More than 8 hours sleep each night is bad for you

Main Category: Sleep / Sleep Disorders / Insomnia
Article Date: 16 Apr 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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According to researchers, more than 8 hours sleep each night is bad for you. We have all known that too little sleep is bad for you, this study suggests that the opposite is also bad.

According to the researchers at the University of California, those who sleep 9-10 hours a night seem to have more problems, ranging from difficulty in falling asleep, staying asleep, plus a whole load of other problems.

It seems that those who sleep eight hours have the least problems. Those who sleep 7 hours each night also had problems falling asleep and waking up feeling full of beans.

Previous studies have focussed on too little sleep. Some previous studies have suggested that too little sleep (less than 7 hours each night) reduces your life expectancy.

In this study, 1004 adults had to answer a sleep questionnaire. The questions asked how many hours they slept each night (it was an ongoing questionnaire), whether they found it easy to fall asleep, did they wake during the night, did they wake up early in the morning and could they not get back to sleep again, did they suffer from fatigue during the day.

Those who slept too much were more likely to experience all the problems on the questionnaire than those who slept eight hours each night.

One of the researchers said that people who sleep too much find it hard to rest at night because they spend too much time in bed. He suggested one way to get rid of insomnia is to spend less time in bed.

He suggested that there might be a link between sleeping long hours and depression.