Study Reveals Ideal Sleep Duration to Avoid Premature Ageing

A recent international study has found that both too little and too much sleep can cause the body to age faster than it should. The large-scale research discovered that extreme sleep durations, whether too short or too long, are closely linked to accelerated biological ageing in various vital organs, from the brain, heart, and lungs to the immune system. This phenomenon also increases the risk of exposure to various chronic diseases.

In this study, an international research team analysed health data from nearly half a million participants registered in the UK Biobank. To measure the impact of sleep on the body, the researchers did not only look at chronological age, but used advanced technology called biological ageing clocks. The tool utilises machine learning technology to analyse the participants’ complex biological data, including brain organ scans, blood protein profiles, and specific chemical markers in the body.

The results showed that if sleep duration is less than six hours or more than eight hours, the body can age faster than it should. Sleep deprivation was significantly associated with brain-related disorders such as depression and anxiety. Beyond brain-related illnesses, lack of sleep was also linked to other conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, respiratory conditions like asthma, and digestive problems such as reflux.

Meanwhile, sleeping too long was also associated with health problems, although the researchers suggest that this may sometimes reflect underlying illness rather than directly causing the damage itself. “Our study looks further and shows that both too little and too much sleep are associated with faster ageing in nearly every organ, supporting the idea that sleep is important in maintaining organ health within a coordinated brain-body tissue network, including metabolic balance and a healthy immune system,” said Junhao Wen, the study’s lead author and assistant professor of radiology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons in the United States.

Although these findings are highly valuable for the medical world, the researchers provided several caveats. The study is currently only correlative, so it cannot yet be confirmed whether sleep duration directly causes ageing or whether poor health conditions disrupt a person’s sleep patterns. Additionally, most of the sleep duration data was based on participants’ memory and self-reporting, which opens a gap for inaccuracies compared to direct sleep measurements in a laboratory. Going forward, the research team calls for further studies with more precise sleep measurement tools and involving a more ethnically and geographically diverse global population.