Sleep really can be a healer. Getting around seven hours’ sleep every night reduces your chances of developing chronic problems such as type 2 diabetes and depression.
REM sleep—when the brain is at its most active—is especially healing. If your nightly sleep includes up to two hours of REM, you’re much less likely to suffer heart failure, dementia or Parkinson’s disease, and it protects against 83 diseases in total, say researchers at the Capital Medical University in China.
They tracked the sleep patterns and health of 95,559 volunteers in the UK Biobank survey. Their sleep was monitored for seven days, and their health was tracked for nearly nine years afterwards. Just 23 percent slept for six hours or more without interruption.
Six to eight hours uninterrupted sleep is the optimum to maintain good health, and those who regularly slept for five hours or less were more liable to develop a chronic health problem, the researchers said. Poor sleepers were also more likely to suffer from anxiety and use illegal substances.
The researchers point out that the study is observational, and poor sleep patterns don’t necessarily mean that someone will suffer from chronic health problems as a result. Nonetheless, achieving around seven hours of uninterrupted sleep a night is something we should all be aiming for, the researchers say.
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