A new study suggests that getting less than 6 hours of sleep can double and even sometimes triple your risk of dying from cancer or heart disease.
Scientists who conducted the study found out that people who have type 2-diabetes or high blood pressure are likely to die from a stroke or a heart disease.
In the same study, researchers found out that people who had a history of heart disease and are not getting enough sleep tripled the risk of dying from cancer.
In the United States of America, 45 percent of their population is reported to have stage 2 high BP or Type 2 diabetes.
14 percent of the population in the United States has a heart problem.
According to the Pennsylvania State College of Medicine, doctors should recommend a special sleep routine for patients who are diagnosed with a chronic disease.
The NSF (National Sleep Foundation) suggests that humans, especially adults, should sleep 7 to 9 hours per day.
Dr. Julio Fernandez-Mendoza, the lead author of the study who is an associate professor in the department of psychiatry at Pennsylvania State College of Medicine, said sleeping can help people protect themselves.
She added, “Our study suggests that achieving normal sleep may be protective for some people with these health conditions and risks.”
She continued, “However, further research is needed to examine whether improving and increasing sleep through medical or behavioral therapies can reduce the risk of early death.”
A study in 2015 found out that 50 percent of adults in the United States of America don’t get the right amount of sleep.
Not getting enough sleep can affect your brain’s functionality, and is linked with heart diseases, obesity, and diabetes.
The new sleep study is published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The new study looked at data that came from 1600 adults who were 20 to 74-years-old.
The 1600 adults were divided into 2 groups, one group had adults who had a history with stroke or heart disease and the other group had Type 2 Diabetes or stage 2 high blood pressure.
Sleeping 8 hours every night is recommended by doctors. The researchers in the study said physicians and other doctors should recommend it to patients who have chronic diseases.
The adults in the study were studied in the sleep laboratory in the 1990s and their causes of death were tracked up to the end of 2016.
Researchers that were conducting the study found out that adults who had diabetes or hypertension doubled their risk of dying from a stroke or a heart disease if they only slept for 6 hours per night.
And for those adults who had a history with strokes or heart disease and got less than 6 hours of sleep per night were tripling the risk dying from cancer.
Talking about the changes that should be made, researchers said that doctors should tell their patients to have enough sleep per night.
Dr. Fernandez-Mendoza, said, “I’d like to see policy changes so that sleep consultations and sleep studies become a more integral part of our healthcare systems.”
The Dr. Added, “Better identification of people with specific sleep issues would potentially lead to improved prevention, more complete treatment approaches, better long-term outcomes, and less healthcare usage.”
People who sleep less than 8 hours per day have a limited performance boost, this is because the brain doesn’t get enough rest.
In a recent experiment that was done, people who only slept 6 hours per night had similar cognitive performance with a person who didn’t sleep at all. Getting 6 hours of sleep is as bad as not sleeping for 2 days straight.