Sleep depravation, must know

 Sleep deprivation is the new smoking.

New data across 3,143 US counties (2019-2025) ranks getting <7 hours of sleep as the 3rd strongest predictor of a shorter life, trailing only smoking and obesity.

+ smoking -0.28 yrs per 1% prevalence
+ obesity -0.18 yrs per 1% prevalence
+ insufficient sleep -0.08 yrs per 1% prevalence

Study limitations:

The study's reliance on self-reported telephone data and county-level ecological regression means associations are not causal.

The lack of a "too long" sleep category (over 9 hours) likely underestimates the true effect, as long sleep is also linked to poorer health.

The study is confounded by the Covid-19 pandemic period, which temporarily altered sleep patterns, especially through lock-down periods. However, the negative association between insufficient sleep and life expectancy persisted across all years from 2019 to 2024, suggesting that the relationship is not solely driven by pandemic-specific effects.

Counterintuitive findings (e.g., higher unemployment correlating with longer life expectancy) are likely artifacts of confounding or temporary population shifts, not protective effects.

Note: these numbers assume that the study’s regression coefficients represent changes in life expectancy (in years) for each 1 percentage point change in the behavior, which is consistent with the methods but not clearly spelled out by the authors.