Two Nights Without Sleep: A Study Uncovers the Impact on Perceived Aging

A study that still proves to what extent the feeling of youth and old age is subjective and above all to what extent our way of life impacts our health.

Article initially published in March 2024

Set your debts to sleep

Durded dark circles, an altered concentration capacity, tremors … An individual lacking sleep is quite easily spotted. Hence the famous particularly pleasant sentence ” You look tired!It is pleasant to hear in the morning in the office, with family or friends.

The return of the sleep debt is as physically scathing as psychologically and fatigue can quickly give the feeling of being more bad physical condition than you really are, or at least that we are older than in reality. And according to science, it's not just an impression …

Two additional studiess

To find out the effects of sleep on the perception of age, Swedish researchers have decided to conduct two studies. The first study, 429 people, aged 18 to 70, had to answer questions about the sentenced night effects, or with little sleep. Volunteers said they felt three months older, the day following the bad night. Conversely, witnesses who had declared any bad night felt six years younger than their real age.

For the second study, the researchers proposed to 186 volunteers aged 18 to 46 to communicate their age in feeling, first after two nights of abundant sleep (more than nine hours of sleep) then after two very short nights (less than four hours of sleep). Due to a feeling of exacerbated drowsiness, the guinea pigs that had only eight hours of sleep to their credit in 48 hours felt an average of 4.44 years older.

Volunteers and/or patients said they felt 4 years older when for two consecutive nights with less than four hours of sleep on the counter. For some, this unpleasant sleepiness even gave them the impression of having aged a few decades.

Promising long -term results

According to Dr. Léonie Balter, psychoneuroimmunologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and the first author of the study, it is no coincidence. “” “Sleep has a major impact on the age you feel and it is not only your long -term sleep habits. Even if you sleep less for two nights only, it still has a real impact on how you feel. ”

“If you want to feel young, the most important thing is to protect your sleep” concluded the doctor, adding that the results of the study showed well how “Subjective age is easily and quickly malleable”.

For Dr. Iuliana Hartescu, lecturer in psychology at the University of Loughborough, who did not participate in the study, these results clearly show that a good quality of sleep has a significant long -term health impact.

Source : The Guardian