Purpose: Both short and long sleep durations are associated with higher mortality. This study examined the association between sleep duration and overall health among those who survive to older ages.
Participants and Methods: In the Nurses’ Health Study, participants without major chronic diseases in 1986 and survived to age 70 years or older in 1995– 2001 were included. Habitual sleep duration and snoring were self-reported in 1986. Healthy aging was defined as being free of 11 major chronic diseases and having no cognitive impairment, physical impairment, or mental health limitations. Logistic regression was used to estimate the odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for healthy aging.
Results: Of the 12,304 participants, 1354 (11.0%) achieved healthy aging. We observed a non-linear association between sleep duration and the odds of achieving healthy aging. Compared with women sleeping 7 hours per day, women with longer sleep duration were less likely to achieve healthy aging; there was also a suggestion of lower odds of healthy aging for shorter sleepers, although the associations did not reach statistical significance: the multivariate-adjusted ORs (95% CIs) of healthy aging for those sleeping ≤ 5, 6, 8, and ≥ 9 hours were 0.94 (0.70, 1.27), 0.88 (0.76, 1.02), 0.83 (0.72, 0.96), and 0.60 (0.43, 0.84), respectively. Similar non-linear associations were consistently observed for individual dimensions of healthy aging. Regular snoring was associated with 31% lower odds of healthy aging (95% CI: 0.54, 0.88), which was primarily due to lower odds of having no major chronic diseases.
Conclusion: Both short and long sleep durations as well as regular snoring at midlife were associated with lower odds of healthy aging in later life.
Keywords: sleep, healthy aging, prospective studies, Nurses’ Health Study, snoring