If you want to live longer then do these two things
05-08-2014
Do you want to live longer? If the answer is yes, and it will be for most of us, then you need to do these two things... seriously! All you need to do to live longer is eat right and sleep right. While diet may sound fairly obvious, sleep may not stand out as a way of living longer, but it is vital to your longevity.
For those who have been keeping up with the latest sleep research, the role of sleep in longevity may not be such a huge surprise. For those who haven’t been following the latest, here is a breakdown on why sleep plays such a huge role in the length of your life.
Piece of Evidence Number One: People who sleep too much or too little are more likely to die young.
In one of the biggest sleep studies of all time, one that looked at over a million people for many decades, researchers found that those who were getting too much or too little sleep, basically more than 8 hours or less than 6 hours, were more likely to die young than those sleeping between 6-7 hours. In fact, they found that there was a 12 per cent rise in early mortality for both the under and over sleepers. Not only was this study one of the biggest ever, but it has been thoroughly corroborated since with a whopping thirty of thirty research studies conducted since validating these findings
Piece of Evidence Number Two: People who sleep well each night have an improved immune system and are able to fight off serious health issues such as cancer better.
In recent research the connection between sleep and the body’s immune system has been proved. It turns out that those who are not sleeping well are more likely to have weaker immune systems. One study looked at two groups of mice, one that slept well each night and the other that had their sleep broken several times a night. They were both injected with cancer cells and within a month the sleep deprived mice had tumours that were twice the size and far more aggressive in nature.
Piece of Evidence Number Three: People who do not sleep as much are more likely to be in a car accident.
In the US alone, sleep deprivation is thought to cause more than 100 000 crashes each and every year. In fact, they believe that sleep deprivation is the single biggest cause of crashes, especially as it exacerbates all the other causes of crashes. Beyond this, being tired is more likely to cause injury and death in the workplace as well.
Diet is obvious, sleep may not be as obvious to some but the reality is that if you want to live longer then you need to make sure that you are sleeping well.
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