Too Little Sleep—and Too Much—Associated with Faster Aging

An analysis of biological clocks throughout the human body suggests that too few hours of sleep—and too many—may speed aging in the brain, heart, lung, and immune system and is associated with a wide range of diseases.

“Previous studies have found that sleep is largely linked to aging and the pathological burden of the brain. Our study goes further and shows that too little and too much sleep are associated with faster aging in nearly every organ, supporting the idea that sleep is important in maintaining organ health within a coordinated brain-body network, including metabolic balance, and a healthy immune system,” says study leader Junhao Wen, assistant professor of radiology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

The research was published May 13 in Nature

The power of aging clocks

Aging clocks are increasingly popular for digitizing how many years a person ages faster or slower than their chronological age using machine learning, based on biological data (e.g., proteins from a minimally invasive blood test).

Though most aging clocks measure aging across the whole body, organs age at different rates (a fact well-known to women facing ticking biological clocks due to fast-aging ovaries).