Sleep has a huge impact on our health & well-being. A busy lifestyle often prevents us from sleeping as much as possible. Insufficient sleep affects our mood, ability to concentrate and the risk of many diseases.
Sleeping more, but too much sleep is also unhealthy?
We asked 26 sleep research & neuroscience experts whether too much sleep is bad for you. 85% refused. This is what we found…
what is the data of sleep time and health?
There are many studies that look at the relationship between sleep time and various medical results.
Dr. Joe Caldwell, a neuropsychology expert in the US Naval Medical Research Unit, summarized the results of these papers: “The best sleep time is about 7 consecutive hours. Every hour below this number will cause other adverse health effects, and every hour over 7 hours will cause another adverse health effect.
These adverse health effects include many lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, heart disease & obesity. Combined with low physical activity, this is also associated with increased mortality.
It is important to remember that all this data is observational, that is, it is collected by observing people with different sleeping patterns & measuring their health results.
Now, There is no observational or experimental information. Where data shows that sleep time has increased experimentally, which links excessive sleep with mortality. In fact, the experimental results are the opposite.
Monica Haack, a sleep researcher at Harvard University, Ph.D., said: “Increasing normal sleep time will have a positive impact on many biological systems, including: Ex. Lower blood pressure, reduce pain & increase insulin sensitivity.
Sleeping and poor health
What is the connection between?
As shown above, observational data indicate that sleep longer than 7 hours is associated with a negative result.
Dr. Jamie Seitzer, a sleep researcher at Stanford University, said: “Explaining sleep as a problem of prolonged sleep is not good for you, because we don’t people who sleep often have bad outcomes. It might be that they are sleeping for long-period because there is something which is medically wrong that shows great sleep is good for fixing things.
Many experts agree that there may be other factors linking prolonged sleep with negative results, but it is not clear what these factors are.
Dr. William Killgore, an expert at the University of Arizona, said: “The most likely explanation related to prolonged sleep is that disease conditions lead to excessive sleep, pro-bably not the other way around. However, since there is no experimental evidence, this is still a chicken & egg problem.
How much sleep is good for health?
Fortunately, we have nothing to worry about excess sleep. Dr. James Ware, an expert at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said: “It’s impossible for a healthy person to overdose while sleeping. Instead, the person usually feels unwell in bed or when he gets up uncomfortable.
Everyone needs a different amount of sleep to work properly. Stanford University expert Dr. Vivienne Abad suggested: “For most adults, we recommend that you sleep 7-8 hours. The key message is to have enough sleep to ensure your health. The ability to remain alert & maintain function the whole day, especially after meals, is a good indicator of adequate of an hour of sleep.
Finally, you can use changes in sleep pattern to identify changes in health.
Dr. Killgore defines “If you find you need sleep more-than 7 hours to work Effective, or if the amount of sleep you need increases significantly, it may be worth discussing with your doctor. Excess sleep may not be hurting you, but it may telling you something else.
The takeaway
Too much sleep is unlikely to negatively impact on your health. On the other hand, if you sleep more than your normal sleep period, then it may be an indicator that you need to talk to your doctor.
Article based on 26 expert answers to this question: Is too much sleep bad for you?
