New Delhi: Cultivating good sleeping habits adds five years to a man’s life and two-and-a-half years to a woman’s, a US study has found.
The preliminary study, which was presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology – a nonprofit medical association – gave 172,000 people a sleep questionnaire between 2013 and 2018.
It then analysed the data gathered on five parameters – falling asleep early, staying asleep, getting seven to eight hours of sleep, waking up rested and foregoing sleep medication.
This means — one has to get a full seven to eight hours of sleep every night, it must be uninterrupted as in you don’t wake up in the middle of the night or have trouble falling asleep more than two times a week, one also has to feel well-rested at least five days a week when they wake up and you certainly can’t pop a pill to attain your slumber.
“If people have all these ideal sleep behaviors, they are more likely to live longer,” said study coauthor Dr Frank Qian, a clinical fellow in medicine at Harvard Medical School and internal medicine resident physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
“If we can improve sleep overall, and identifying sleep disorders is especially important, we may be able to prevent some of this premature mortality,” Qian said in a statement.
The study then factored out other potential causes for a higher risk of dying, such as drinking and existing medical conditions. Its final inference was: “
It finally inferred that, “Compared to individuals who had zero to one favorable sleep factors, those who had all five were 30 per cent less likely to die for any reason, 21 per cent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease, 19 per cent less likely to die from cancer, and 40 per cent less likely to die of causes other than heart disease or cancer”.
As to why women do not benefit as much as men from healthy sleeping habits, is perhaps the subject of another study.
Also read: Study suggests how human body can predict mealtimes