07.03.2023
Researchers from America concluded that men benefit from healthy sleep more than women, as it may extend their life by nearly five years, and females by only about two and a half years. What is the scientific explanation for this difference?
About a third of Germans suffer from sleep problems and disorders, and one in ten Germans suffers from a sleep disorder that requires medical treatment, according to the German Society for Sleep Research and Medicine (DGSM). The problem of not getting enough sleep at night may have more far-reaching consequences for human health than just feeling tired and unwell the next morning.
Chronic lack of sleep increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart attack, diabetes, dementia, and mental disorders. Not only the duration of sleep, but its quality also plays a role, according to a study conducted by American scientists, which will soon be presented at the American College of Cardiology (ACC) conference with the World Heart Federation (WHF).
The researchers concluded that men benefit from healthy sleep more than women, as it may extend their life by nearly five years, and females by about two and a half years.
The researchers evaluated data on more than 170,000 then-50-year-olds between 2013 and 2018. Everyone participated in a survey conducted by the US Agency for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Participants answered questions about sleep habits and sleep in general. After that, the scientists noted that nearly 8,700 study participants had died during that period, which allowed them to establish a link between the cause of death and the quality of sleep.
About a third (30 percent) of deaths were due to cancer, 24 percent due to cardiovascular disease, and 46 percent from other causes.
Hours of sleep alone do not guarantee quality!
The researchers evaluated five different measures of sleep quality:
The ideal sleep duration is seven to eight hours per night.
Difficulty sleeping should not be more than twice a week. Suffering from insomnia twice a week at most.
Do not use sleeping pills.
A person’s feeling of relief after waking up may last at least five days a week.
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The researchers also included other factors that could increase the risk of death in their study – such as poor socioeconomic status, smoking, alcohol consumption and other illnesses.
Participants who met all five criteria for good sleep had an average life expectancy of 4.7 years longer for men and 2.4 years longer for women than those who did not meet all five criteria or at least only one.
“We found a clear relationship between sleep duration and health,” said Frank Kian of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “The better a person sleeps, the lower the death rate from cardiovascular disease.”
And the doctor participating in the study continued in a press release: “I think that these results confirm that simply getting enough hours of sleep is not enough.
Kian said that if people sleep perfectly, they are likely to live longer. “If we can improve sleep in general, we may be able to partially prevent premature deaths.”
But this study needs more research into why men who sleep well may live twice as long as women who sleep well.
A.M./ A.H