Poor sleep increases the risk of death, shows research
From the results, Prof Schantz said people who are more likely to have frequent sleep disturbances are older
What you need to know:
- This risk is more aggravated among people with type 2 diabetes
- Study showed that patients with diabetes had a 67 per cent increased risk of mortality
A healthy adult should sleep for at least seven or more hours per night.
However, not all adults are able to achieve this level of sleep due to health and economic factors.
Although denying yourself adequate sleep might seem negligible, lack of sleep could lead you to your death.
According to a new study on sleeping patterns and the health effect of failing to sleep adequately, people who have trouble sleeping are at a higher risk of dying earlier than those who get enough sleep. This risk is more aggravated among people with type 2 diabetes.
This study was conducted by scientists from the University of Surrey in a nine-year period, and involved over 500,000 middle-aged people in the UK.
The study showed that patients with diabetes had a 67 per cent increased risk of mortality. This increased to nearly 90 per cent when diabetes was combined with frequent sleep problems.
“The link between the risk of death, diabetes and sleep problems is particularly prominent among patients with type 2 diabetes. This means that disease management for diabetes should extensively focus on sleep disorders as well,” said Prof Malcom von Schantz, a professor of chronobiology who led the team of scientists.
Sleep disturbances
The findings were published in the Journal of Sleep Research.
From the results, Prof Schantz said people who are more likely to have frequent sleep disturbances are older and have a higher body mass index.
They are also more likely to be female than male, have a previous history with smoking, and currently have depression and diabetes.
Prof Kristen Knutson, who took part in analysing the data, noted that other than early death, sleep deprivation was also associated with heart disease, obesity, depression and cancer.
In the study, Prof Schantz and his team sought to distinguish between sleep disorders such as insomnia and sleep deprivation. Insomnia was classified as the inability to attain sleep despite having the time to sleep.
Deprivation, on the other hand, was classified as the deliberate lack of time to sleep.
