Research indicates that both insufficient and excessive sleep may be tied to accelerated aging in various body systems and an increased risk of health issues, including depression, diabetes, and heart disease. Historically, inadequate sleep has been linked to poor health, but recent findings suggest that too much sleep can also be detrimental.
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Published in the journal Nature, the study led by Junhao Wen, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, reveals that short sleep—defined as less than six hours per night—and long sleep—more than eight hours nightly—are associated with faster biological aging in organ systems, including the brain, heart, lungs, and immune system. The researchers examined how these sleep patterns correlated with a wide array of illnesses.
Wen and his team employed “digital aging clocks,” machine learning algorithms that estimate future health trends based on biological data from minimally invasive blood tests, medical imaging, and organ-specific proteins. They analyzed data from half a million participants in the UK Biobank, creating 23 clocks across 17 organ systems. By comparing participants’ self-reported sleep duration with biological age estimates produced by these clocks, the researchers found a notable U-shaped relationship between sleep duration and aging.
Biological age differs from chronological age; it estimates the aging rate of a person's tissues and organs. Aging clocks are increasingly used to assess disease risk, mortality, and health outcomes. "In the liver, for instance, we have an aging clock constructed from protein data, metabolic factors, and imaging data," Wen explained.
While the study does not establish a direct causal relationship between sleep duration and premature aging, it suggests that abnormal sleep patterns may reflect broader health issues or disruptions within the body. The analysis linked short sleep to conditions such as depressive episodes, anxiety, obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. Both short and long sleep durations were associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, and gastrointestinal disorders including gastritis and gastroesophageal reflux disease.
The authors emphasize the importance of sleep in relation to overall physiological functions like metabolism and immune regulation. "This study highlights a connection between sleep duration and multi-organ, multi-omics aging clocks, linking these indicators to systemic disease outcomes and mortality risk," Wen and his co-authors noted. They advocate for increased awareness of sleep disturbances as potential signals of health issues, essential for promoting healthy aging, reducing disease risk, and extending lifespan.