Jay Novella

And that difference is called a biological age gap.

And the findings that they came had what's called a U-shaped relationship between sleep duration and biological aging.

So people who reported sleeping too little tended to show more signs of biological aging, which we would expect.

But so did people who reported sleeping too much.

In my world, Cara, and you know what I'm about to say, there is no too much sleeping.

I think you're in a much better health position now with that medication.

Absolutely.

So the lowest biological age gaps were generally seen in the middle range, right?

So 6.4 to 7.8 hours of sleep.

And this also depended on the organ system, the sex, and specific aging clock.

So this is like a generalization, but...

Between those sleep times, 6.4 and 7.8 hours, that's where they found the optimal health of all the people that they studied.

Meaning that if people were sleeping within that range, they were biologically younger than people who slept less or more than that.

And it's important to point out this doesn't mean there's a magic sleep number that works for everyone.

It is the opposite of that.

If anything, you know, optimal sleep durations, of course, they vary from person to person.

And this is why we have to pay attention to our own bodies.

And try to come up with a good understanding of what we need and what's working.

And, you know, it's one thing to say, hey, I'm not getting enough sleep, so I'm going to go to bed a little bit earlier or prioritize carving out the right amount of time that I need to be undisturbed and all that stuff.

But I think a lot of people don't think of oversleeping as a problem.