Seven hours of sleep.
This is the ideal night for people over 40 who want to preserve their mental health, according to a study published this Thursday in the journal
Nature Aging
, reports
Madame Figaro
.
For their work, researchers from the universities of Cambridge (United Kingdom) and Fudan (China) questioned 500,000 people aged 38 to 73 about their sleep habits, their mental health and their general well-being.
The participants then took a series of cognitive tests and their genetic data was analyzed.
Sleep well to preserve mental health
The researchers found that those who sleep seven hours a night, no more and no less, show better abilities in tests relating to information processing speed, visual attention, memory and the ability to solve problems.
The signs of anxiety and depression would also be less present than in the others.
According to a professor from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, getting a good night's sleep is even more crucial as we get older.
This allows in particular to maintain mental health and to avoid cognitive decline, "especially for patients suffering from psychiatric disorders and dementia", indicated the author.
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