Between the ages of 40 and 75, the ideal sleep duration would be seven hours, according to a study published April 28 in Nature Aging. Scientists have examined the medical data of nearly 500,000 adults. Their conclusion: sleeping too much or too little has an impact on our health.
Lack of sleep affects the brain, heart and mood. And while it may seem less obvious, sleeping too much isn’t ideal either.
In this study, people who slept too much or too little were slower during cognitive tests and managed to concentrate for less time. They also had symptoms of anxiety and depression.
“Unrecoverable Sleep”
A large study conducted in Lausanne, HypnoLaus, had come to the same observations. José Haba Rubio, neurologist at the CHUV Sleep Center, evokes a “U” curve.
“People who sleep too little or those who sleep too much are more at risk. Lack of sleep stresses the body. And for people who sleep too much, we don’t have a very clear explanation yet. they do it because their sleep is not restorative. In this case, it would be necessary to look for the diseases which can explain this behavior”, he explains Tuesday in La Matinale.
Signal of a possible pathology
Even if sleep changes with age, the Lausanne study was also able to show that aging is not the cause in itself of poor sleep.
“If we exclude from these analyzes the subjects who have sleeping sickness, there is ultimately no reason to have poor sleep with age. So even if sleep becomes more fragile, it is not bad sleep is inevitable. If really, with age, you feel tired during the day, you should probably consult. There is probably a disease behind it that can be treated to improve the quality of sleep”, indicates José Haba Rubio.
The seven hours suggested by this new Sino-American study is a kind of indicator. Sleeping much more or much less would be the signal of a possible pathology.
Alexandra Richard/gma
