The way all Americans sleep can be divided into one of four categories, according to a major new study.
And those in two of the groups are at least 30 percent more likely to develop a variety of conditions, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes and depression.
Scientists at Penn State’s College of Health and Human Development tracked the sleep habits of nearly 3,700 participants over a decade.
Using national historical data, Midlife Study in the United States (MIDUS), looked at how middle-aged participants rated their own sleep between the years 2004 and 2014.
They were trying to determine how people’s sleep patterns changed as they aged and how that might be related to the development of chronic diseases.
Penn State’s analysis showed that each participant fell into one of four different categories: good sleepers, weekend sleepers, insomniac sleepers and nappers.
People who slept well reported that they slept many hours and consistently and felt satisfied with their sleep and alert during the day.
Weekend sleepers were people who slept irregularly or shorter during the week, but slept more on weekends.
More than half of the participants fell into the two worst sleep categories: insomniacs and nappers.
Insomniac sleepers had difficulty falling asleep and slept less overall, compared to the other cohorts. Insomniacs reported feeling more tired during the day and less happy with their sleep.
The final sleep category identified was napping. These participants slept fairly constantly during the night, but reported taking frequent naps during the day.
The Penn State team then looked for disease risk patterns among the different sleep groups. They controlled for other contributing factors, such as underlying health conditions, socioeconomic factors, and work environment.
A shocking graph shows the impact of a night of poor sleep, which can cause your brain to work at a slower rate, affecting concentration, while a person’s sex drive can also plummet due to exhaustion.
They found that people with insomnia had a 28 to 81 percent higher risk of heart disease, diabetes and depression, compared to people who slept well.
People who napped well also had a 128 percent higher risk of diabetes, compared to people who slept well, and a 62 percent higher risk of frailty.
Experts say this latest finding may be due to the fact that the frequency of naps increased with age.
Previous studies have found that getting too little sleep can increase the risk of developing dementia, having a stroke, a heart attack, and liver disease. One study found that about 83 percent of people with depression also have insomnia.
According to the CDC, inadequate sleep means the body and mind don’t have as much time to repair and recover from the day’s stress, and chronic stress has been shown to be a factor in a number of diseases.
And although it may seem contradictory, doctors have also pointed out the risks of sleeping too much.
Sleeping too much, as occurs in the napping group, has been associated with an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, obesity, depression and headaches, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Some studies have suggested that napping does not trigger diabetes, but the opposite is true: the condition can cause tiredness that increases the need to nap.
Although health conditions were controlled for in the new study, it is possible that some participants were undiagnosed.
Another theory is that those who nap tend to have a higher BMI and are therefore at higher risk for the condition, and another is that sleeping too much increases inflammation in the body.
According to the new study, those who nap regularly are up to 128 percent more likely to develop diabetes.
There are also demographic factors that help explain these patterns, according to study author Soomi Lee, director of the Sleep, Stress and Health Laboratory at Penn State.
Lee found that unemployed people and those with less education were more likely to fall into the insomniac category. A previous study from the University of Glasgow reported similar results: the unemployed tended to sleep worse than the employed.
This is evidence, Lee said in a university interview. Press releasethat environmental factors can play an important role in sleep quality.
“These results may suggest that it is very difficult to change our sleep habits because sleep health is integrated into our overall lifestyle.
“It may also suggest that people still don’t know the importance of sleep or healthy sleep behaviors.”
This also means that there are things you could do to change your patterns and reduce your risk of developing sleep-related problems.
‘We need to make more efforts to educate the public about good sleep health. “There are sleep hygiene behaviors that people could adopt to improve their sleep, such as not using cell phones in bed, exercising regularly, and avoiding caffeine in the late afternoon,” she said.