Sarah TS1

Podcast: More or less

The radio program more or less is presented by Ruth Alexander, on BBC radio 4.
The 21st of February 2015, she chooses to talk about the myth of eight hour sleep. To
introduce the topic, she confesses that she, sometimes, fails to sleep eight hours, which she
thinks is ideal time to maintain a good health. However, right after she talks about the myth
of the ideal eight hours sleep, a deep voice says: that is not true.
Indeed this is Dr Grey Jacobs voice, a specialist of the sleep disorder centre at the
University of Massachusetts medical school. He tells us that during ages, Doctors advised us
to sleep eight hours but in the past few years many researches have shown that it is could be
bad for our health to sleep eight hours. Over 34 studies around the world, which people
follow all the time (around 2 million people) show that a huge relation exist between the
mortality risks and the sleep duration. The lowest mortality risk is at seven hours sleep. As a
consequence, more or less than seven hours might increase those mortality risks, because
our body need to sleep, to have energy but also too much sleep might distort the way the
body is working. Furthermore, this rise is gradual: the more you get away from this seven
hours sleep duration the more the risks are increasing and this is a fact equally to long
sleepers as to short sleepers. Ruth asks then what does Dr Grey Jacobs mean by mortality
risk. She is totally right when she says and we all know this statement- that we will all going
to die one day. Is it about more chance of dying sooner rather than later?
The real debate is about now the way our sleep habit is studied: she interviews a
doctor Franco Capuchio, a professor of cardio-vascular and epidemiology at the University of
Warwick, who has done a detailed analysis of sleep studies. The Professor explains precisely
to the auditors, his analysis. Studies are done with very simple methods of asking question to
the person who is studied during his sleep, for example questions like how many hours they
sleep at night? However, the problem in those studies appears very quickly, because it is
impossible to have an accurate study on the sleep duration. People are not good at reporting
their experiences in terms of sleep duration, because naturally you do not know exactly

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when you are sleeping, because of the unconsciousness of this time. There is a big debate
between Professors due to the approximations of those studies.
Mrs Alexander informs us that of the population say that they are sleeping
between six and eight hours and according to professors, there are nothing to worry about.
However when you sleep more or less than this sleep duration, you might be expose to
health problems such as high blood pressure and cardio vascular diseases or even worst.
Franco Capuchio agrees on this fact, because when you sleep more than eight hours, or less
than six hours, a very important rise exists to develop diseases and so to die early. What is
surprising, says Ruth Alexander, is that studies have shown that short sleeper are less expose
to mortality risks than the long sleeper: so It would be more dangerous, at first sight, to
sleep for a long time.
But it is not what Franco Capuchio says because a short sleep IS bad for your health,
because people who have been deprive of sleep do have bad repercussion on their physical
health. You may develop then abilities to get diseases easily or to have difficulties to
transform glucose for instance, this means that you might lack energy. There is an evident
alteration of the metabolism and body functions, which will sustains for the rest of our life.
Another Professor Jim Horn argues that people who have been deprive of sleep for those
studies, were put under pressure and they develop stress, which make the results not
reliable. For him, the studies should be done on the waking hours; asking for example the
question: why are sleeping 5 hours? Is your life stressful? According to this professor, the
sleep duration is more a consequence to the time we are awake. Franco Capuchio and Jim
Horn agree on the fact that there are no evidence that a long sleep is causing an ill health, it
is at least a symptom of this condition. For instance depression or the use of sleeping pills
are factors as well to this conditions. Sleep duration would be more a mark of this
conditions, and so another factor which they cannot find is the real cause of an ill health.
Not everyone agrees; Shan Yougstan, says that short sleep has been studied a long
because it is what pharmaceutical firms are interesting in. But he studies long sleep and gets
interesting results. They ask, in the experimentation, young adults (14 years old) to sleep
three hours more every night during three weeks. The results were pretty explicit about the
consequence of a long sleep: they were not able to sleep more than two hours more; they

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felt depressed and complained about soreness and back pain. For him, the sleep duration is
about the age of the person. In fact, spending an hour less in the bed might consolidate the
quality of the sleep.
So the big question is: How long should we sleep?
Dr Grey Jacobs says that according to the national sleep centre, the typical sleep duration
would be seven hours and this seems to be a very good result to maintain a good health.
Seven hours asleep would be the natural time for the brain to relax. Most of adults who are
sleeping this median time feel energetic and only 5% feel sleepy. Seven hours would be the
ideal sleep duration then. Ruth Alexander adds that if you enjoy to spend a lot of time in bed
and you feel in good health, you should not change your habits.
https://soundcloud.com/bbc-more-or-less/ws-moreorless-sleeping-the-8