Good sleep in midlife could extend working life: study

People who have a healthy sleeping pattern in middle age tend to keep working for longer, a study suggests.

Meanwhile, sleeping for lengthy periods of nine hours or more, or being disturbed regularly, were linked to leaving the workforce up to nine months earlier.

To explore if good quality sleep may lead to longer careers, researchers in Finland looked at data from people aged 50 up to the age of 68.

They analysed two studies: one which included more than 70,000 public sector staff from 2000 to 2016, and another of 6071 working age adults in Finland from 1998 to 2013.

Data on sleep was collected after people turned 50, and was categorised as either short (under seven hours), mid-range (seven to eight and a half hours) and long (nine or more hours).

Disturbances included problems falling or staying asleep and waking too early.

People who reported no disturbances had a working life expectancy of 13 years five months.

This was compared with 13 years among those moderately disturbed two to four nights a week, and 12 years 10 months among people whose sleep was disturbed almost every night.

The longest working life expectancy - almost 14 years - was among professional women who reported no sleep disturbances.

The shortest - almost 12.5 years - was among men with severe sleep disturbances.

Elsewhere, public sector workers who slept from under seven to eight and a half hours had a working life expectancy of 13 years two months, while those who slept for more than nine hours were expected to work 12 years five months.

Researchers also found a difference in working life expectancy between professional workers with higher levels of education and those in routine jobs with lower levels of education.

Among 50-year-old public sector workers, the longest life expectancy was around 13 years seven months among men and women in professional roles and short sleep lengths.

The shorted was six years five months, among men in routine jobs with low levels of education who slept for more than nine hours a night.