想长寿，多睡觉

睡眠不足会引发疾病。

马修•沃克是加州大学伯克利分校人类睡眠科学中心的主任，他在接受《卫报》采访时解释了背后的原因。

沃克通过研究发现，与那些每晚睡眠足够的人相比，睡眠不足的人往往健康状况不佳，活力较差。他分析了20个互不相关的独立研究结果，发现人们的睡眠时间与长寿程度存在强烈正相关的关系。简而言之，睡眠越少，寿命越短。

听起来有点不对，因为我们很多人都把睡觉与懒惰联系起来。沃克对《卫报》说:“我们想让自己看上去很忙的样子，所以常常对别人说自己睡眠很少，就像睡眠不够是一种荣誉勋章。”沃克说，不少听众等到他演讲结束后悄悄告诉他，他们每晚需要8-9个小时的睡眠，那样子就像是在承认干了什么错事儿。这么做不但没错儿，而且是选择了更健康的生活方式。

以其中一项研究结果为例，45岁及以上年龄的人群如果每晚睡眠少于6小时，与每晚睡眠7-8小时的人群相比，前者在一生中心脏病发作或者中风的几率是后者的2倍。在其它研究中，睡眠过少导致肥胖风险升高，老年痴呆症加重，而且身体机能失调的旧病容易复发。此外，缺乏睡眠会导致人体免疫力降低。

“我并不是说肥胖完全是因为缺觉造成的。加工食品以及长期伏案、缺乏运动的生活方式并不能完全解释为何肥胖案例数量呈上升趋势，一定有什么因素被我们忽略了。现在弄明白了，睡眠是造成肥胖的第三个原因，”沃克说。

沃克建议人们尽量避免熬夜。清醒19小时后，人类的认知功能受损，和醉酒的相当。他还建议人们把睡眠当成一种任务，就像去健身房那样，要保证让自己按时上床睡觉。

“人们会设置起床闹钟，其实也可以设一个睡觉闹钟，告诉自己还有半小时就要去睡觉了，要安静入眠了。”沃克对《卫报》说。 （财富中文网） 

译者：珠珠

Too little sleep is making us sick.

In an interview with The Guardian, Matthew Walker, Director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, explains how.

Through his work, he’s determined that people who don’t get enough sleep tend to be less healthy and have lower energy levels than those who get the recommended amount of shut eye per night. After analyzing the results of 20 separate studies, he’s found a strong correlation between how much people sleep and how long they live. In summary: The less you sleep, the shorter your life will be.

This is a problem, particularly because many of us are conditioned to equate sleep with laziness. “We want to seem busy, and one way we express that is by proclaiming how little sleep we’re getting,” he told The Guardian. “It’s a badge of honor.” When he gives talks, he says people will wait until afterwards to whisper to them that they need eight or nine hours of sleep at night, similar to how someone might confess a crime. But they shouldn’t — they’re the ones making the healthier choice.

In one study, for instance, adults age 45 and older that slept less than 6 hours each night were 200% more likely to have a heart attack or stroke during their lifetime compared to participants who got seven or eight hours. In other studies, sleeping less has been associated with an increased risk of weight gain, developing Alzheimers, and relapses in addition disorders. On a basic level, lack of sleep also lowered participants’ immune systems.

“I’m not going to say that the obesity crisis is caused by the sleep-loss epidemic alone,” says Walker. “It’s not. However, processed food and sedentary lifestyles do not adequately explain its rise. Something is missing. It’s now clear that sleep is that third ingredient.”

Walker’s suggestion for people: Avoid pulling all-nighters. After you’ve been awake for 19 hours you’re essentially as cognitively impaired as a drunk person. Also, think of sleep like a job. Just like going to the gym, you need to make sure you go to bed.

“People use alarms to wake up,” Walker told The Guardian. “So why don’t we have a bedtime alarm to tell us we’ve got half an hour, that we should start cycling down?”