Five Hours' Sleep Is Tipping Point For Bad Health 53
At least five hours sleep a night may cut the over-50s' chances of multiple chronic health problems, researchers say. The BBC reports: The PLoS Medicine study tracked the health and sleep of UK civil servants. All of the about 8,000 participants were asked: How many hours of sleep do you have on an average weeknight?" Some also wore a wrist-watch sleep tracker. And they were checked for chronic conditions, including diabetes, cancer and heart disease, over two decades of follow-up:
- Those who slept five hours or less around the age of 50 had a 30% greater risk of multiple ailments than those who slept seven hours
- Shorter sleep at 50 was also associated with a higher risk of death during the study period, mainly linked to the increased risk of chronic disease
- Those who slept five hours or less around the age of 50 had a 30% greater risk of multiple ailments than those who slept seven hours
- Shorter sleep at 50 was also associated with a higher risk of death during the study period, mainly linked to the increased risk of chronic disease
Cause and effect (Score:2)
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What did that guy do to live rent-free between your ears?
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Oh wow, they REALLY don't want anyone to see this. I must be onto something.
Re:Cause and effect (Score:4, Informative)
I remember reading that sleeping pills cause the wrong form of sleep - essentially they're an anesthetic - and you don't get the kind of REM sleep required for resetting the brain overnight so physically they may refresh you but mentally they're a waste of time.
Re:Cause and effect (Score:5, Funny)
physically they may refresh you but mentally they're a waste of time.
You just described pretty much every relationship I ever had.
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Don't date the ones who require up front payment.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I dunno about you, but I'd much rather pay up front so I know what I'm on the hook for, rather than wait for the judge to tell me how much it's going to cost me.
Re:Cause and effect (Score:5, Funny)
Don't date the ones who require up front payment.
I'm old fashioned. I prefer the ones that say they require no payment, then make you pay for it in subtle ways for the rest of your life.
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Financially, they are much safer. The others can walk away with millions of dollars- up to half of what you make. They are also much more likely to break up your male friendships and isolate you. And more likely to have sex with your male friends.
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I often don't take sleeping med (or PM versions of painkillers like Tylenol PM) unless I can dedicate 12 hours of sleep, knowing that the first 6 hours of sleep will not be fitful, and I will be miserable the next day, but if I have 12 hours, I can get some real sleep after the med effects goes away.
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Yeah, something like that. Talked to an MD about options for better sleeping quite a while ago and after he explained things to me, medication was out. He also said that quite a few patients do not listen and want them anyways.
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TFA says that: The causative relationship goes both ways. Poor health interferes with sleep, and sleep deprivation aggravates health problems.
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Yea we don't live in neat little world where there is just the Right way and Wrong way to do things. There seems to be a balance for every individual that seems to be more optimal.
Re:Cause and effect (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, the more I exercise, the more sleep I need. And exercise probably delays chronic illness. Like you said, correlation isn't causation.
Re:Cause and effect (Score:5, Informative)
Personally, the more I exercise, the more sleep I need. And exercise probably delays chronic illness. Like you said, correlation isn't causation.
That is your body recovering from the exercise. Exercising also gives you a better quality of sleep [hopkinsmedicine.org].
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Personally, the more I exercise, the more sleep I need. And exercise probably delays chronic illness. Like you said, correlation isn't causation.
Advice on sleep seems to be all over the place. Obviously, you need a minimum number on average to stay healthy, but what that number IS tends to be contested. Further, as you stated, fitness seems to have it's own knots concerning rest. I've seen weight-lifting experts make contradictory claims, for instance. Some will tell you that you need a minimum of 10 hours per night in a weigh lifting regimen because of the need for muscle recovery, and yet I've seen others claim that you'll need less sleep after be
Re: Cause and effect (Score:2)
Re: Cause and effect (Score:4, Informative)
Much of that is compensated by asking 8000 people rather than just one.
The study is best viewed as preliminary due to the size and limited population it's drawn from, but it does suggest a larger, more detailed study would be worth doing.
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I read the article on a different site. The information and study itself is completely anecdotal. So 25 yrs ago they picked 8000 people, and once every 3-4 yrs they ask them questions.
Once I started using a sleep tracker I realized how wrong I could be about estimating my sleep. Some wore sleep trackers, but most of the people in that study just guessed.
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I read the article on a different site. The information and study itself is completely anecdotal. So 25 yrs ago they picked 8000 people, and once every 3-4 yrs they ask them questions.
Once I started using a sleep tracker I realized how wrong I could be about estimating my sleep. Some wore sleep trackers, but most of the people in that study just guessed.
Estimating sleep time can be subject to strong biases. Just like asking people how many hours they work, a bias exists toward one's ideal. Some people think that sleeping only a few hours is a positive, e.g., indicating hard work or activity. Others think that sleeping more is better. There is always a period of lying in bed before falling asleep. Some people will count this time and others won't. This type of self-reporting study demands a related study showing the accuracy of self-reporting compared
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While it may not imply a cause, it also doesn't deny that it could be a cause.
