The Main Health Benefit of Sleep: Longevity

Everyone should know that the three pillars to good health are diet, exercise and sleep. Of these, though, sleep is most often overlooked and neglected as a key element of a healthy life. People are becoming increasingly aware that they need to eat healthily and exercise regularly, but not enough people realise the value of sleep as part of this mix.
There are numerous health benefits of good sleep, ranging from reduced stress and weight control to improved memory and concentration during the day. However, the greatest benefit and the one that most people are probably interested in is that healthy sleep habits can increase your life span.
There are two factors at work when it comes to the effects of sleep on your life expectancy. The first factor is sleep duration, and the second is sleep quality. Sleep duration refers to the length of time that you tend to sleep for most nights, whilst sleep quality includes elements such as disruption to your sleep and how deeply you sleep.
There have been several major scientific studies in this area. The most significant was a very long term study contacted on several thousand pairs of twins. Twins are ideal for a lot of scientific research as they offer a way to control for other factors to some extent, allowing researchers to focus on the one they're interested in.
In this case, the interesting factor was the relationship between sleep and longevity. The twins in the study were asked questions about their average sleep duration and sleep quality, and this was then compared to their longevity over the long term. Self-reporting studies like this aren't as reliable as research that relies on objective measurement, but this can be compensated for by using a large number of participants, as this study did.
Once the results of the study were compiled and analysed, they found a strong link between sleep and longevity. However, this link was not as simple as many people might expect it to be. The research showed that whilst sleep quality correlates quite directly with the length of your life, the relationship with sleep duration isn't so simple.
According to the study, it appears that that there is a golden zone for the ideal amount of sleep that will increase your life expectancy. As you might expect, getting too little sleeping has a negative impact on life expectancy. But getting too much sleep can also have a bad effect. So the advice from the research is to get between seven and nine hours of sleep a night to increase your life expectancy.

Posted in: Sleep Snoring