Sleeping Too Much? Experts Warn Irregular Sleep May Trigger 172 Dangerous Diseases

Disrupted sleep rhythms were linked to 37% of Parkinson’s risk, 36% of Type 2 diabetes risk and 22% of acute kidney failure risk.

Getting just the right amount of sleep is crucial for overall well-being. And while previous studies have warned that too much sleep could lead to several health problems, such as heart disease, depression, and even untimely deaths, a new study has proven otherwise.

Let’s examine what researchers have found and why it’s time to change the way we look at sleep and health.

The study, which is now published in the Health Data Science, revealed that the real underlying issue may not be the amount of sleep but how inaccurately we report it. Participants who claimed to have slept more than eight hours were getting six hours or less sleep. And this is why these “false long sleepers” may have led to a misleading association between sleep and health in previous studies, which heavily relied on self-reported sleep.

90,000 Sleeping Patterns

Dr. Qing Chen from China’s Third Military Medical University, who led the study, along with his team, monitored nearly 90,000 adults for over seven years.

During the timeline, participants were equipped with fitness trackers that provided accurate data on their sleeping patterns, which allowed researchers to closely monitor their long-term health.

Accelerometers Tracked Participants’ Sleep

Researchers used accelerometers from the UK Biobank for accurate results that gave information on:

Nocturnal sleep duration and onset timing,
Sleep rhythm (relative amplitude and interdaily stability),
Sleep fragmentation (sleep efficiency and waking numbers).

“In the UKB, we saw that nearly a quarter of the self-reported long sleepers actually slept no more than 6 h when estimated by objective measurement. Subjective recall of sleep traits, especially sleep duration, has long been suspected to bear systematic error,” the study states.

Result

After a 6.8-year follow-up, the data led to the conclusion that irregular schedules, poor consistency, and fragmented rest were linked to 172 diseases, including major chronic conditions.

And disrupted sleep rhythms were linked to 37% of Parkinson’s risk, 36% of Type 2 diabetes risk and 22% of acute kidney failure risk.

Individuals with highly disrupted sleep rhythms were also warned of a three times higher risk of age-related frailty and double risk of developing gangrene, where a human body tissue dies because of a lack of blood supply.

Follow TheHealthSite.com for all the latest health news and developments from around the world.