Not getting enough sleep may make you feel years older
Insufficient sleep seems to result in people feeling older than they are, with a higher “subjective age” previously being linked to depression
By Chen Ly
27 March 2024
Prioritising sleep could make you feel younger
Uwe Krejci/Getty Images
Sleep deprivation could make you feel several years older than you really are.
How old someone feels, or their subjective age, has been associated with various physical and mental health outcomes, particularly depression. “Age is more than just the perception,” says Leonie Balter at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. “We know those who feel younger than their actual age live healthier and longer.”
Given sleep’s importance for our mental and physical health, Balter and John Axelsson, also at the Karolinska Institute, decided to investigate if it affects our subjective age.
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The pair enlisted 429 people – aged 18 to 70 years old – to take a survey on how old they felt and how much they had slept in the past 30 days.
They found that reporting insufficient sleep was linked to the participants feeling older than they were, with each day of poor sleep adding an average of 0.23 years to their subjective age. In contrast, those who reported getting sufficient sleep throughout the 30 days had a subjective age that was 5.81 years younger on average than their real age.
