So perhaps I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was to learn from a study referenced in gut health company ZOE’s podcast that sleep duration might not be the most important factor for a long life. And it turns out that a 2024 paper listed sleep regularity as a “stronger predictor of mortality” than even sleep duration. The scientists acknowledged that both way too much and way too little sleep are linked to an increased risk of premature death. This was more strongly associated with mortality than how many hours of sleep participants got a night. Additionally, the scientists “found that irregular sleep predicted [a] higher risk of mortality by cancer, whereas short sleep duration did not.”Why might sleep regularity matter more than sleep duration?

Source: Huffington Post March 24, 2025 11:26 UTC