Oversleep and Under sleep are damaging
05-03-2014
We are the sleep experts, our aim is to help all of our customers have the best possible night’s sleep every night. One area of interest to us is sleep length. It is obvious that not getting enough sleep is bad for you, you only need to have one bad night’s sleep to see the range of consequences, from irritability and exhaustion to coordination and memory issues, but did you know that not only is under sleeping bad, but so is oversleeping? Yes, you can oversleep and while the consequences may not be as obvious or quick as under sleeping they are very real.
While there is no hard and fast ‘number’ of hours a person needs to sleep each and every night, and it should be stated that each and every person is different and what is healthy for one person may be unhealthy for another and vice versa, research shows that there is a healthy zone of sleep length (roughly between 6-9 hours each night) which is bordered by two less healthy zones. This article outlines the situation. http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1112963357/sleep-bad-for-your-health-100113/
The article refers to a recent study that found that out of its 54,000 participants, who were all 45-years-old or older, that 64 percent of these people were classified as optimal sleepers, getting between seven to nine hours of sleep a night, a worryingly large group showed very unhealthy sleep habits.
The study was done by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (or CDC) and found that while 31% of the remaining correspondents were not getting as much sleep as they should be, just over 4% were getting more sleep than they needed.
While those who were getting less than the optimal amount of sleep every night would suffer from the huge range of consequences that under sleeping causes, from obesity and memory recall troubles through to depression and mood swings, those that overslept actually face something even more concerning: a shortened life span.
Yes, those who sleep for more than 8 hours a night or more (and for less than 6) will live shorter lives. In one of the biggest sleep surveys of all time, that spanned a six years of more and looked at more than one million adults ages 30 to 102, a group of researchers found that people who sleep longer have are more likely to die young. This article outlines the findings of the study findings, explaining that people who sleep 8 hours or more, or less than 4 hours a night, were shown to have a significantly increased death rate compared to those who averaged 6 to 7 hours.
So while the impacts of under sleeping are quite well known, the consequences of oversleeping are even more alarming. If you are not sleeping enough or are sleeping too much then it is advised that you talk to an expert, though you should also listen to your own body, some people can survive and thrive on 4 to 5 hours a night, others cannot operate with any less than 8 or 9.
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