New research examining sleep data suggests poor sleep in terms of length, depth, and waking in the night is associated with illnesses like Parkinson’s disease and type 2 diabetes. Getting a proper night’s sleep is important for several health reasons, including supporting brain health, immune function, and muscle recovery. Still, falling asleep is not always easy for many individuals, and the National Institute of Health estimates that between 20% and 30% of adults in the United States have experienced insomnia at some point in their lives. In fact, researchers have shown that insomnia and the use of sleep aids are increasing among adults. Despite the importance of sleep to our health, prior studies on sleep may not be the most reliable, since many have largely relied on subjective measurements. These include surveys asking participants to recall how well they slept, which can be prone to inaccurate recollections of past experiences, known as recall bias. While subjective studies have reported many health risks associated with poor sleep, do objective measures of disrupted sleep show the same impacts on health? Next, the researchers analyzed the data from the UK Biobank to identify specific diseases that occurred in participants for whom they had accelerometer sleep data. They estimated whether certain diseases were more likely to occur in individuals with poorer sleep behavior within these areas of interest. The team identified a total of 172 diseases that were statistically more likely than not to be impacted by sleep length or quality. The researchers then assessed the risk of disease by comparing the top 25% versus the bottom 25% in a specific sleep dimension. For example, 25% of participants with the shortest sleeping times might be more likely to be diagnosed with a disease compared to the 25% with the longest sleeping times. The researchers quantified the difference in risk between the top 25% and bottom 25% in each area of interest, finding that several diseases were associated with an increased risk in individuals with poor sleep. These included Parkinson’s disease, with 2.8 times increased risk, age-related frailty, with 3.36 times increased risk, liver fibrosis or cirrhosis, with 2.57 times increased risk, and type 2 diabetes mellitus, with 1.6 times increased risk. They also found that roughly 20% of all participants who self-reported as being long-sleepers actually slept less than 6 hours a night, supporting the idea that studies relying on subjective self-report measures of sleep can have recollection errors.
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