- Sleep quality is more important for the quality of life than sleep duration or “social jetlag”, a new Czech study suggests.
- To date, little research has explored the long-term effects of changes in sleep length or sleep quality on quality of life.
- Researchers at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in Prague, Czechia examined thousands of individual and household data to find a correlation.
- They found that “individuals who experience higher quality sleep also have greater satisfaction with life, more well-being, feel healthier, perceive less work stress and are happier.”
Czechian scientists say that sleep quality plays a greater role in influencing the quality of life (QoL) than sleep duration or timing.
Their study, published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, is among the first to observe the impact of changes in sleep quality over the long term.
It is also the first study to test how social jetlag, a mismatch of internal sleep rhythms and environmental demands, may affect QoL.
Lead authors Michaela Kudrnáčová of Charles University’s Faculty of Social Sciences and Aleš Kudrnáč, Ph.D., of the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences concluded:
“While when we sleep and how long we sleep is important, individuals who have better quality sleep also have a better quality of life, regardless of the time and length of sleep. In addition, by following [4,523] people for three years, we found that those whose sleep improved also had an improved quality of life.”
Previous studies have shown that sleep disruptions and low quality sleep may decrease the quality of life.
The Charles University researchers define the quality of life (QoL) as “an interplay between the perception of an internal state, such as the experience of happiness or feeling of good heath or satisfaction, and external events in the surrounding environment, which may include family and career.”
They based their analysis on the parameters…
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