Sleeping too much is actually more harmful than sleeping too little, according to research published this month in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
People who slept for 10 hours or more were at an increased risk of cardiac disease, according to the study led by researchers from Keele University in England.
Their research was an analysis of 74 earlier studies on self-reported sleep duration for nearly three million subjects. The researchers found that for people who slept 10 hours or more, they had a 30 percent increased risk of early death compared to people who slept for seven hours.
Further, longer sleep was associated with a 56 percent increased risk of stroke mortality and 39 percent risk of cardiovascular disease mortality.
The authors recommend maintaining between seven and eight hours of sleep for optimal health.
“Longer duration of sleep may be more associated with adverse outcomes compared with shorter sleep durations,” they wrote in their conclusion.
• Laura Kelly can be reached at lkelly@washingtontimes.com.
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