“Long” sleepers who slumber more than eight hours a night
and “short” sleepers who get fewer than seven hours of shuteye
both report more sleep complaints than people who sleep in the “just
right” zone of seven to eight hours, say Michael A. Grandner, B.A.,
and Daniel F. Kripke, M.D., of the University of California, San Diego.
Their study appears in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.
“Although it is unclear why long and short sleepers should have
similar types of sleep complaints, these data challenge the assumption
that more than seven or eight hours of sleep is associated with increased
health and well-being,” Grandner says.
Scientists know a lot more about problems associated with lack of sleep
than they know about too much sleep, although some studies have shown a
correlation between too much sleep and an increased risk of death in certain
groups of people, according to Grandner and Kripke.
To find out if long sleepers have as many sleep complaints
as the sleep-deprived, the researchers used data from nearly 100 adults
interviewed in the National
Sleep Foundation’s 2001 Sleep in America Poll. The participants were
asked how many hours they slept on a typical workday, not including naps,
and whether they had any complaints about the quality of their sleep and
sleep’s effect on their daily activities.
Long sleepers reported more problems with falling asleep,
waking up during the night, awaking too early, feeling “unrefreshed” upon
waking up, and feeling sleepy during the day than those who slept seven
or eight
hours, the researchers found.
Sleep complaints were more common in both long and short sleepers than
in those who got seven to eight hours of sleep a night. Women were more
apt to be long sleepers than men were.
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
