Can you actually get too much sleep?

After analyzing 16 sleep studies, Professor Franco Cappuccio discovered that sleeping too little or too much can raise your mortality! As reported by BBC and The Daily Beast, the studies showed that sleeping more than eight hours or less than six hours each night have an increased mortality risk than if they had slept for between six and eight hours. But which is worse? It turns out that the people who sleep for too long carry a 30 percent increase in the risk of death over people those whose sleep falls in the middle ground. On the low side, they found a 12 percent increase.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, there is no way to pinpoint the exact amount of sleep a person needs, but Cappuccio’s analysis revealed that the risks of too much sleep are similar to the risks of too much alcohol. So how much should you sleep to avoid the risks? The National Sleep Foundation provides this chart to help answer this question.

The amount of sleep you should get depends on several factors, but age of life seems to be the most important one. This is because age relates to the stage of life that you are in, which, depending on what it is, influences your lifestyle with factors like stress and emotional states, as well as physical health and needs.

This chart defines what the National Sleep Foundation calls a recommended “Rule of Thumb” for the amount of sleep, but it still does depend on the individual. The foundation implores that individuals ask themselves the following questions to figure out how much sleep they really need:

• Are you productive, healthy and happy on seven hours of sleep? Or does it take you nine hours of quality ZZZs to get you into high gear?
• Do you have health issues such as being overweight? Are you at risk for any disease?
• Are you experiencing sleep problems ?
• Do you depend on caffeine to get you through the day?
• Do you feel sleepy when driving ?

Answering these questions will help you to decide what amount of sleep is best for you. Healthy sleep is one of the most important factors in living a healthy life.

Protect yourself and live healthy by sleeping healthy!