Sleep is essential for your health, this is of course quite obvious!
Research is continuing to highlight the important role of sleep for your longevity. At its essence, there are three major factors that determine if you are sleeping well.
Sleep & Longevity
Sleep Duration
how much you are sleeping
Sleep Quality
how well you are sleeping
Sleep Schedule
how regular your bedtime
/waking time are
Let’s look into each of these in a bit more detail…
This seems like a simple question! However, the details in the right answer for you are difficult to pin down. Your personal sleep duration needs cannot be prescribed by any webpage on the internet.
In general, guidance on this matter is centered around about 7 hours. However, your sleep needs could be less, or could be more.
How much sleep (duration) you need is very much an individual statistic. And your personal sleep requirements will change according to the demands of your day.
How much sleep do you need?
For example, athletes tend to need more sleep so their bodies can recover from their training. If they were to discontinue their intense training, they would need less sleep overall.
It of course also depends on…
Measuring your sleep duration is of course not enough - you need to ensure that you are getting quality sleep. Thankfully, there are now many different technologies available for tracking your sleep quality.
Sleep tracking technologies allow you to monitor sleep over time. We suggest that you first use one of these technologies to get a baseline for what ‘normal sleep’ looks like for you.
Sleep quality. How well are you sleeping?
Nick discusses sleep with OneSkin CEO Dr. Carolina Oliveira.
Let’s start this off with a startling fact revealed in the latest scientific research about sleep…
Did you know that shift workers who have irregular sleep schedules (e.g. nightshift work a few days/week) are known to have much higher age-related disease risks (e.g. cancer, cardiovascular disease)?
This is because sleep is one of the most important drivers of your bodily systems, such as hormone function, cellular repair and the health of your brain.
You need a regular sleep schedule.
As you can already see, sleep is very important for your longevity. And in order to improve it, you have to take this matter very much into your own hands.
A longer life is here to help you become an expert in understanding how you sleep best.
We’ve compiled a set of resources to help you in tracking and improving your sleep, which you can explore below.
