Don't hit the snooze button too many times: Logging too many hours in bed can cause as many sleep problems as logging too few.
"Long" sleepers who slumber more than eight hours a night and "short" sleepers who get fewer than seven hours of shuteye both report more sleep complaints than people who sleep in the "just right" zone of seven to eight hours, say researchers at the University of California, San Diego.
Scientists know a lot more about problems associated with lack of sleep than they know about too much sleep, although some studies have shown a correlation between too much sleep and an increased risk of death in certain groups of people.
Long Sleep and Quality of Sleep
To find out if long sleepers have as many sleep complaints as the sleep-deprived, researchers used data from nearly 100 adults interviewed in the National Sleep Foundation's "Sleep in America" poll. The participants were asked how many hours they slept on a typical workday, not including naps, and whether they had any complaints about the quality of their sleep and sleep's effect on their daily activities.
Long sleepers reported more problems with falling asleep, waking up during the night, awakening too early, feeling "unrefreshed" upon waking up, and feeling sleepy during the day than those who slept seven or eight hours, the researchers found. Women were more apt to be long sleepers than men were. |
