Six to nine hours sleep 'best for quality of life'

 

People who get between six and nine hours of sleep per night tend to have the best quality of life and the lowest risk of depression, new research shows.

A team of scientists at the Cleveland Clinic Sleep Disorders Centre in Ohio, US, analysed data on 10,654 patients between January 2008 and May 2010.

Questionnaires were used to assess participants' quality of life and risk of depression.

The researchers found that people with a 'normal' sleep duration of six to nine hours per night tended to report better quality of life and were less likely to be affected by depression.

Principal investigator Dr Charles Bae, who presented the findings at Sleep 2011, the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, admitted: 'It was surprising to see that sleeping less than six hours and more than nine hours is associated with a similar decrease in quality of life and increase in depressive symptoms.

'I thought that there would be changes in quality of life and degree of depressive symptoms for short and long sleepers, but did not expect that those changes would be similar in both groups.'

Meanwhile, a separate study presented at the same meeting found that preschool-aged children who do not get enough sleep are more likely to be hyperactive and inattentive when they start school.