• Posted February 28, 2025

Poor Sleep Endangering The Health of Two-Thirds of Americans

About two-thirds of Americans are getting too little or too much sleep, risking their health, a new study suggests.

In fact, people not getting the right amount of sleep – seven to nine hours a night – had a 29% increased risk of premature death from any cause, researchers reported Feb. 27 in JAMA Network Open.

“These findings provide new evidence that irregular sleep patterns over a 5-year period may increase the risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality,” the research team led by Kelsie Full, an assistant professor of epidemiology with Vanderbilt University Medical Center, concluded.

For the study, researchers analyzed sleep and health data on nearly 47,000 people 40 to 79. Participants entered the study between 2002 and 2009, and completed follow-up surveys between 2008 and 2013.

Researchers grouped all the participants based on their sleep “trajectory” -- differences between the sleep they reported at the start and then during follow-up.

For example, people on a “long-short” trajectory got too much sleep at the beginning and too little by the end, while “short-long” went the opposite way.

Overall, 66% of participants reported getting too much or too little sleep, results show.

Specific results for different sleep trajectories included:

• A 29% increased risk of death from any cause for short-long, 19% for long-short and 27% for long-long.

• A 22% increased risk of heart-related death for long-long, 32% for long-short, and 22% for short-long.

“Associations were stronger among White compared with Black adults and among adults with a household income $15,000 or greater compared with adults with household incomes less than $15,000,” researchers noted. “No differences were observed by sex.”

The study “highlights the importance of maintaining healthy sleep over time,” said an accompanying editorial written by Dayna Johnson, an associate professor of epidemiology with the Emory University School of Public Health.

“The finding that transitioning from short or long to healthy sleep duration is associated with increased mortality risk underscores the impact of irregular sleep on health,” Johnson wrote. “It also raises critical questions about the potential for recovery from insufficient sleep and the time required to reverse its effects on health outcomes.”

More information

The National Sleep Foundation has more on recommended amounts of sleep.

SOURCE: JAMA Network Open, Feb. 27, 2025