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Getting less than six hours sleep a night can lead to an early grave, UK and Italian researchers have warned.

They said people regularly having such little sleep were 12% more likely to die over a 25-year period than those who got an “ideal” six to eight hours.

They also found an association between sleeping for more than nine hours and early death, although that much sleep may merely be a marker of ill health.

Sleep journal reports the findings, based on 1.5m people in 16 studies.

The study looked at the relationship between sleep and mortality by reviewing earlier studies from the UK, US and European and East Asian countries.

Premature death from all causes was linked to getting either too little or too much sleep outside of the “ideal” six to eight hours per night.

But while a lack of sleep may be a direct cause of ill health, ultimately leading to an earlier death, too much sleep may merely be a marker of ill health already, the UK and Italian researchers believe.

Time pressures

Professor Francesco Cappuccio, leader of the Sleep, Health and Society Programme at the UK’s University of Warwick, said: “Modern society has seen a gradual reduction in the average amount of sleep people take and this pattern is more common amongst full-time workers, suggesting that it may be due to societal pressures for longer working hours and more shift-work.

“On the other hand, the deterioration of our health status is often accompanied by an extension of our sleeping time.”

Five hours is insufficient for most people Sleep expert Professor Jim Horne

If the link between a lack of sleep and death is truly causal, it would equate to over 6.3 million attributable deaths in the UK in people over 16 years of age.

Prof Cappuccio said more work was needed to understand exactly why sleep seemed to be so important for good health.

Professor Jim Horne, of the Loughborough Sleep Research Centre, said other factors may be involved rather than sleep per se.

“Sleep is just a litmus paper to physical and mental health. Sleep is affected by many diseases and conditions, including depression,” he said.

And getting improved sleep may not make someone better or live longer, he said.

“But having less than five hours a night suggests something is probably not right.

“Five hours is insufficient for most people and being drowsy in the day increases your risk of having an accident if driving or operating dangerous machinery.”

There appears to be a link between working nightshifts and sleep problems, especially among workers in their 30s and 40s, according to a study published in the April edition of Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the official journal of ACOEM (American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine).

As younger workers with sleep problems are more likely to leave their jobs, the sleep problems do not appear to worsen with time, the study reports. This study was led by Philip Tucker, Ph.D., of Swansea University, Swansea, Wales, U.K.

Using a large database employment database, the investigators studied the relationship between shiftwork and sleep problems in workers of different ages and over various lengths of time. As seen in previous studies, shiftworkers had a higher rate of sleep problems compared to dayworkers. Shiftwork was specifically related to waking up too early rather than other types of sleep problems.

The effects were most apparent in the early to middle years of working life-workers in their 30s and 40s. Former shiftworkers had more sleep problems than those who had never done shiftwork. However, more years of shiftwork did not lead to greater sleep problems. Instead, workers who gave up shiftwork seemed to be a “self-selected” group who tended to have more problems with shiftwork.

The study bears out the findings and conclusions unveiled in previous studies regarding a link between shiftwork and sleep problems, while lending new insights into the course of those problems over time. Sleep problems seem to be a “reversible consequence” of shiftwork-although it may take awhile after giving up shiftwork before sleep returns to normal.

Video games ‘have mild effect on male teen’s sleep‘ (Getty Images)

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Playing a video game before bedtime has only a mild effect on the sleep of older male teens, a new study suggests.

Results show that after playing a stimulating video game it took adolescents a median of 7.5 minutes to fall asleep, which was only slightly longer than the three minutes it took them to fall asleep after passively watching a documentary on DVD. Although no participants fell asleep while playing the video game, almost one-third of them fell asleep while watching the DVD. Subjective sleepiness after playing the video game was only slightly lower than after watching the DVD, and playing the video game was associated with a small increase in cognitive alertness. However, no significant differences in physiologic arousal or sleep architecture were found between testing conditions.

