While sleep is essential for health, one should not overdo anything, no matter how healthy or beneficial, and doctors have linked it to some serious diseases. So today we'll learn about these diseases and the harms of sleeping more than 10 hours daily, so you can avoid these illnesses and stay healthy.
How much healthy sleep does a person need?
The amount of sleep varies from person to person due to several factors, which differ among individuals. We'll explain these in the next lines:
- Heredity
Genes play an important role in sleep duration. Scientists found that some people feel fine sleeping less than 4 hours. This is because of changes in some of their genes. But this mutation is very rare. Most people feel well when they sleep 7 to 8 hours.
- Age
Kids and younger ones need longer sleep than young adults, and older adults need less sleep.
- Activity Level
The more active you are, the more sleep you need because sleep helps you recover faster and easier.
- Health
If someone has more health issues, they need longer sleep than healthy people. We mean short-term illnesses like the flu.
- Life Changes
Life always changes, and stress or tension can hit you sometimes, which can affect your sleep. It might make you sleep too much or not enough.
Reasons for oversleeping:
There are many reasons that make you sleep too much and these reasons are:
- Oversleeping
Oversleeping is a medical term for a type of sleep disorder like insomnia. It happens when a person sleeps for long periods during the day and night without a clear reason. This condition might affect memory, lower energy, and cause sluggishness.
- Narcolepsy
This disease is a neurological sleep disorder where the brain can't control the sleep periods a person has. People with this condition sleep a lot during all activities like driving and during the day.
- Sleep apnea
The person faces brief episodes where they cannot breathe normally. These episodes make them feel the need to sleep and cause constant drowsiness because they disrupt normal sleep patterns.
- Depression
Depression is one of the most common reasons that makes a person sleep excessively and have no energy to do anything else. So, depressed people tend to sleep all day for long periods.
- Medications
Many medications have side effects that include long sleep times. If you notice some drugs cause sleep problems for you, you should talk to your doctor to help find an alternative medicine.
Medical problems that can result from your sleep habits:
Sleeping too long causes many health issues and risks your health like lack of sleep does. It can cause you to get one of these diseases:
- Heart diseases: Your heart may develop diseases from oversleeping. The CDC says women have a higher risk due to sleep disorders.
- Weight gain: Research shows people who sleep more than 9 hours store more calories because they are less active, so they burn fewer calories.
- Diabetes: Oversleeping affects blood sugar levels and this could lead to type 2 diabetes.
- Focus and cognition issues: Sleeping too much may cause early aging symptoms in the brain, making it hard to do daily tasks, and you often feel sleepy.
- Depression: Depression affects sleep and is affected by it. It may be a cause or a symptom of sleep problems and the effects that follow.
- Headaches: Oversleeping can cause headaches when you wake up. This might be urgent or could get worse into a medical problem.
When should you ask for help?
Anyone who sleeps more than 10 hours a day should see a doctor to find out why and treat the oversleeping before it harms other health areas. If medicine is causing it, stop it right away and try to fix your sleep schedule and set your body clock.
