NEWS

13 May 2026

Health outcomes were better in people who slept between about six and eight hours a day.

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Heidi Ledford Heidi Ledford reports for Nature from Seattle, Washington.

Getting roughly 6 to 8 hours of sleep each day has been linked with a longer life — at least in humans. Credit: Justin Paget/Getty

A sweeping analysis of sleep duration and signs of ageing in half a million adults has pinpointed a sweet spot — about six to eight hours of sleep each day — that is linked to a lower risk of early death and disease.

Getting either more or less sleep than that was associated with accelerated ageing, which was measured by nearly two dozen different biological ageing ‘clocks’ that aim to assess ageing’s impact on the body.

The sleep paradox: why do humans sleep so little when we need it so much?

The results, published 1 in Nature on 13 May, do not mean that six to eight hours is the optimum amount of sleep for every person, nor do they prove that achieving that ‘Goldilocks’ range of sleep each…