Not getting enough sleep won’t just leave you yawning, it can make you feel older than you really are, according to new research. It only takes two nights of poor sleep to feel years older, a new two-part study from Sweden finds.
In the first part of the study, 429 people between the ages of 18 and 70 answered questions about how old they felt and how many nights they’d slept badly in the past month.
- For each day of poor sleep, participants felt an average of three months older, while those who had an entire month of sleeping well felt nearly six years younger, on average, than their true age.
- In part two of the study, researchers found the 186 volunteers ages 18 to 46 felt an average of 4.44 years older after two nights in a row of sleeping only four hours, but some felt decades older.
- When they were able to sleep for nine hours a night for two nights in a row, participants felt three months younger than their real age, on average.
- Study authors found some differences in people’s responses to sleep loss depending on whether they’re a morning person or a night owl. Night owls typically felt older than their age even after getting plenty of sleep, while early birds were hit harder and felt older from a lack of sleep.
“Sleep has a major impact on how old you feel and it’s not only your long-term sleep patterns,” explains study author Leonie Balter. “Age is more than just the perception. If you want to feel young, the most important thing is to protect your sleep.”
Source: The Guardian