With all my obligations and desires, sleep often takes a second seat to everything else, though I try to get at least six hours a day. I know this is not unusual and for many, like new parents, sleeplessness is a fact of life.
A wide study covering more than 1.3m people and more than 100,00 deaths finds a correlation between inadequate/excessive sleep and premature death.
The study provides unequivocal evidence of the direct link between both short (less than 6 hours sleep a night) and long (9 hours or more) duration of sleep and an increased chance of dying prematurely, compared to those who sleep 6-8 hours a night on average.