“Initially we were surprised that playing the violent video game did not lead to a much longer time taken to fall asleep,” said research supervisor Michael Gradisar, PhD, senior lecturer in clinical child psychology at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia. “Although the scientific literature is sparse when it comes to measuring sleep latency associated with playing video games, anecdotally a lot of people report difficulty falling asleep after playing video games at night.”

The study involved thirteen male students between 14 and 18 years of age who were good sleepers, normally falling asleep in less than 15 minutes. They were “evening types” who did not have excessive daytime sleepiness and had no identifiable sleep disorders. Participants completed a seven-day sleep diary for the week prior to their initial testing night. This information was used for the testing conditions so that participants attempted to sleep at their usual bedtime.

The study was conducted at the Flinders University Sleep Laboratory, where participants sat in bed beneath the covers with electrodes attached and lights dimmed for both testing conditions.

The study appears in the April 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine .

Not getting enough sleep does more damage than just leaving you with puffy eyes. It can cause fat to accumulate around your organs – more dangerous, researchers say, than those pesky love handles and jiggly thighs.

A new study by researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine reveals how extremes of sleep – both too much and too little – can be hazardous to your health – especially for young minority women, a group most affected by obesity and chronic metabolic disease. The findings also indicate that there’s more to “fat” than what we choose to eat – social factors such as the need to work three jobs in a bad economy – could be causing dangerous fat deposition around vital organs.

“We put a lot of stock in diet,” said Kristen G. Hairston, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor of endocrinology and metabolism and lead author on the study. “But this study brings up some interesting questions about the way we live. We may need to start looking at other behaviors – besides daily food choices – that could be contributing to the obesity epidemic in younger age groups.”

In individuals under 40, the study showed a clear association between averaging five hours or less of sleep each night and large increases in visceral fat, or fat around the organs. Of the study participants under 40, Hispanic men and black women were the largest groups to report getting such little sleep.

Short sleep has become more common in the United States and minorities are disproportionately affected, said Hairston, an affiliate of the Maya Angelou Center for Health Equity, part of the School of Medicine. They are also more prone to metabolic conditions, including increased rates of obesity, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. The study suggests that part of the explanation for higher rates of metabolic disease in this population may lie in the association between sleep duration and fat deposition.

But sleeping the day away won’t do much to better one’s health, either. The researchers found that getting more than eight hours of sleep on average per night has a similar – though less pronounced – affect and is a problem most commonly seen in Hispanic women of all ages.

Surprisingly, the connection between extremes of sleep and accumulation of visceral fat was seen only in patients under 40, Hairston said.

“We don’t really know yet why this wasn’t seen in participants over 40, but it was clear that, in individuals under 40, it is worse to get five or less hours of sleep on average each night than it is to get eight or more hours,” Hairston said. “However, both may be detrimental and, in general, people should aim for six to eight hours of sleep each night.”

The study appears in the March issue of Sleep, the journal of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, LLC.

The study raised important social questions for researchers, Hairston said, such as why so little sleep is such a problem in black women under age 40 and what circumstances may be contributing to their sleep patterns and likely to obesity and chronic disease development?

“This was certainly just a starting point,” Hairston said. “We definitely know that a relationship exists between sleep and obesity. Now we need to know how this relationship can be modified.”

Hairston added that it will be important for future obesity research to consider sleep patterns and the effect they can have on outcomes. Until the connection is understood, physicians should consider gathering information about sleep patterns just as they do other vital information when seeing patients. This information is especially relevant when treating patients about to make or in the middle of life transitions, such as college, marriage and childbearing, because such times are often associated with sleep deprivation in younger years.

“That information may help a physician put into context other issues going on in the patient’s life which may be affecting their overall health,” Hairston said.

Coresearchers on the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, were Donald W. Bowden, Ph.D., and Lynne E. Wagenknecht, Dr.P.H., both of the School of Medicine, Michael Bryer-Ash, of the University of Oklahoma School of Health Sciences, Jill M. Norris, M.P.H., Ph.D., of the University of Colorado School of Health Sciences, and Steven Haffner, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.