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Getting the latest healthcare news for you
Getting the latest healthcare news for you
Sleeping too little or too much accelerates biological aging across nearly every organ system, a major new study finds. Researchers analyzed 23 biological aging clocks and found the healthiest aging pattern among people sleeping 6.4 to 7.8 hours nightly. Abnormal sleep duration was also tied to conditions ranging from heart disease and diabetes to depression and digestive disorders.
A sweeping new study published in Nature suggests that both short and long sleep are linked to faster biological aging across nearly every organ in the body — not just the brain. Researchers from Columbia University used data from roughly half a million UK Biobank participants and 23 organ-specific aging clocks spanning 17 organ systems to map how sleep duration relates to how fast our bodies age at a biological level.
The findings revealed a clear U-shaped pattern: people sleeping fewer than 6 hours or more than 8 hours showed accelerated biological aging, while those sleeping between 6.4 and 7.8 hours had the slowest aging profiles. Notably, the study also found that short and long sleepers may reach the same health outcomes — like late-life depression — through different biological pathways, suggesting they may need different clinical approaches.
Key Takeaways:
Why it matters: Sleep is modifiable — and this study makes the case that optimizing it could be one of the most impactful levers for slowing whole-body aging and reducing disease burden across multiple organ systems.
