Diet and exercise are both factors that can influence how long you live, but they're not the single greatest predictor of your longevity, research suggests.
According to a recent study, there's something else that might have more of an effect in terms of curtailing your lifespan.
While poor sleep has been previously linked to a host of health issues, this latest investigation found that getting enough shut-eye had a stronger connection to living longer than diet and exercise – factors that are known to add years to your life.
Researchers from Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) crunched the numbers on survey data from across the US, covering the years 2019 to 2025.
Measures of life expectancy were compared against self-reported evaluations of sleep duration, with less than seven hours per night considered a threshold for insufficient sleep.
