Sleep & Longevity

Sleep
is essential for your
health,
this is of course quite obvious!

Research is continuing to highlight the important role of sleep for your
longevity.
At its essence, there are three major factors that determine if you are sleeping well.

We encourage our readers to focus on getting
enough, good sleep,
on a
regular schedule.
  You’ll quickly see there are that getting ‘enough good sleep’ breaks down in to three major components:
You’ll quickly see there are that getting
‘enough good sleep’
breaks down into three major components:

Sleep Duration

how much you are sleeping

Sleep Quality

how well you are sleeping

Sleep Schedule

how regular your bedtime
/waking time are

Let’s look into each of these in a bit more detail…

This seems like a simple question! However, the details in the right answer for you are difficult to pin down. Your personal
sleep duration
needs cannot be prescribed by any webpage on the internet.

How much sleep do you need?  

In general, guidance on this matter is centered around
about 7 hours.
However, your sleep needs could be less, or could be more.
How much
sleep (duration)
you need is very much an individual statistic. And your personal sleep requirements will change according to the demands of your day.
For example, athletes tend to need
more sleep
so their bodies can recover from their training. If they were to discontinue their intense training, they would need less sleep overall.

It of course also depends on…

Measuring your sleep duration is of course not enough - you need to ensure that you are getting quality sleep. Thankfully, there are now many different technologies available for tracking your
sleep quality.

Sleep quality. How well are you sleeping?   

Sleep tracking
technologies allow you to monitor sleep over time. We suggest that you first use one of these technologies to get a baseline for what ‘normal sleep’ looks like for you.

Nick discusses sleep with OneSkin CEO Dr. Carolina Oliveira.

You need a regular sleep schedule.

Did you know that shift workers who have
irregular sleep schedules
(e.g. nightshift work a few days/week) are known to have much higher age-related disease risks (e.g. cancer, cardiovascular disease)?

Let’s start this off with a startling fact revealed in the latest scientific research about sleep…

This is because sleep is one of the most important drivers of your bodily systems, such as hormone function, cellular repair and the health of your brain.

How to measure and improve your sleep

As you can already see, sleep is very important for your longevity.  And in order to improve it, you have to take this matter very much into your own hands.

A longer life is here to help you become an expert in understanding how you sleep best.

We’ve compiled a set of resources to help you in tracking and improving your sleep, which you can explore below.

Learn more about longevity and sleep

Sleep: Basics

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ENVIRONMENT