Sleep can feel like an inconvenient necessity with everything else you’ve got going on right now. But new research is serving up fresh motivation to put yourself to bed a little earlier: It could extend your life.
That’s the major takeaway from an analysis of nationwide health data published in Sleep Advances. Given that nearly 37% of American adults don’t get the recommended seven-plus hours of sleep a night, this is information worth paying attention to.
The link between sleep and longevity is a little complicated, but sleep medicine doctors say they’re not shocked by the findings. Here’s why, plus the biggest sleep traps they see people fall into.
The study found a clear link between time spent sleeping and lifespan.
For the study, researchers analyzed nationwide data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey collected between 2019 and 2025. This survey is conducted each month by state health departments and looks at a range of behaviors that can impact a person’s health, including their smoking habits, diet, chronic conditions, and how much sleep they get. In the mix was this question, “On average, how many hours of sleep do you get in a 24-hour period?”
After crunching the data, the researchers discovered that sleep was the strongest predictor of life expectancy, even topping better-known factors like diet, physical activity, or social isolation. (Smoking was the only factor that was more influential than sleep.) Meaning, people who said they got the recommended seven-plus hours of sleep a night were more likely to outlive those who consistently got less than seven hours a night.
Why can sleep have such a big impact on your lifespan?
The researchers didn’t look into this—they just found a link between lack of sleep and a shorter lifespan. But sleep medicine physicians say it makes sense.
“Getting sufficient sleep is related to so many aspects of health, including cardiovascular health, our immune system, and even weight management and mood,” Beth Malow, MD, a neurologist and chief of the Division of Sleep Disorders at Vanderbilt Health, tells SELF. “That translates into the importance of sleep on our lifespan.”
Getting shorter sleep is usually linked to making worse behavioral choices (think: around your diet and exercise), which can influence how likely you are to develop certain diseases, Andrew W. McHill, PhD, study co-author and director of the Sleep, Chronobiology, and Health Laboratory at Oregon Health & Science University, tells SELF. “It really does highlight the importance of sleep among all other behaviors that we commonly think of being essential for health—the food we eat, the air we breathe, or how much we exercise,” he says.
There are a few major sleep traps doctors see.
Most people will experience the odd night where it’s hard to get enough sleep. Maybe you stayed out late with friends, got caught up in watching your favorite show, or couldn’t put down a good book—it happens. But then there are situations that are harder to control, like you’re working two jobs or you have a young child who isn’t sleeping well. Those are more complicated, points out Christopher Winter, MD, a neurologist and sleep medicine physician with Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine and host of the Sleep Unplugged podcast. “This is a different population than the insomnia population who often identify as ‘sleep deprived,’” he tells SELF.
