Men With Healthy Sleep Habits May Live Nearly 5 Years Longer, Study Suggests
Getting enough sleep is one thing. Getting the right kind of sleep consistent, restful, uninterrupted appears to be something else entirely, and research suggests it could add years to your life. A widely cited 2023 study found that people who hit five specific low-risk sleep markers lived significantly longer than those who didn’t, and newer research from 2025 links insufficient sleep to shorter life expectancy at the county level across the United States.
What the 2023 Sleep Study Found
The research by Haibin Li and Frank Qian analyzed data from the National Health Interview Survey (1997-2018), linked to National Death Index records through December 31, 2019. The team looked at 172,321 participants over a median follow-up of 4.3 years, during which 8,681 people died from any cause 2,610 from cardiovascular disease and 2,052 from cancer.
Researchers built a low-risk sleep score based on five factors
- Sleep duration of seven-eight hours per day
- Difficulty falling asleep no more than twice a week
- Trouble staying asleep on two or fewer nights per week
- No use of sleep medication
- Waking feeling rested at least five days a week
People who checked all five boxes had substantially lower mortality risk compared with those who checked one or none. Life expectancy at age 30 was 4.7 years greater for men and 2.4 years greater for women . The authors estimated that 7.9% of all-cause mortality in the cohort could be attributed to suboptimal sleep patterns.
Why Quality of Sleep Matters as Much as Quantity
Dr. Frank Qian, an internal medicine resident physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, emphasized that hours alone don’t tell the whole story. “We saw a clear dose-response relationship, so the more beneficial factors someone has in terms of having higher quality of sleep, they also have a stepwise lowering of all cause and cardiovascular mortality,” he said in an American College of Cardiology release. “I think these findings emphasize that just getting enough hours of sleep isn’t sufficient. You really have to have restful sleep and not have much trouble falling and staying asleep.”
Qian also urged younger adults not to postpone thinking about sleep. “Even from a young age, if people can develop these good sleep habits of getting enough sleep, making sure they are sleeping without too many distractions and have good sleep hygiene overall, it can greatly benefit their overall long-term health,” he said. “It’s important for younger people to understand that a lot of health behaviors are cumulative over time. Just like we like to say, ‘it’s never too late to exercise or stop smoking,’ it’s also never too early. And we should be talking about and assessing sleep more often.”
Why the Gender Gap in Sleep Research Matters
Sleep specialist Dr. Raj Dasgupta, an associate professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, told CNN that regularity the same good sleep night after night deserves as much attention as duration. “Recent studies have shown irregularity in sleep timing and duration have been linked to metabolic abnormalities and higher cardiovascular disease risk,” he said. “Encouraging maintenance of regular sleep schedules with consistent sleep durations may be an important part of lifestyle recommendations for the prevention of heart disease.”
He offered one possible explanation for why women in the study saw a smaller life expectancy gain than men obstructive sleep apnea can be harder to identify in women. The condition causes breathing to stop repeatedly during sleep and, as it worsens, raises the risk of coronary artery disease, heart attacks, heart failure and stroke.
“Women with obstructive sleep apnea often get underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed because they may not present with the classic symptoms that we see when we’re evaluating men,” Dasgupta said. “Maybe we need to ask different questions or look at different parameters, or is there something we’re missing here?”
How to Build Better Sleep Habits
The CDC recommends several practical habits that support healthier sleep. These are the basics most sleep specialists come back to, and they align closely with the five factors used in the 2023 mortality analysis.
- Go to bed and get up at the same time every day
- Keep your bedroom quiet, relaxing and at a cool temperature
- Turn off electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bedtime
- Avoid large meals and alcohol before bedtime
- Avoid caffeine in the afternoon or evening
- Exercise regularly and maintain a healthy diet
What Newer Research Adds to the Conversation
A study published in 2025 drew on the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System surveys from 2019 to 2025 to test how insufficient sleep tracks with life expectancy at the county level, controlling for other adverse health behaviors.
The results were consistent across most states lower rates of sleep insufficiency were associated with longer life expectancy. When controlling for traditional predictors of mortality, only smoking showed a stronger association with life expectancy than insufficient sleep. The authors concluded that adequate sleep matters “in all communities regardless of income level, access to health care services, or geographical classification.”
Senior author Andrew McHill, Ph.D., an associate professor at the OHSU School of Nursing, the OHSU School of Medicine and OHSU’s Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences, said the strength of the relationship surprised him. “I didn’t expect it to be so strongly correlated to life expectancy,” he said in an OHSU release. “We’ve always thought sleep is important, but this research really drives that point home. People really should strive to get seven to nine hours of sleep if at all possible.”
“It’s intuitive and makes a lot of sense, but it was still striking to see it materialize so strongly in all of these models,” McHill said. “I’m a sleep physiologist who understands the health benefits of sleep, but the strength of the association between sleep sufficiency and life expectancy was remarkable to me.”
He argued that sleep deserves the same daily attention as diet and exercise. “This research shows that we need to prioritize sleep at least as much as we do to what we eat or how we exercise,” he said. “Sometimes, we think of sleep as something we can set aside and maybe put off until later or on the weekend.”
“Getting a good night’s sleep will improve how you feel but also how long you live.”
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
