Is too much sleep damaging to the body?

It doesn’t leave you much time to live a life outside of dreamworks.

Research indicates that adults who sleep an average of more than 7 hours a day tend to have shorter life spans, just as those who sleep less than 7 hours a day. Some of this, however, depends on your age – teens for example need more sleep than the typical adult. And of course, this is on a statistical basis, which means “maybe.”

@Darwin Seven huh…I may be doing that someday when I actually have a reason to get up lol which I hope comes sooner than later

I would love to sleep for 10 hours now and then.
No matter when I go to bed. Up at 7:30

Cant get to bed before 11pm

@ChazMaz If I went to bed on my own, I’d sleep from sun up to sun down, and be awake in between. Thank God for drugs lol

Now drugs are another thing. :-)

Actually, if there was a way to be healthy and never have to sleep. That would be sweet.

I make sure to get 7 hours of sleep, or I know I won’t be able to function. I would love to sleep 10 or more hours, but it gets to a point where waking up is way too hard because you’ve slept too long. I hate that feeling.
I think @Darwin posted a nice link.

Its all about quality of sleep, not quantity…some people can perform at peak with only a few hours of quality sleep while others cn sleep endlessly and perform low. See a sleep expert if you are’nt getting restful sleep.

It has always seemed to me that, if one’s body is not drugged, then, when fully rested, you will wake up, so i’ve never imagined that one could get too much natural sleep; but i’m looking forward to becming enlightened.

The thing once your body adjusted itself to too much sleep, it will remain like that. It is not good to sleep too much.
Research shows that people who sleep more than 9 hours a day have on average shorter life span. Same goes to ppl who sleep less than 7 hours a day. Don’t know how true that is.
What’s the point of sleeping so much. Another 80 years more or less, a person can sleep all he/she wants.

Too much sleep means that you are trying to get more sleep than your body requires. There is no single amount of time that refers to your specific needs. The times most quoted are “average” and do not directly relate to any individual person.

I suggest you talk this over with your medical provider and find out what is best for your situation.

Too much sleep can interfere with your mealtimes and cause digestive problems. I once read somewhere that the sleep cycle is dependent on the sunlight cycle. It’s been hardwired from our cave living ancestors. When you wake up, you need to experience the sunlight for a particular amount of time at a particular time. The exactness may vary from person to person but it has to be the early morning. They rest of day’s energy depends on it apparently.

I don’t know what my particular sunlight time or duration is but I know that the day I watch the sunrise, I am uncannily refreshed but not hyper. You can almost not notice it; but you feel more whole. Emotionally, spiritually and physically.

After reading Darwin’s link (very interesting, thanks for providing it!) I’m not at all convinced that getting too much sleep is bad for you or damaging to the body. The article said that researchers had found an association between the two, it didn’t say which direction it goes. It concludes by saying “Averaging more than seven hours of sleep a night is associated with a shorter life span, though whether poor health or too much sleep accounts for the link is unclear.”

I sleep a lot. Including naps probably about 9 hours a day, but I’m not going to try to sleep less, because if that’s how much my body tells me I need. If a certain amount of sleep makes you feel good, go with it.

@atlantis I can attest to the “mealtimes” thing. Most days I’ll eat like once, not including my fiber shake and tea.

@atlantis I’m not so sure about the meal thing. For most of human prehistory, people were lucky to be able to eat everyday. The idea of set mealtimes is a relatively recent cultural invention compared to the long evolutionary expanse within which we formed our sleeping and eating rhythms. In the bush, where the living is easy, people sleep quite a lot of the time (there being little on TV, and all).

@MontyZuma: How’s the phone reception and WiFi in the bush?

@mea05key : what’s the evidence that substantiates your statement ”... once your body adjusted itself to too much sleep, it will remain like that.”? i’d like to see the study, and how it pre-defined what is too much sleep.

omg! its not good to eat just once a day a “meal”. I think too much sleep isnt bad, whats bad for your health is too little sleep, it’ll make you get skinnier and then weaken your energy.

@LexWordsmith

It is somehting i undestand from articles that i read a while ago. All of us have a biological clock. Say if you wake up at 7 am and sleep at 11pm everyday for 1 month, your biological clock will be set to such timing. It sort of automatically wakes you up at 7 am everyday. Its pretty accurate. If you disrupt the timing, say if you sleep at 2am and wake up at 2pm , then you body will adjust to that sort of time and it takes a while to kick off that habit. I know this because i used to this when i was still studying.

Not related but interesting is the fact the alcohol can also affect the biological clock. alcohol makes us less senstive towards light therefore upsetting our wake up time. thats why people with hangover tends to lay on the bed till the afternoon.

@mascarraaa : actually, for non-diabetics, one meal a day (as small as is tolerable) might be good, because insulin is a growth hormone, thereby causing aging, so you want to trigger your body’s production of it as little as possible.

Yes.

@atlantis You’re thinking about the circadian rhythm.

@gailcalled : hmmmm, we seem to be visiting a lot of the same threads. Apparently, you called, and i answered—i hope that works for you!<grin>

@LexWordsmith: Antiphony, man.

i forwent saying “you called, and i raised,” because thinking “poker” put me over the line for suggestiveness, until you made it clear that you’re anti-phony.<grin>

@LexWordsmiht: It is a foregone conclusion that we think alike.

and. still better for the sake of future mutual geniality, like to think!

@mea05key I wonder about that study. It might be that people who sleep a lot tend to be more sedentary and that has an effect on their overall health.

Too much is totally bad for you! It weakens your immune system and not to mention is feels crappy! When I get 10 hour of sleep, I’m tired all day and feel like I could sleep all day. When I get like 7 I feel a little more energetic

@Steverpeeps: Can you cite a source for getting to much sleep leading to a weakened immune system? I would be interested to read a scientific studying showing a causal connection between the two.

I can’t find a specific scientific study that says it online, but common threads are expressed here. There is a reference to a UK study here also, as well as references to many more studies.

Basically, the idea is that too much sleep weakens the body and its immune system because it is not awake long enough to absorb sunlight or to get exercise. Too much sleep seems to be a contributing factor in diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and depression. It can also cause migraines. Also, too much sleep results in an excess of melatonin which leaves you feeling drained of energy.

According to WebMD, too much sleep has been shown in studies to lead to diabetes, obesity, headaches, back pain, depression, heart disease and an increased risk of death.

With some of these, however, it may be the chicken and the egg: do you sleep too much and then end up obese and diabetic? Or do you get obese and then diabetic, and then start to sleep too much?

Thanks @Darwin (again!) but I didn’t see any causal connection in any of those. The first one wasn’t a scientific paper and didn’t seem to cite any, and the second even said of the participants in the study, “Some reasons cited for too much sleep included depression, low socioeconomic status and cancer-related fatigue.” Clearly people who suffer from depression, cancer, or poverty are going to have a shorter lifespan than those who don’t. The third one basically said the same thing.

I think you and I are both just showing different sides of the same coin though. I think establishing a causal connection would be extremely difficult without using truly randomized experimental design, instead of the observational studies that have been done so far.

Darwin – Thanks for that answer – I didn’t know too much sleep could cause migraines and back pain! That explains a lot for me!

@Steverpeeps – I just found out yesterday, though, that now the “experts” say women who get migraines have a reduced risk of breast cancer.

WHOA! Really? That is awesome to know, but weird! lol

The kicker was that I was having a migraine at the same time I was trying to read the article.

lol, isn’t that ironic! lol Hate that when that happens!