Study Links Sleep Duration to Accelerated Aging Across Multiple Organs
A recent study led by Junhao Wen, an assistant professor of radiology at Columbia University, has found that both insufficient and excessive sleep are linked to accelerated aging in various organs, including the brain, heart, lungs, and immune system. The research, published in Nature, utilized aging clocks, which are tools that measure biological age using machine learning and biological data. The study analyzed data from the UK Biobank, involving half a million participants, to establish a connection between sleep duration and biological aging across 17 organ systems. The findings suggest a U-shaped pattern where both short sleep (less than 6 hours) and long sleep (more than 8 hours) are associated with faster aging, while optimal aging was observed in individuals sleeping between 6.4 and 7.8 hours per day. 
