Hours of sleep and mortality

Posted on March 24, 2009
Filed Under People |

Affects sleep

A large number of studies have examined the effect of sleep duration on mortality. Half of them showed a U-shaped association between sleep and all-cause mortality in both sexes.

Every time less hours?

In the current industrialized societies people are sleeping fewer hours each time and show greater levels of sleep disorders. This change, the shortening of sleep time to allow more time for leisure and shift work, has meant that older people complain about problems of fatigue, daytime sleepiness and fatigue that just a few decades.

Effects

The dream represents the daily process of physiological rest and recovery and loss of sleep has harmful effects on various endocrine functions, immune and metabolic. Despite this, few studies have examined the effects of change in sleep duration on mortality.

In this paper the authors examine the sleep duration and change in the duration of the predictors of all causes of death (cardiovascular and non cardiovascular) in a large group of British citizens.

We evaluated more than 10,000 people from 35 to 55 years of which 9700 participated in phase 1 (initial questionnaire) and 7700 in phase 3 study (final questionnaire). The results showed U-shaped associations between sleep (<5, 6, 7, 8 and> 9) at stages 1 and 3 and subsequent cardiovascular mortality and non-cardiovascular both.

Shorter hours, increased cardiovascular mortality…

It was noted that a decrease in the duration of sleep below the usual 6-8 hours was associated with increased cardiovascular mortality. However, it was also found that increased hours of sleep over 7-8 hours is not associated with increased cardiovascular mortality.

… And longer hours, more non-cardiovascular mortality

The authors conclude that this is the first study that shows that the increase or decrease the hours of sleep are associated with increased mortality through effects on cardiovascular and non cardiovascular deaths, respectively.

A risk that must be taken into account

Patients have reported a decline in hours of sleep should be considered as patients at risk for cardiovascular and suffer higher mortality from all causes of death. Further studies are needed to determine the causes of death contributing to excess cardiovascular mortality is not observed in people who sleep more hours than usual.

In terms of prevention, the findings indicate that sleep 7-8 hours a night is optimal for health. Happy dreams!

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