According to a new study, the ideal length of a night’s sleep is seven hours.
The French sleep on average between 6 and 8 hours per night. A new study has just pointed out that our fellow citizens would be almost at the perfect time of sleep every night. Indeed, researchers from the University of Cambridge (UK) and Fudan University (China) have just pointed out in a new study published in the review Nature Aging what the ideal sleep duration would be seven hours for middle-aged people.
The perfect sleep duration would be 7 hours
Getting enough sleep each night is important for good health. Sleep plays an important role in the activation of cognitive functions and the maintenance of good psychological health.
Via this new study, researchers came to examine the data of nearly 500,000 adults aged 38 to 73 years. The latter were questioned on various factors, including their sleep habits, their mental health and their well-being. Cognitive tests were also performed. On top of that, about 40,000 participants provided researchers with brain images as well as genetic data.
Following the analysis of these data, the work revealed that insufficient and excessive sleep durations were associated with diminished cognitive performance, namely processing speed, visual attention, memory or problem solving.
The studies highlight in particular that getting seven hours of sleep a night was the optimal amount of sleep for cognitive performance as well as good mental health. Indeed, people who did not sleep during this sleep duration more regularly experienced symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Jianfeng Feng, of Fudan University in China, explained: “While we cannot conclusively say that too little – or too much – sleep causes cognitive problems, our analysis of individuals over a longer period seems to support this idea. But the reasons why older people sleep less appear to be complex, influenced by a combination of our genetic make-up and brain structure.”