Around 8 percent of premature deaths are linked to longterm insomnia.
Even though the deaths may be attributed to known life-threatening conditions such as heart disease, poor sleep patterns could be the underlying cause, say researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston, USA.
The quality of the sleep also matters, they concluded after studying the health and sleeping habits of 172,321 people with an average age of 50 for more than four years. In that time, 8681 participants died.
Those who had all five healthy sleep patterns—sleeping for seven or eight hours; having difficulty getting to sleep on no more than two nights; having trouble staying asleep for no more than two nights; not using sleep medication, and feeling well rested after sleep five days a week—are much more likely to live longer.
Those who had all five qualities were 30 percent less likely to die prematurely, 21 percent less likely to die from heart disease, 19 percent less likely to die from cancer, and were 40 percent less likely to die from any other cause, compared to someone who didn’t have any of the sleep qualities.
Participants who scored all five sleep qualities had a life expectancy that was nearly five years longer than someone who scored zero or one.
