Sleep timing deserves a place next to sleep duration.
A large cohort linked more consistent sleep with lower mortality. It did not prove that a schedule change extends life.
The 30-second takeaway
Hours are only one part of a sleep pattern. In this cohort, people with the most consistent schedules had lower mortality than those with the least consistent schedules, even after adjustment for several differences. That is an association: the study cannot tell us whether changing your schedule would produce the same result.
Health, work schedules and other factors may still influence both sleep and mortality. A short recording may miss long-term patterns.
What researchers found
Mortality hazard ratio
1 means no difference in the modeled death rate; below 1 means lower. Most versus least regular fifth; fully adjusted, 95% confidence interval 0.59–0.83. Not absolute risk.
What was measured
Researchers estimated sleep regularity from wrist activity data, then linked it to later deaths. The fully adjusted analysis included 46,721 participants.
How to read it
More consistent sleep predicted lower mortality. This does not show that regular timing compensates for insufficient sleep.
The original publication
Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration: A prospective cohort study
Daniel P. Windred et al.
Sleep · 2024
- PubMed ID
- 37738616
- Record checked
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