Getting a good night's sleep could be a lifesaver.
Those of us who manage between six and eight hours of shut-eye a night are more likely to live longer and have better health, a study has found.
Researchers say the best length for a nightly sleep is around seven hours - the time spent in bed by most Britons.
Their findings provide the most convincing evidence yet of a link between too little sleep and an increased risk of early death.
Around one third of the UK adult population regularly sleeps five hours or less a night.
Researchers from the University of Warwick and the Federico II University in Naples studied the nightly habits of thousands of people and found poor sleepers are 12 per cent more likely to die prematurely than those who get six to eight hours.
Long sleepers could also be in trouble if they regularly exceed nine hours a night.
While over-sleeping does not in itself increase the risk of death, it can be a significant marker of an underlying serious illness.
The findings published in journal Sleep today coincide with the release of a separate American study that found older people tend to sleep better - the opposite of what was previously thought.
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