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We all know that getting a good night’s sleep is important, but a new study sheds light on just how much. According to researchers from Stockholm University, sleep actually affects how old you feel. This means that sleeping well can leave you feeling young and refreshed. But, on the flip side, a few bad nights of sleep will age you.
“Given that sleep is essential for brain function and overall well-being, we decided to test whether sleep holds any secrets to preserving a youthful sense of age,” says Leonie Balter, researcher at the Department of Psychology, Stockholm University.
To get answers, they surveyed 429 individuals aged 18 to 70 and asked how many nights of bad sleep they’d gotten over the past month and how old they felt. It turns out that for every night of bad sleep, each participant felt an average of 0.23 years older.
For the second part of the study, researchers asked 186 participants aged 18 to 46 to restrict their sleep to just four hours for two nights in a row. They were then asked to sleep nine hours for two consecutive evenings. Each time, they were asked how old they felt. On average, the participants felt 4.4 years older when their sleep was restricted.
Interestingly, how the participants viewed their age has a lot to do with their level of sleepiness. When extremely alert, they felt four years younger. Conversely, when extremely tired, they felt much older—six years, to be exact.
“This means that going from feeling alert to sleepy added a striking 10 years to how old one felt,” says Balter. “Safeguarding our sleep is crucial for maintaining a youthful feeling. This, in turn, may promote a more active lifestyle and encourage behaviors that promote health, as both feeling young and alert are important for our motivation to be active.”
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