Research

Hormonal

In women, sleeping 8 hours is associated with significantly lower Interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels compared to sleeping 7 hours, suggesting an optimal sleep window for this specific inflammatory marker.

For women, extending sleep from 7 to 8 hours may help lower IL-6, a key inflammatory marker. While 7 hours is often cited as standard, this data suggests 8 hours might be the sweet spot for inflammation control in women, whereas men showed no such benefit.

GoodQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
However, a consistent observation was that those individuals who slept 8 hours per night, as compared with those who slept 7 hours, had significantly lower levels of IL-6 (P < 0.05).
Michelle A. Miller et al. · SLEEP · 2009

Why this rating

Statistically significant in multiple adjusted models, but the overall linear/nonlinear trend was not significant, making it a specific contrast rather than a general rule.

Source

Gender Differences in the Cross-Sectional Relationships Between Sleep Duration and Markers of inflammation: Whitehall II Study

Michelle A. Miller et al. · SLEEP · 2009

DOI 10.1093/sleep/32.7.857

cross_sectional · n=5100Cited 209×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

This is one finding among thousands. Every one is graded and traced to its source, so you can see what the evidence actually supports. Browse the research →