Are you worried that you’re not getting enough sleep?

You may have heard a lot of advice about how important sleep is for our health. Experts have repeatedly stated that we need to sleep 7-9 hours a night. Getting adequate sleep has been linked to improved mood, brain performance, longevity, and weight loss. Not getting enough sleep is thought to contribute to heart disease and even dementia.

Unfortunately, many of my patients are not able to get this many hours of sleep a night. And quite frankly, neither am I. This can lead to feelings of guilt about doing ourselves harm, even if we don’t feel tired or sleepy during the day and engage in other healthy behaviors such as avoiding smoking, exercising regularly, eating well, keeping our weight down, and managing stress to the best of our ability.

There is some good news. A new study published in the journal “Sleep” found that sleep regularity was a stronger predictor of lifespan than the quantity of sleep. Impressively, data was used from accelerometers being worn by 60, 977 participants with an average age of 62.8 years in the UK Biobank databank.

Going to bed and waking up at the same time regularly was found to decrease the risk of death by 20-48% overall. More specifically, a 16-39% lower risk of death from cancer and a 22-57% lower risk of death from a cardiac cause was found, depending on the level of regularity.

These are very impressive numbers! What is especially impressive about this study is the number of participants and how the data was collected - not from people’s recall (which can be erroneous) but by devices tracking their movement, which is much more precise.

So if you are worried that you aren’t able to get enough sleep, make sure that you at least keep the same schedule. However, you should see your doctor if you are getting less than 4 or more than 12 hours of sleep a night, notice gaps in your breathing at night, or are regularly feeling tired or sleepy during the day.

Worried that you aren’t getting enough sleep?