A large study published in Health Data Science showed that sleep problems affect the risk for a total of 172 diseases, including dementia, Parkinson’s disease, type 2 diabetes and kidney failure. The study followed nearly 90,000 individuals for almost seven years via wearables and linked their sleep habits to disease data.
Key insights
- For 92 of these diseases, poor sleep patterns account for at least 20% of the risk.
- For 42 diseases (for example gangrene and liver diseases) the risk was twice as high among those with irregular sleep patterns.
- The study focuses not just on hours of sleep, but above all on sleep regularity (consistent timing and rhythm) — which turned out to be critical.
The message?
Sleep duration isn’t the only thing that matters — sleep patterns and regularity are at least as important for preventing chronic diseases. Improved sleep regularity may be a simple but powerful way to reduce the risk of serious disease.
