United States: A new report shows two out of three Americans get insufficient or too much sleep, thereby endangering their overall health condition.
More about the news
According to a study published in the JAMA Network Open on February 27, individuals who failed to sleep seven to nine hours at night experienced a 29 percent increase in their risk of premature medical-related death.
According to the research team lead, Kelsie Full, an assistant professor of epidemiology with Vanderbilt University Medical Center, “These findings provide new evidence that irregular sleep patterns over a 5-year period may increase the risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality,” US News reported.
How did the study take place?
The analysis included sleep and health information from close to 47,000 adults between 40 to 79 years old.
The research participants engaged in the study between 2002 and 2009, which led to the completion of a follow-up survey between 2008 and 2013.
The research team categorized participants according to their sleep “trajectory,” which indicated that their reported sleep behavior changes between the initial assessment and the follow-up.
The “long-short” group exercised excessive sleep at the first observation compared to less sleep in the later period, whereas the “short-long” reported a reverse pattern.
The research data showed that too many participants (66%) faced either inadequate or excessive sleep patterns.
The following specific results are reported:
- There is a 29 percent increased risk of death from any cause for short, 19% for long-short, and 27 percent for long-long.
- There is a 22 percent increased risk of heart-related death for long, 32% for long-short, and 22 percent for short.
What more are the experts stating?
According to the researchers, “Associations were stronger among White compared with Black adults and among adults with a household income USD 15,000 or greater compared with adults with household incomes less than USD 15,000,” US News reported.
“No differences were observed by sex,” they noted.
Furthermore, the study highlights the “importance of maintaining healthy sleep over time,” added an associated editorial writer, Dayna Johnson, an associate professor of epidemiology with the Emory University School of Public Health.
“The finding that transitioning from short or long to healthy sleep duration is associated with increased mortality risk underscores the impact of irregular sleep on health,” Johnson noted.
“It also raises critical questions about the potential for recovery from insufficient sleep and the time required to reverse its effects on health outcomes,” he continued.