For example, researchers have found that people who sleep five hours or less have a 30 percent higher risk of developing chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, depression, liver disease, and dementia than the age of 50. Seventy-year-olds who sleep little are at 40% more likely to develop chronic diseases than their peers who sleep seven to eight hours.
Therefore, researchers recommend sleeping seven to eight hours a night. They discovered no negative results in people who slept more than eight hours. But since this was only a small group, the researchers did not draw any scientific conclusions from this.
The results of the research were published on Tuesday. For the study, a group of nearly eight thousand people were followed for 25 years. Their sleep and health were monitored every five years.
One caveat with the study is that only a third of the participants are women. The vast majority of the eight thousand people are white men. Participants will also be slightly healthier than the average Brit.