Much like other things for a healthy life style, there is balance.
Going to the Gym and weight training, is a healthy activity, however if you take Steroids for performance boosting, than a lot of the health benefits are negated. Sure you will get big and strong, but you also hurt your organs. Or even if you do it without "supplements" you can overwork and injure yourself.
The same thing with Diets, some people will just try to co
Re:Cause and effect (Score:4, Insightful)
It is kinda funny. "Correlation does not imply causation" has become a sorta nerd mantra but half of them seem to forget that correlation is how you prove relation, demonstrating relation is a precursor to showing causative relation.
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It is a bit more complex than that. For example, if you have a third factor that causes the observed correlated ones, then there is no causation either way.
Okay, sure, seven is better than five (Score:2)
But the actual details seem sparse. Where, for example, do people who get six hours of sleep a night fall - halfway between the two in terms of probability, or are they close to the "seven hours a night" folks (which the headline would seem to imply)?
Re:Okay, sure, seven is better than five (Score:5, Interesting)
It's in the paper, table 2. Six hours is much closer to seven hours than to five. There is little difference in multimorbidity between six, seven and eight hours sleep, but then a significant increase when you go down to five. Which would be good for me, since I get more than six hours most nights, except I only get there by hitting the sauce pretty hard, which probably more than wipes out any benefits.
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Thank you for pointing that out. Unfortunately I must, however, in turn point out that by reading TFP you've violated Slashdot's long-standing rules of conduct. As a five-digit UID, you should know better - the rest of us look to guys like you to set an appropriate tone for the site.
what about segmented sleep? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: what about segmented sleep? (Score:5, Informative)
Half life expectation was due to high children mortality. If you survived till 5, average lifespan was shorter than today, but not as drastically. Don't remember numbers offhand, but something like 60 vs 75, rather than 35 vs 75 if you count the children.
Re:what about segmented sleep? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:what about segmented sleep? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:what about segmented sleep? (Score:5, Informative)
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Study is flawed. (Score:1)
Civil servants made up their sleep hours at their desks during the day.
It's the Government Way all over the world.
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Probably helps to explain why private industry is doing so poorly at simple tasks such as producing products and getting them to stores.
Do you really think the people producing products and getting them to stores are working from home? Like, they have a portable home everything-factory or something?
Re: Study is flawed. (Score:1)
He's probably a civil servant. They're pretty disconnected from the real world.
Study seems flawed (Score:2)
Looking at the raw data, the study seems flawed (or at least the interpretation presented here). The group with the highest percentage of chronic illness is actually the group with the most sleep (greater than 9 hours) with 19.5% of them having one or more chronic diseases. While the group with less than 5 hours of sleep has 12.9% occurrence
Those with 6, 7 or 8 hours of sleep seem to be the healthiest, with those either getting very little or very much sleep being the unhealthy ones.
Many chronic diseases in
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To me it seems getting very little sleep is a byproduct of other traits or decisions that also caused unhealthy habits in general.
Can't speak for anyone else, but a lot of what keeps me up after I get up to piss is thinking about things I can't change, some of which I did to myself and some I didn't.
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I would assume the study is largely meaningless unless you find a way to strap down people at home with some measurement device: to study sleep apnea, brain activity, nutrition, and how the brains dumping of used chemical cocktails, and how entering the sleep phase works, alongside things like using body temperature to gauge the circadian rhythm/jetlag and how synced it is to actual sleep.
To the best of my knowledge the only useful source in how to treat sleep disorders on the Internet is a a manifesto writ
Really? (Score:4, Funny)
"tracked the health and sleep of UK civil servants. "
Civil servants usually only sleep 4 hours at home, otherwise they can't sleep on the job.
It's an individual thing. (Score:2)
Good (Score:2)
I always assumed that anything less than the recommended 8 hours per night was bad. I personally rarely get that much but I do typically get at least 6 hours of sleep per night so I'm glad that isn't hurting me as much as I thought it might be.
And granted that's mostly just because I'm a night owl so I typically stay up until around 2am and then wake up at 8am to go to work. Left to my own devices (eg during time off) I usually will sleep the recommended 8 hours it just tends to usually be from like 4am t
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From what I read, it really depends on the person and anywhere between 6 and 10 hours can be normal and fine. The study shows that _less_ than 5h is correlated with serious health issues.
So sleeping over 8 hours is bad too... (Score:1)
It's a predictor of dementia or Alzheimer's if you always need over 8 hours apparently.
I normally need 8 to 9 hours but suddenly started waking up after 6 hours about 3 weeks ago.
Five Hours' Sleep Is Tipping Point For Bad Health (Score:1)