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25.11.2011

Sleep better - live longer

The better the quality of your sleep, the longer you'll live. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh came to this conclusion after doing a study in which they followed 184 healthy men and women aged 58-91 for an average of 13 years.

Sleep & health
Inventions such as artificial light, TV and the internet mean we sleep less long, and the quality of our sleep is probably also worse. As a result our health is suffering, sleep researchers suspect.

They base their reasoning on studies which have shown that too little sleep reduces the body's maximal oxygen uptake, stimulates overweight and lowers testosterone levels. And that's just a few of the problems associated with lack of sleep.

When the researchers compared the over-sixties in the study who had died with the over-sixties who were still alive, they discovered three sleep factors that reduced the chance of dying.

Results
Among the survivors, there were significantly more subjects who, after getting into bed, took less than half an hour to fall asleep. Secondly, the survivors lay awake less often and they slept for over 80 percent of the time that they lay in bed. And finally, the survivors spent more time in deep sleep.

When you get up in the morning you can tell whether you have slept deeply. You aren't properly awake for the first half hour, but after that you feel well rested.

When the researchers corrected their data for the subjects' health, deep sleep disappeared as a contributing factor. Unhealthy people apparently sleep less deeply. But a new factor popped up: REM-sleep. This is the phase when your brain is active and clears up old connections between brain cells and creates new connections. Dreams are probably translations of this electrical activity.

The most important predictor of death that the researchers found was the amount of time it took the subjects to fall asleep. If this was longer than 30 minutes, their chance of dying was higher by a factor of 2.14.

For the subjects who spent more than 80 percent of their time in bed awake, their chance of dying was greater by a factor of 1.93. If they noticeably frequently or infrequently entered REM sleep phases, the chance of dying was greater by a factor of 1.71.

Conclusion
"The fact that certain sleep parameters independently predicted cumulative probability of death may have practical implications for sleep-related interventions in older adults", the researchers write. "In particular, one could hypothesize that interventions that optimize and/or protect sleep initiation and sleep quality in old age might not only add quality to life but prolong life as well."

Did anyone there say 'melatonin'?

Source:
Psychosom Med. 2003 Jan-Feb;65(1):63-73.

More:
Sleep less and you're more likely to die 03.04.2013
Afternoon nap helps you live longer 01.06.2011

Archives:
Longevity
Sleep

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