Sleeping for longer periods of time is potentially more unhealthy than sleeping for too little, according to Medical News Today.
Smeeping longer or less than 7–8 hours per night could be bad for your health, with too much sleep actually being worse than too little, say researchers. An analysis of data taken from many different studies covering more than 3 million people found that self-reported sleep duration outside of 7–8 hours each night is linked to a higher risk of death and cardiovascular diseases.
This study was done by scientists at Keele University in the United Kingdom, and had now been published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The researchers found a “J-shaped” relationship between the duration of sleep and deaths. The same relationship was observed with incidents of cardiovascular illness.
The authors stated that their findings suggest that sleeping for more than 7–8 hours “may be associated with a moderate degree of harm” compared with sleeping less. The J-shaped relationship showed that the size of the risk rose in line with a greater duration of sleep. Sleeping for 9 hours, for example, carried a 14 percent higher risk of death, while 10-hour sleeps carried a 30 percent higher risk.
Their results also showed that poor-quality sleep was linked to a 44 percent higher risk of coronary heart disease. “Our study,” said lead study author Dr. Chun Shing Kwok, a clinical lecturer in cardiology at Keele University, “has an important public health impact in that it shows that excessive sleep is a marker of elevated cardiovascular risk.”