In addition to drinking loads of wine in order to make its readers happier (how does that work again?)… InterWined is dedicated to bringing helpful health news on a weekly basis. One of the little discussed benefits of responsible wine drinking is that, quite simply, it helps you sleep. The wine helps the body produce Seratonin, which is responsible for running the body’s circadian rhythm.

Without getting too complicated, think of how overindulging in wine can make it hard to get out of bed in the morning. And, as it turns out too much sleep can be as detrimental as too little.

Researchers from the University of Warwick, and University College London, have found that lack of sleep can more than double the risk of death from cardiovascular disease. However they have also found that point comes when too much sleep can also more than double the risk of death.

In research presented yesterday to the British Sleep Society, Professor Francesco Cappuccio from the University of Warwick’s Warwick Medical School showed how sleep patterns affected the mortality of 10,308 civil servants in the “Whitehall II study”.

The researchers took into account factors such as age, sex, marital status, employment grade, smoking status, physical activity, alcohol consumption, self-rated health, body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol, other physical illness etc. Once they had adjusted for those factors they were able to isolate the effect that changes in sleep patterns over 5 years had on mortality rates 11-17 years later.

Those who had cut their sleeping from 7h to 5 hours or less faced a 1.7 fold increased risk in mortality from all causes, and twice the increased risk of death from a cardiovascular problem in particular.

“Fewer hours sleep and greater levels of sleep disturbance have become widespread in industrialised societies. This change, largely the result of sleep curtailment to create more time for leisure and shift-work, has meant that reports of fatigue, tiredness and excessive daytime sleepiness are more common than a few decades ago. Sleep represents the daily process of physiological restitution and recovery, and lack of sleep has far-reaching effects,” said Cappuccio.

Curiously the researchers also found that too much sleep also increased mortality. They found that those individuals who showed an increase in sleep duration to 8 hours or more a night were more than twice as likely to die as those who had not changed their habit, however, predominantly from non-cardiovascular diseases.

“In terms of prevention, our findings indicate that consistently sleeping around 7 hours per night is optimal for health and a sustained reduction may predispose to ill-health,” said Cappuccio.

Like what you've read? Why not subscribe to InterWined.com and get the lastest posts delivered fresh to your feeder.