Are you sleeping too little or too much for healthy ageing?

By Roselyne Min Published on 15/05/2026 - 7:00 GMT+2 Share Comments Share Facebook Twitter Flipboard Send Reddit Linkedin Messenger Telegram VK Bluesky Threads Whatsapp

A large new study suggests that too little and too much sleep are linked to faster ageing and several diseases. How much sleep do we really need to avoid fast ageing?

Too few or too many hours of sleep may speed up ageing in the brain, heart, lungs, and immune system and be linked to several diseases, according to a new study.

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An international group of researchers analysed data collected from nearly half a million participants in the UK Biobank and found a clear pattern.

People who regularly slept for fewer than six hours or more than eight hours tended to show signs of faster ageing across the body.

The team used what they call “biological ageing clocks,” tools that estimate how many years a person ages faster or slower than their chronological age, using machine learning, based on biological data such as brain scans, blood proteins and chemical markers in the body.

As a result, researchers found a repeated U-shaped pattern. People sleeping in the middle range had the healthiest results, while those at either extreme showed greater biological ageing.

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The link was visible across organs such as the brain, lungs, liver, immune system, skin, and metabolism.

Short sleep was significantly associated with brain-related disorders such as depression and anxiety, as seen in other studies of sleep and mental health.

“The broad brain-body pattern is important because it tells us that sleep duration is a deeply embedded part of our entire physiology, with far-reaching implications across the body,” said Junhao Wen, lead author of the study and assistant professor of radiology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons in the United States.

Beyond the brain-related diseases, short sleep was also linked to other conditions, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, breathing conditions such as asthma, and digestive problems such as reflux.

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Long sleep was also linked to health problems, although researchers suggest it may sometimes reflect underlying illness rather than directly causing harm itself.

“Previous studies have found that sleep is largely linked to ageing and the pathological burden of the brain,” said Wen.

“Our study goes further and shows that too little and too much sleep are associated with faster aging in nearly every organ, supporting the idea that sleep is important in maintaining organ health within a coordinated brain-body network, including metabolic balance and a healthy immune system,” Wen added.

However, researchers warned that the study cannot prove sleep alone causes these changes. They also note that much of the sleep data came from people’s own reports, which can be less accurate than measuring sleep directly.

Researchers say more work is needed to understand whether poor sleep directly speeds up ageing, or whether underlying health problems may also affect sleep patterns.

They also call for future studies using more accurate sleep measurements and more diverse populations.

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