The way you sleep has ties to 80 different diseases

Thomas Edison famously regarded sleep as a waste of good work hours, electing to snooze a mere three or four hours every night. Benjamin Franklin wasn’t much of a fan of it either, quipping in his famous almanac, “in the grave, will be sleeping enough.”

The rest of us mere mortals ought to know better, with study after study laying out the benefits of getting a solid night’s shut-eye whenever possible.

An analysis of just under 100,000 UK Biobank participants conducted by researchers from Peking University and Capital Medical University in Beijing has again found that those who get too little sleep each night face an increased risk of dozens of diseases.

Even among those who manage to go to bed at a reasonable hour, sleep quality was found to significantly affect personal health, suggesting that those who wake frequently may also have reasons for concern.

This suggests the nature, or “architecture”, of sleep you get is more important than simply an accumulation of naps throughout each day.

“While many previous studies have examined the association between sleep and risks of morbidity and mortality, most have primarily focused on sleep duration as measured by self-reported questionnaires,” the researchers behind the study claim in their recently published report.

This leaves plenty of room for optimistic interpretation of just how much sleep many get, while ignoring factors such as sleep fragmentation or durations of sleep stages.

Critical to healthy brain functioning is a dreaming state of unconsciousness called Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. Adults spend around 20 to 25% of every sleep block in this neurologically active state, which extends into longer periods through the morning hours.

The relationship between REM sleep, total sleep duration, and changes in our health is complex, especially since this overall architecture of slumber evolves as we age.

In an ideal world, researchers would hook up volunteers to a polysomnograph to collect objective data on eye and muscle movement and brain wave activity. This might be fine for a night or two to diagnose a sleep disorder, but gathering enough data on enough people to sift out long-term statistical correlations just isn’t feasible.

Fortunately, the UK Biobank features a subset of around 230,000 people who wore accelerometers on their wrists for a week, providing the next best thing to a sleep laboratory. The research team used this bank of information to compare health outcomes with the nightly tossing and turning of just under 100,000 sleeping participants.

Of the 1,049 conditions included in the study, 156 were associated with some variation in sleep architecture. Getting enough of that sweet, sweet dream sleep guarded against 83 different conditions, including cardiovascular diseases and various metabolic and psychiatric outcomes.

Getting plenty of light rest was found to be beneficial only if it was part of a long night’s sleep. Too much light snoozing each night was associated with a higher risk of poor mental health and problems with muscles and bones.

Finding that your sleep is broken up into too many smaller sessions was associated with metabolic and psychiatric disorders, suggesting continuity of shut-eye is just as important as getting enough hours spent in REM states.

The findings back up previous research on sleep and health, providing comprehensive evidence in support of getting the right kind of respite each night.

So turn off that screen, drink some warm milk, and count a few sheep. Whatever it takes. Your body will thank you for it later.

This research was published in PLOS.

Source: Scimex