A new study has shown that sleeping between 6 and 8 hours is associated with a reduced risk of developing many diseases, while sleeping less than 5 hours is associated with a higher risk of developing them.
The study, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, was conducted by Shengqi Sun of Capital Medical University in China and his colleagues, based on data from 95,559 participants from the UK Biobank.
The researchers followed the participants for 8.9 years, after they wore devices on their wrists for 7 consecutive days and nights to measure the duration and stages of sleep, including deep sleep and rapid eye movement sleep, as well as sleep regularity and periods of wakefulness during the night.
Researchers found that increased REM sleep duration was associated with a reduced risk of 83 diseases, including heart failure, dementia, and Parkinson's disease. Increased deep sleep duration was also linked to a lower risk of seven health conditions, including type 2 diabetes and major depressive disorder.
Conversely, irregular sleep patterns and increased periods of wakefulness after falling asleep have been linked to a higher risk of several conditions, including anxiety disorders and disorders related to alcohol and drug use.
The results also showed that people who slept less than 5 hours were more likely to develop 37 diseases, while sleep durations between 6 and 8 hours were associated with the lowest risk levels in a large number of diseases.
The researchers pointed out that the study does not prove that sleep patterns directly cause or prevent diseases, because it relied on monitoring the correlations between sleep and health status, and not on a clinical trial.
The researchers said the findings provide further evidence of the importance of getting enough regular sleep, and of the potential role of different sleep stages in maintaining health.
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