14 DAY TRIAL // An international collaboration of scientists has recently determined that less than six hours of sleep each night is completely insufficient for the human body. The investigators believe they may have established a connection between sleeping five hours each day or less and an early grave, saying that people who don't get enough rest have all the chances of dying prematurely. Ideally, a person should sleep for 6 to 8 hours each night, and those who don't have a 12 percent higher rate of dying over the next 25 years than those who do, the BBC News reports.
In a strange twist, the science team also found that individuals who sleep for more than nine hours per night are also at a higher risk of death than the average. However, they hypothesize, this may be closely related to the fact that these people may already be suffering from medical conditions that make them sleep more. The data used in this research comes from 16 separate sleep studies, which together cover in excess of 1.5 million people. Details of the investigation appear in the latest issue of the renowned scientific journal Sleep.
The researches covered the United Kingdom, the United States, as well as countries in Europe and East Asia. A clear correlation was found to exist between sleeping either too much or too little and early death caused by a variety of issues. The scientists again underline the fact that people should stick to sleeping between 6 to 8 hours per night, as this is the ideal period of time the human body needs to be ready for a new day.
“Modern society has seen a gradual reduction in the average amount of sleep people take and this pattern is more common amongst full-time workers, suggesting that it may be due to societal pressures for longer working hours and more shift-work. On the other hand, the deterioration of our health status is often accompanied by an extension of our sleeping time,” explains University of Warwick professor Francesco Cappuccio, who is also the leader of the Sleep, Health and Society Program at the university.
“Sleep is just a litmus paper to physical and mental health. Sleep is affected by many diseases and conditions, including depression,” adds Loughborough Sleep Research Center professor Jim Horne, who believes that other factors may be contributing to this correlation beside the actual sleep patterns. “But having less than five hours a night suggests something is probably not right. Five hours is insufficient for most people and being drowsy in the day increases your risk of having an accident if driving or operating dangerous machinery,” he concludes.