Sufficient Sleep For Longevity

A 2025 study published in SLEEP Advances examined the relationship between insufficient sleep and life expectancy across U.S. counties using data from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System collected between 2019 and 2025. Researchers analyzed county-level patterns to assess whether variations in sleep duration were associated with differences in life expectancy while accounting for well-established behavioral risk factors such as smoking, diet, and a sedentary lifestyle.

The study found that counties where people consistently got too little sleep had shorter life expectancy, a pattern seen across most states and years studied. This relationship remained statistically significant even after adjusting for traditional predictors of mortality, indicating that sleep insufficiency independently contributes to reduced lifespan. Sleep insufficiency was more strongly correlated with reduced lifespan than either diet or physical inactivity; only smoking had a stronger association with earlier mortality.

Importantly, the association between inadequate sleep and lower life expectancy was observed across counties regardless of income, access to health care, or geographic classification. The authors position sleep as a fundamental determinant of health and longevity, comparable in importance to other widely recognized health behaviors.