In the great quest for a satisfying night of rest, comes a twist. In a six-year study of more than a million adults age 30 to 102, University of California psychiatry professor Daniel Kripke found that those who sleep just six or seven hours a night have a lower death rate than those who sleep eight hours a night.

For those of us who were raised on the theory of eight hours a night, this is truly interesting news. "There is really no evidence that the average eight-hour sleeper functions better than the average 6- or 7-hour sleeper," Kripke said in a Live Science interview. Kripke's study also found that insomniacs who clock around 3.5 hours a night live longer than those who get more than 7.5 hours of sleep a night.

If that's not a big enough blow to big sleepers, Kripke also suspects that people who sleep less than average make more money and are generally more successful.

[via Live Science]

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