Comment by bjornsing

2 years ago

Another hypothesis that seems plausible to me is that what we’re really measuring when looking at sleep is mental health, and mental health is a strong predictor of mortality 10-15 years into the future.

You are already correct, but the actual factor here is trait Neuroticism (negative emotion personality dimension), which is very roughly speaking a combination of genetic factors and your ACE score. ACE score is shockingly good at predicting mortality, having one over 6 makes people die on average 20 years earlier.

  • Yeah that’s kind of what I’m after: ACEs mess up people’s sleep and cause early deaths. That makes sleep patters a strong predictor for all cause mortality, but the causal relationship is really ”ACEs cause both poor sleep and early death”.