October 1, 2010

Are you sleeping too much?

Well if I were a 50-81 year old woman that might be true.

A new study in the journal Sleep Medicine found that women who sleep between 5 and 6.5 hrs a night were more likely to live longer. Researchers at UC San Diego followed 459 women ranging in ages 50-81 to figure out if sleep duration had anything to do with mortality. The original research was conducted between 1995 and 1999 and headed by Daniel F. Kripke, MD, professor emeritus of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine. Fourteen years later, he looked up his original participants to see who was alive.

From ScienceBlog, here's a quote:

"The surprise was that when sleep was measured objectively, the best survival was observed among women who slept 5 to 6.5 hours,” Kripke said. “Women who slept less than five hours a night or more than 6.5 hours were less likely to be alive at the 14-year follow-up.”


Okay so here's the problem, the headline at ScienceBlogs reads, "Women’s study finds longevity means getting just enough sleep."

But based on the small bit of information provided by the ScienceBlogs article, this study was specifically about women between the ages of 50-81. Secondly, if you're 81 years old, whether you sleep 10h or 5 h, my guess is that in 14 years (when you are 94) its unlikely you'll be alive anyway. In this study 86 women died. Unfortunately, I can't get access to the original scientific article so I can't assess what were the characteristics of these women? Also is it actually sleep or is it a specific kind of rest?

I realize that science news tries to sell itself because it is a business, but in the process it trades off the facts. One major consequence of exaggerated or inaccurate science reporting that is the public's perception of science and scientists is often mistrustful.

Need I mention ants?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd be interested to hear if they addressed whether a desire to sleep less was just correlated with overall better health, higher levels of activity, or an absence of depression. In that case, longevity and sleeping less would both be results of other overarching physiological traits.

I'm guessing they did address this, but inevitably the headline just paints it as "sleep less to live longer".

queerscientist said...

I have access to the article--would you like me to send it to you?

unknown said...

@Queerscientist
Thanks. But I'll pass I'm just way too loaded down with things to read to add one more thing to the pile.

The liability of a brown voice.

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