PHYSICAL HEALTH ISSUES
The study's findings suggest more isn't necessarily better when it comes to sleep. Aiming for seven to nine hours is ideal, and sleeping longer than that won't bring extra health benefits. In fact, potentially the opposite—excess sleep can affect your lifestyle and make you more prone to certain health issues.
That's according to sleep experts at Amerisleep, who say regularly sleeping longer than the recommended time period can result in greater rates of inflammation and reported pain, as well as a higher risk of developing health issues like diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and stroke.
Take it from one group of researchers: "The evidence that long sleep is associated with obesity, diabetes, hypertension or other cardiovascular diseases and with a 20% to 30% higher mortality risk has consistently been found even stronger than the associations with short sleep."
MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES
Getting too much sleep may also have a negative effect on mental health. Amerisleep cites a 2014 study that links sleep duration to the developmental course of anxiety and depression disorders. "Long sleep duration was independently associated with persistence of depression/anxiety even after adjusting for severity of psychiatric symptoms," the study's authors write.
What's more, there are certain research studies that link regular oversleeping with a greater rate of self-reported "psychological distress" and unease. Anyone who's a marathon sleeper (like I am) knows it can certainly make you feel groggy, and even that's enough to affect my mood and productivity, which is obviously not ideal.
