Why is it actually bad for you? I know you’re at greater risk for heart disease and other things, but why?
In: Biology
We don’t know that it is. Correlation is NOT causation.
Sleeping more than ~10 hours is correlated with a variety of health problems, but it’s not known for certain that the extra sleep is the cause. Consider some of the things that make people want to sleep more: depression, sleep apnea, infections, a variety of medications, etc. All of these things either cause other health problems, or indicate that other health problems are present. Lower life expectancy is tied to sleeping longer mainly because being tired and needing more sleep is a symptom of a lot of things that shorten your life.
Sleep apnea, and not getting enough oxygen while you sleep, is definitely tied to heart disease. Though it too is also caused by other things that contribute to heart disease. There are more definite mechanisms to tie low oxygen levels to causing heart damage, while “sleeping too much” does not have well demonstrated methods for how it causes heart disease.
Saying that sleeping too much is bad for you is like saying that seeing doctors frequently causes you to die. Yes, a lot of people who go to doctors frequently end up dying, because when you’ve got something badly wrong with your health, you seek medical care a lot.
In short, people who need more sleep are people who have health problems, and if you find yourself needing a lot of sleep you should try to figure out what the root cause is, not worry that sleeping too much is harming you.
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