Overview
- The peer-reviewed study in Sleep Advances examined more than 3,000 U.S. counties using CDC self-reported sleep data from 2019–2025.
- Insufficient sleep, defined as fewer than seven hours per night, was consistently associated with shorter lifespan across most states and years.
- Among behavioral factors modeled, insufficient sleep ranked second to smoking in its association with life expectancy after adjusting for diet, inactivity and loneliness.
- Authors cautioned that the observational design and self-reported measures limit causal inference and may leave unmeasured confounders.
- The team urged elevating sleep in public-health messaging alongside diet and exercise, noting partial NIH funding and the study’s novel county-by-county mapping.