You know how you've always heard that you should get at least eight hours of sleep a night? Forget it. The Wall Street Journal reports that a series of studies have found that not only is seven the number of hours we want to strive for, but also that getting eight hours or more could actually be unhealthy. Obviously you knew oversleeping isn't a good thing, but getting overzealous with your Z's is worse than you think.
In one particular study, Dr. Daniel F. Kripke at the University of California San Diego found that participants whose sleep ranged from 6.5 hours to 7.4 hours had lower mortality rates than those with shorter or longer sleeps. In a later study, Dr. Kripke even found evidence that we need less sleep as we get older: After testing 450 elderly women, he found that those who slept fewer than five hours and more than 6.5 hours had higher mortality rates.
Higher mortality rates are scary enough, but there are plenty of other worrying side effects of oversleeping, including diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. Fortunately, cognitive function and memory issues (which are common results of too little sleep) did not change with too much sleep, but if those other serious risks aren'’t enough to scare you into setting your alarm, we’'re not sure what will.
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