Most of us feel like we don’t get enough sleep. Getting 6 to 8 hours of shut-eye a night is challenging enough for those of us who work late, care for families, and stare into the blue glare of the Internet well after dark.
We’ve always known that there are dangers involved in not getting enough sleep, but research shows that those who manage to sleep past their well past their alarms in the morning might be increasing their risk of disease or death.
How’s that for a wake-up call?
A new study published in the European Heart Journal this month showed that people getting more than 8 hours of sleep had higher incidences of cardiovascular events, like stroke or heart failure, and even an increased risk of death.
So how did they come to this conclusion?
The researchers used data gathered from something called the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) project, which asked 116,613 people about their various habits. Subjects ranged in age from 35 to 70 and came from 21 countries around the world.
A project this large and diverse should technically give us better and more reliable information, so people are paying attention.
The original project gathered data about a variety of factors and was not simply about sleep (they also asked questions about things like eating habits and physical activity, for example), so the sleep researchers just pulled out just the specific information they wanted for their analysis.
Once they crunched the numbers, they saw that in those who reported getting over 8 hours of sleep per night, 4,381 deaths and 4,365 major cardiovascular events had occurred over a period of 7.8 years.
Of course, this is a correlation (or possible coincidence) and does not mean that too much sleep caused the events.
It’s important to remember that other factors might be involved. Those who got more than 8 hours of sleep might have had other underlying conditions that caused both the excess sleep and heart disease, for example.
Still, the numbers are interesting, even if they are just an observation that requires more research.
But it’s significant, from a scientific standpoint, that those who slept between 8 and 9 hours a night were 5% more likely to develop cardiovascular disease or die each year – and the percentage went up to 17% in those who slept 9-10 hours, and to a whopping 41% in those who slept more than 10 hours per night (though that’s still just roughly 15 per every 1000 people).
Remember, this is for chronic oversleepers. If you had a long week and try to catch up on your sleep over the weekend a few times, you’re not going to die.
This is tricky news for us to process since researchers have long been telling us that some people need up to 10 hours of sleep per night.
What’s worse is that we’ve also been told that napping can be good for us, but the new study shows that in some cases that might not be true!
The research revealed similar health risks among daytime nappers who already got over 6 hours of sleep at night. (Sleep-deprived nappers are still ok to take that power nap.)
Of course, sleep deprivation is bad for you too. Other studies have suggested that less than 6 hours of sleep can also lead to heart attacks, mood changes, weakened immunity, weight gain, and a higher risk of accidents and death.
While it all sounds like you just can’t win, the answer is actually quite simple, if you want to live by the research – aim to get 6-8 hours of sleep every night.
If your body won’t let you get the optimal amount of sleep and you think it could be affecting your overall health, it’s important to see a doctor before it leads to something more serious.
And it’s always good to take the latest science headlines with a grain of salt. There’s a lot of conflicting evidence out there and it’s not always easy to understand how to interpret it. If you can, read multiple sources, remain skeptical until you feel like the data is convincing, ask professionals what they think, and don’t change your life based on everything you read.
Everyone’s body is different and changes that make you feel unhealthy or stressed or worse off in some way aren’t always worth it.
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