How many hours of sleep will you live the longest?

It is common knowledge that you need to sleep well to live longer. But how many hours of sleep is the best? Stanford professor Seiji Nishino’s introduces two studies related to this.

In 2002, a research team from the University of California, along with insurance companies and the American Cancer Society, conducted a large-scale epidemiological study of 1.1 million people. Average sleep time was 7.5 hours. Of course, because it was average, there were people who slept 3-4 hours, and there were people who slept 9-10 hours.

The research team followed 1.1 million people and looked at their sleeping hours and mortality rates. The survey found that those who slept about 7 hours lived the longest. The mortality rate of those who slept only 3 hours was 1.3 times higher than those who slept 7 hours, and those who slept longer had a slightly higher mortality rate than those who slept 7 hours.

These results were found not only in the United States but also in Japan. A Nagoya University research team followed 100,000 people aged 44 to 79 in Japan and found that those who had the lowest mortality rate after 10 years were those who slept 7 hours a night. Less or more than this time, the relative mortality rate went up.

Of course, what should not be overlooked here is that the results of these studies are group averages. A group average does not provide any accurate description of an individual. In other words, there is no guarantee that you will live a long life if you must sleep for 7 hours. However, when there is no reference point, such a study can be an important reference.

A way to check the right amount of sleep for you is to go to sleep without an alarm on unscheduled holidays. It’s not just a day or two, but if you check your sleep time for several weeks, that time is your optimal sleep time. If you sleep less than that, you are suffering from sleep debt, which is not good for your health. However, if this kind of experiment is annoying, based on research, sleeping for 7 hours is a very reasonable choice. Of course, the story is different if you are a short sleeper. Short sleepers are people who can live a refreshing life with only 3-4 hours of sleep due to genetic factors.