- Diabetes, COPD, depression... these are some of the health problems that lack of sleep can cause.
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| Lack of sleep can cause various health problems. |
These are the chronic and serious diseases derived from sleeping less than six hours each night
Sleep and rest are essential functions for our well-being, and we have ample scientific evidence that when they are deficient, the risk of suffering from a good number of health problems increases.
Now, a group of researchers from University College London has wanted to catalog and quantify the health risks that appear in people who usually sleep less than six hours a day.
A 40% higher risk at age 70
The results of this large cohort study have been published in the academic PLOS Medicine, and suggest that this population is at high risk of suffering from diseases such as diabetes, cancer, coronary heart disease, stroke, heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ( COPD), chronic kidney disease, liver disease, depression, dementia, Parkinson's and arthritis.
To reach these conclusions, the authors recruited 8,000 chronic disease-free 50-year-old participants who had to report their usual hours of sleep every 4 to 5 years over a 25-year period. Subsequently, these data were crossed with the different health problems that arose.
In this way, they found that those people who slept five hours or less habitually were up to 30% more likely to receive a diagnosis of chronic disease at age 50 than those who slept seven hours a day. By age 70, this difference had widened to 40%.
Too much sleep also increases the risk
Another important issue is that this work once again confirms a fact that quite a lot of recent research has also been pointing to that excessive sleeping hours are also related to a higher risk of developing certain health problems.
Thus, for example, those who slept nine or more hours a day were more likely to receive more than one diagnosis of chronic disease after 60 years of age.
Even with everything, the researchers remember that their study also suffers from some limitations. Mainly, they point out that the fact that it is the participants themselves who report their hours of sleep can distort the data.
In fact, it has been proven that people with insomnia tend to underestimate their sleep time, while those who sleep too little due to behavioral reasons (staying up late, very active lifestyle...) tend to overestimate it.
Be that as it may, the study supports the evidence that has been collected in recent years and helps us get an idea of the terrible effects of chronic lack of sleep on our health.
References
Severine Sabia, Aline Dugravot, Damien Léger, Céline Ben Hassen, Mika Kivimaki, Archana Singh-Manoux. Association of sleep duration at age 50, 60 and 70 years with the risk of multimorbidity in the UK: 25-year follow up of the Whitehall II cohort study. PLOS Medicine (2022).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004109.
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Health