5 Hours Or Less Of Sleep Increases Risk Of Chronic Disease: Study

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Sleeping for five hours or less a night if you’re age 50 or older could increase your risk of getting two or more chronic diseases as you age, research has found.

A passenger sleeps as she rides an Amtrak train from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 18, 2015. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)

The study was published on Oct. 18 in the journal PLOS Medicine.

Researchers from University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom tracked the health and sleep duration of 7,864 men and women who were employed in the London offices of the British civil service over 30 years and who had no chronic disease at age 50.

Self-reported sleep duration was measured six times between 1985 and 2016, and data on sleep duration was extracted at ages 50, 60, and 70. Researchers looked at the data and examined its association with incident multimorbidity over 25 years of follow-up.

Incident multimorbidity is defined by researchers as having two or more of 13 chronic diseases, including diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and kidney disease.

The study found that those who slept five hours or less around the age of 50 were 20 percent more likely to have been diagnosed with a chronic disease and 40 percent more likely to be diagnosed with two or more chronic diseases over 25 years, than those who slept seven hours a night.

Additionally, sleeping for five hours or less at the age of 50, 60, and 70 was linked to a 30 to 40 percent increased risk of two or more chronic diseases when compared with those who slept for up to seven hours.

Woman pretending to sleep for picture (Leszek Glasner/Shutterstock)

Americans Not Getting Enough Sleep

Researchers also found that a sleep duration of five hours or less at age 50 was associated with a 25 percent increased risk of death over the 25 years of follow-up, which they attributed to the increased risk of chronic disease.

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