British civil service for more than 30 years and had no chronic diseases at the age of 50 were monitored for their health and amount of sleep by researchers from University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom.
Self-reported sleep duration was measured six times between 1985 and 2016, and data on sleep duration was extracted at ages 50, 60, and 70. Researchers investigated the data’s correlation with incident multimorbidity over 25 years of follow-up.
Researchers define incident multimorbidity as the presence of two or more of 13 chronic conditions, such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and renal disease.
The study discovered that people who slept five hours or less each night at the age of 50 had a 20% increased risk of receiving a chronic disease diagnosis and a 40% increased risk of receiving two or more chronic disease diagnoses during a 25-year period.
Additionally, compared to people who slept for up to seven hours, individuals who slept for five hours or less at the ages of 50, 60, and 70 had a 30 to 40% higher risk of two or more chronic diseases.
Americans Not Getting Enough Sleep
Additionally, it was discovered that sleeping for five hours or less per night at age 50 was linked to a 25% higher chance of dying during a 25-year period, which the researchers attributed to a higher risk of chronic disease.
The small number of cases in the long sleep category, the self-reported nature of the sleep data, and the potential for reverse causality—the mistake of mistaking cause for effect and vice versa—that could result from undiagnosed conditions—were all acknowledged as limitations by the study’s authors.
“In this study, we observed short sleep duration to be associated with risk of chronic disease and subsequent multimorbidity but not with progression to death,” the authors noted. “There was no robust evidence of an increased risk of chronic disease among those with long sleep duration at age 50. Our findings suggest an association between short sleep duration and multimorbidity.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), almost one in three Americans don’t get enough sleep or rest at night or during the day, and an estimated 50 to 70 million Americans have chronic, or ongoing, sleep disorders.
According to the CDC, getting little sleep can result in issues with physical and mental health as well as increasing the risk of death.
According to specialists, adults between the ages of 61 and 64 should sleep between seven and nine hours per night, while adults between the ages of 18 and 60 should get at least seven hours. Ages 65 and up require roughly seven to eight hours every night.
Read the study given below:
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