Beware of nights that are too short, especially for those who, from the age of 50, do not sleep more than five hours a night. We know that as we get older, the quality of sleep is less good, and that deep sleep decreases sharply, that people wake up earlier, but even in their fifties and later, getting enough sleep remains a way to protect their health.
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This team of researchers from Inserm and the University of Paris Cité has established that from the age of 50, short nights of five hours or less increase the risk of developing a first chronic disease by 20%. These too short nights also increase by 20 to 40% the risk of developing several chronic diseases at the same time, this is called multimorbidity.
Researchers have compiled a list of 13 diseases, including: cardiovascular disease, cancer, kidney disease, liver disease, diabetes, neurological disorders, risk of depression, and even osteoarthritis. . To obtain these results of the correlation between sleep and chronic diseases, the researchers analyzed data from a panel of 7,000 Britons, whose sleep and health were scrutinized by questionnaires and medical examinations, for 35 years.
The link between all these diseases and lack of sleep is that sleep plays a major role in physical recovery, energy restoration, hormone secretions and the elimination of waste and toxins in the body. If the sleep cycles are truncated, this regulation does not take place completely and our immune system pays the price.
“Even when you get older, getting enough sleep is therefore just as necessary as eating when you are hungry,” recalls Séverine Sabia, Inserm researcher and first author of the study. A reminder which is also useful at all ages because according to Public Health France. French adults have lost on average between an hour and an hour and a half of sleep in the space of 50 years, mainly because of noise and the use of screens in the evening.