[waxman]

A recently published controlled study found that in two groups who were deliberately exposed to the cold virus then forced to sleep less than 6 hours a night or more than 8 hours, the group that slept less than 6 hours caught colds at a 4.5X greater rate, which was independent of previous immune system strength, age, socio-economic, and every other variable they tracked.

The experimental design seems to be pretty solid, and once these findings are replicated, this is pretty strong evidence that "we're not getting enough sleep."

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/short-sleepers-may-...

[obastani]

The claim made by the article isn't that getting < 8 hours of sleep is bad (they agree it is), it's that most people get 8 hours of sleep; more specifically, that many surveys overestimate the number of people who get too little sleep.

[mordocai]

Unless you also show that a majority of people are getting less than 6 hours of sleep a night I don't see how the summary you gave shows that people are not getting enough sleep.

I did not read your link.

[waxman]

There are interesting challenges with data collection (and I don't think the survey paper discussed in the OP really solves this problem), but to be clear, somewhere between 10-30% of Americans average fewer than 6 hours of sleep per night, which increases your risk of catching colds by 450%.

So getting less sleep than you need is definitely harmful, the questions become: a) how much do we really need, b) how much are people actually getting, and the jury still seems to be out on both of these.

[mayoff]

It's evidence that lack of sleep is unhealthy. It's not evidence that we are (on average) lacking sleep.

[eterm]

No, it's evidence that we need more than 6 hours sleep, it's not evidence that we're not getting 6 hours sleep.