Not getting enough sleep may make you feel years older

Lack of sleep can make you feel years older than you actually are.

How old someone feels they are, or their subjective age, Associated with a variety of physical and mental health outcomesspecial frustrated. ‘Age is more than just perception,’ says Leonie Barthes at Karolinska Institute in Sweden. “We know that people who feel younger than their actual age live healthier and longer lives.”

Given the importance of sleep to our physical and mental health, Barthes and John AxelsonResearchers, also from Karolinska Institutet, decided to investigate whether it affects our subjective age.

They recruited 429 people aged 18 to 70 and asked them about their age and how much sleep they had in the past 30 days.

They found that reporting a lack of sleep was associated with participants feeling older than their actual age, with each day of sleep deprivation increasing their subjective age by an average of 0.23 years. In contrast, those who reported getting enough sleep over a 30-day period had an average subjective age that was 5.81 years younger than their actual age.

In the second part of the study, the pair recruited an additional 186 people. Over two weeks, the participants were asked to aim for nine hours of sleep on two consecutive nights, recorded via sleep logs and sleep-tracking wrist devices. They were then told to limit sleep to 4 hours for two consecutive nights.

After this period of sleep restriction, they felt on average 4.44 years older than their actual age, whereas with 9 hours of sleep, they felt 0.24 years younger. The most fatigued people felt about 10 years older than those who felt least tired.

Balter said the findings suggest sleep is a key indicator of how old some people feel, which is linked to our health. “If you protect your sleep, you’ll feel younger,” she says.