Our Worst Fears: Too Much Sleep Is Bad For Your Health
Late nights, early mornings, Saturday morning comes around and you know it's time to catch up on sleep. Sound familiar? Now, new research suggests if you go too hard on the snoozing, it might be detrimental to your heath.
According to a new study published in the journal BMC Public Health, sleeping more than 10 hours a week could be linked to obesity.
The report, conducted by the Seoul National University College of Medicine analysed data from 133,608 Korean men and women aged between 40 and 69 years old over a nine-year period. They were then placed into four categories: those who slept less than six hours a night, between six and eight hours, between eight and 10 hours or more than 10 hours.
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As expected, men who who slept the least were more likely to develop metabolic syndrome (a term that refers to a number of conditions, including increased blood sugar levels, high cholesterol levels and high blood pressure). Meanwhile, both genders were at risk of increased body fat later in life.
The biggest surprise? Sleeping more than 10 hours a night the increased risk of metabolic syndrome in all participants.
“This is the largest study examining a dose-response association between sleep duration and metabolic syndrome and its components separately for men and women,” says lead author of the study, Claire E. Kim.
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“We observed a potential gender difference between sleep duration and metabolic syndrome, with an association between metabolic syndrome and long sleep in women and metabolic syndrome and short sleep in men.”
This is not the news we wanted to wake up to.
