People who sleep fewer than six hours or more than eight hours a night show signs of faster biological aging across multiple organs compared to those who sleep between 6.4 and 7.8 hours, according to a recent study reported by Healthline.
The research team used data from half a million participants in the UK Biobank and applied machine learning to identify aging signatures across 17 organs. They assessed each participant's self-reported sleep duration against 23 different organ-specific aging clocks, which are computational models that estimate how quickly cells and tissues are aging relative to a person's chronological age.
"Sleep is fundamental for healthy aging and longevity. More importantly, it is potentially modifiable," said lead study author Junhao Wen, PhD, assistant professor of radiological sciences at Columbia University. "In this study, we measure biological aging clocks across organs to link these clocks with sleep duration."
The study defined too little sleep as fewer than six hours per night and too much sleep as more than eight hours. Participants sleeping outside the 6.4 to 7.8 hour window generally showed faster biological aging across organs than those sleeping within it. Researchers also found a direct link between sleep duration and late-life depression.
Sarathi Bhattacharyya, MD, a pulmonologist and sleep medicine specialist at MemorialCare Sleep Disorders Center at Long Beach Medical Center, who was not involved in the study, explained some of the biological mechanisms that may connect poor sleep to accelerated aging. "Short sleep duration is associated with immune dysregulation and increased systemic inflammation, impairing tissue repair and metabolic homeostasis. It also disrupts glucose regulation and overall energy balance," Bhattacharyya said.
Most previous aging clocks measure age across the body as a whole, but the research team behind this study has been instrumental in developing clocks that track aging in specific organs, which can provide more personalized health information. The finding that individual organs may age at different rates adds a layer of precision to how researchers understand the relationship between lifestyle factors and long-term health.
The researchers noted that sleep duration alone does not directly cause organs to age faster or slower, but that too little or too much sleep may play a role in poorer overall health across the body. Prior studies have linked sleep to various aspects of mental and physical health, but this research broadens the scope by connecting it to organ-level biological aging on a large scale.
