There are 4 types of sleepers and one of them has a greater risk of developing life-threatening chronic diseases, researchers suggest.
We spend roughly a third of our lives sleeping. Sleep is crucial for our health since it allows the body to recover physically, psychologically and intellectually. It is perfectly established that sleep is crucial for many biological functions such as memory, learning, metabolism, immunity, etc. Conversely, poor sleep habits are harmful to the body and could even be associated with the long term to chronic diseases, suggest researchers from the College of Health and Human Development at Penn State in a new American study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.
To achieve this discovery, Researchers surveyed 3,700 adults over nearly 15 years who were asked to self-evaluate their sleep habits (regularity and duration of sleep, perceived satisfaction with their sleep and daytime alertness) and declare whether they had one or more illnesses chronicles at two moments spaced approximately 10 years apart. The researchers then highlighted 4 distinct types of sleepers:
- Good sleepers, characterized by optimal sleep habits across all data points (reference profile)
- Weekend catch-up sleepers, characterized by irregular sleep, particularly short average sleep duration during the week, but longer sleep times on weekends or non-working days.
- Insomniac sleepers, characterized by sleep problems related to clinical symptoms of insomnia, including short sleep duration, high daytime fatigue, and long time to fall asleep.
- Good sleepers who take frequent naps during the day. Generally, this is the profile of elderly people and retirees.
The “insomniac sleeper” profile was the worst for health because it was linked to an increase in the number of chronic diseases of +81% compared to the “good sleeper” profile. In detail, they had an increased risk of +72% (in the first monitoring period, i.e. between 2004 and 2006) and +188% (in the second monitoring period, i.e. between 2013 and 2017) of the appearance of 4 types of illness: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer or depression. The “sleeper who naps” profile had a greater risk of developing diabetes or cancer, but not depression or cardiovascular disease. The “sleeper who catches up on sleep on weekends” profile was not associated with the development of chronic diseases.
“The results may suggest that it is very difficult to change our sleep habits because sleep health is an integral part of our overall lifestyle and people still do not know the importance of their sleep and behaviors related to it. sleep health, regrets the lead author of the study in a statement. However, sleep is something that can be changed.” According to them, more efforts must be made to raise public awareness about good sleep health. There are sleep hygiene behaviors people could adopt to improve their sleep, such as not using a cell phone in bed, exercising regularly and avoiding caffeine in the late afternoon, they recommend .