Lack of sleep can age you prematurely

Being sleep deprived can make you feel several years older than you actually are.

how old someone feels, or subjective age; associated with a variety of physical and mental health outcomesespecially depression. “Age is more than just a perception,” he says Leonie Balter At Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. “We know that people who feel younger than their actual age are healthier and live longer.”

Considering the importance of sleep to our mental and physical health, Balter and John AxelsonAt Karolinska Institutet, we also decided to investigate whether it affects our subjective age.

They surveyed 429 people between the ages of 18 and 70 about how old they felt and how much sleep they had gotten in the past 30 days.

The researchers found that reporting sleep deprivation was associated with participants feeling older than their actual age, with consecutive days of sleep deprivation making participants feel older by an average of 0.23 years. was found to increase. In contrast, those who reported getting enough sleep over a 30-day period were, on average, 5.81 years younger than their chronological age.

In the second half of the study, the pair recruited an additional 186 people. These participants were asked to aim for 9 hours of sleep over two consecutive nights over a two-week period, which was recorded via a sleep log and sleep tracking wrist device. They were then told to limit their sleep to four hours for two consecutive nights.

After this period of sleep restriction, subjects reported feeling on average 4.44 years older than their age, whereas under the 9-hour sleep condition they reported feeling 0.24 years younger. Compared to those who felt the least fatigued, those who felt the most fatigue reported feeling about 10 years older.

The findings show that sleep is an important indicator of how old some people feel, and that it is linked to our health, Balter says. “If you protect your sleep, you'll feel younger,” she says.