September 25th, 2007 in Lifestyle
Can Lack Of Sleep Kill You?
Well we all know that humans need to sleep to live, but some studies are suggesting as little as a few hours less can decrease your chances of living longer!
Those whose nightly sleep fell from seven hours to five hours or less were 1.7 times as likely to die (compared with those who stayed at seven hours) over the next 11 to 17 years. Their risk of cardiovascular-related death was double.
There are, however, some different view points. One suggesting that more than the standard eight hours may actually be worse for you than too little sleep.
Read on? I need a nap.
Sleep or Die - [Slate]
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Comments
Adam says on September 25th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
This is only statistical though. It may only be an indirect correlation in the fact that whatever lifestyle is contributing to the lack of sleep may very well be responsible for the higher risk of dying.
ryan says on September 25th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Yes but think of all the time you can gain of conscience activity in a lifetime of 5 hour sleep vs. 7 hours of sleep.
If you started this say when you are 25 and you live to 75. You could add 4 years to your active life. ;-p
Jeremy Steele says on September 25th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Actually, they did a experiment a while back with rats where they kept them up 24/7. After like a week and a half or so the rats literally died from a lack of sleep. So yes, lack of sleep can kill you.
James says on September 26th, 2007 at 7:01 am
But by getting less hours of sleep you will feel more tired, less energized, not as mentally sharp, more prone to illness etc. So those 4 years you save may not exactly be productive to you if it takes twice as long to do your work because you can’t think clearly, or you can’t keep your home de-cluttered because you have no energy
SpiKe
Organize IT
Brian Carnell says on September 26th, 2007 at 7:18 am
Adam’s interpretation is likely correct. The increased mortality is likely due to confounding behavioral factors. The press release on the study says,
“Short sleep has been shown to be a risk factor for weight gain, hypertension and Type 2 diabetes sometimes leading to mortality but in contrast to the short sleep-mortality association it appears that no potential mechanisms by which long sleep could be associated with increased mortality have yet been investigated. Some candidate causes for this include depression, low socioeconomic status and cancer-related fatigue.”
I think the researchers there have it backwards in that it is more likely that people who are engaging in behaviors predisposing them to hypertension and weight gain are also likely not sleeping as much as part of that behavioral set.
In this case the group that was studied was British civil servants. It would have been interesting to see what, if any, correlation there was between income/status level and change in sleep hours.
Daria Sofiyeva says on September 26th, 2007 at 10:04 am
If you’re in a position where you can’t sleep long, make you you get quality sleep with minimal interruptions, take your omega 3’s for your heart, exercise it regularly, and control stress-related activites. That’s what works for me. Last fall, I used to sleep very little due to scheduling conflicts and sure enough, developed tachycardia. Now, with my schedule back to normal and a healthy lifestyle, I maximize sleep hours & feel much better!
Manage Your Sleep says on October 1st, 2007 at 12:19 am
Indeed, there are several cases (oddly most out of China) of people not sleeping for 3 days straight (usually while playing video games) and dying. This has been happening for several years, and is scary!
lily says on March 7th, 2008 at 8:11 am
short sleeep?