Forget beauty sleep, scientists say ‘consistently’ getting a good night’s rest can SLOW ageing
You already know how important it is to get a beauty sleep.
But scientists now say that a good night’s sleep not only makes you more beautiful, but also has anti-aging effects.
Researchers in the US, who tracked the sleep habits of more than 6,000 people, claim that those who stuck to a consistent sleep pattern were biologically younger.
Not sticking to a regular bedtime or sleep duration was linked to poorer health and an earlier grave.
The team suggested that disruptions to the body’s internal clock could accelerate the aging of the body’s cells and the onset of age-related diseases.
Researchers in the US, who tracked the sleep habits of more than 6,000 people, found that those who did not stick to a consistent sleep pattern had an older biological age
While chronological age is the number of years you have been alive, biological age refers to how old your cells and tissues are, based on their current state.
Biological aging can act as an indicator of how long a person will remain in good health and the risk of premature death, research has shown.
However, it is unclear what influence sleep has on biological aging.
The team from Augusta University in Georgia examined sleep data from 6,052 participants, average age 50, collected as part of the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
The group wore a sleep tracker for four to seven days, which collected data on sleep duration; variability (whether the time they went to bed changed each night); and irregularity (how the center of a person’s sleep differed each night).
It also provided data on catch-up sleep (differences in sleep duration between weekdays and the weekend) and social jet lag (how the midpoint varied in a person’s sleep between weekdays and the weekend).
Biological age was calculated by analyzing participants’ blood samples for signs of liver disease, kidney damage and diabetes, as well as high blood pressure and cholesterol.
Volunteers were also asked about their health, including their weight, whether they drank alcohol or smoked and their activity levels.
The results, published in the journal Sleep HealthResearch shows that about two-thirds of participants got seven to nine hours of sleep per night, while 16 percent got less than seven hours and 19 percent slept more than nine hours.
On average, participants’ bedtime changed by 60 minutes each night, while they got an extra 78 minutes of sleep on weekends.
The center of their sleep changed by an average of 42 minutes every night, and by 66 minutes on weekends, the results showed.
Those deviations in their daily sleep patterns – especially those with the largest differences in the time they went to bed each night and sleep duration during the week compared to the weekend – had the highest biological age, the results showed.
Those with the least rigid sleep schedule had a biological age up to nine months older than those who were the most consistent.
The researchers suggested that those who frequently change the time they go to bed and wake up are disrupting their circadian rhythm – their internal body clock – which may be the ‘primary mechanism’ that increases their biological age.
They pointed to animal studies showing that changes in the circadian rhythm accelerate the aging of the body’s cells and worsen age-related diseases.
However, they noted that further research is being done into their findings and the cause, as the study is observational. And those who struggle to get a good night’s sleep may already be unhealthy, which could increase their biological age.
The team said their study is the first to link changes in sleep habits to biological aging.
However, previous research has linked irregular sleep patterns to an increased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, poor heart health and cognitive impairment – all of which carry the risk of increasing biological age.