Besides eating a healthy diet and engaging in regular exercise, obtaining a good night’s sleep remains one of the key controllable factors in achieving good health and well-being.
While it is relatively easy to eat more nutritious foods and avoid ultra-processed options, as well as to begin walking, it is much more difficult to simply “will” yourself to sleep a full 8 hours. This final factor, however, often makes the critical difference between vibrant well-being and compromised health.
Two newly published studies show that routinely getting fewer than 7 hours of sleep impacts next-day energy and activity levels and is also linked to a shorter life expectancy.
It has long been assumed that exercising or engaging in physical activity leads to better sleep. However, a research team from Flinders University in Australia found that the opposite is often true: a good night’s sleep is what energizes people for the following day. Their three-year study (2020 – 2023) tracked approximately 71,000 participants who used wearable devices (a wrist tracker and an under-mattress sensor), providing researchers with approximately 28 million days of real-world data.
Their data analysis revealed that most people fall short of the widely recommended eight hours of sleep and 8,000 daily steps a day. Only12.9% of participants consistently met both the recommended sleep and physical activity targets, while 16.5% averaged fewer than seven hours of sleep and fewer than 5,000 steps per day. Additionally, sleep duration and quality appeared largely unaffected by the previous day’s step count.
According to lead author Josh Fitton, the findings show that sleep quality and duration have a stronger influence on next-day physical activity than the reverse. “We found that getting a good night’s sleep, especially high-quality sleep, sets you up for a more active day,” he stated. “People who slept well tended to move more the following day, but taking extra steps didn’t meaningfully improve sleep that night. This highlights the importance of prioritizing sleep if we want to boost physical activity.”
In the second study, researchers from Oregon Health & Science University sought to identify a relationship between regular sleep duration and life expectancy by analyzing data from more than 3,000 US counties between 2019 and 2025. They examined responses from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a nationwide telephone survey conducted monthly. Survey participants were asked to report the average number of hours they sleep per night.
The researchers found that insufficient sleep was significantly and negatively correlated with life expectancy in most states, while lower levels of sleep insufficiency were associated with longer life expectancy. Counties in which larger proportions of residents reported sleeping fewer than seven hours per night demonstrated measurably shorter life expectancies. “We’ve always thought that sleep is important, but this research really drives that point home. People should strive to get seven to nine hours of sleep whenever possible,” said senior author Andrew McHill, PhD.
Why Eight Hours of Sleep Matters
Consistently healthy sleep supports sustained mental and physical energy, stable mood, cognitive acuity and flexibility, and resilience against stress and anxious tension.
By contrast, habitual poor sleep, defined by insufficient duration and irregular quality, rather than occasional sleepless nights, can contribute to a range of health problems, including weight gain, hypertension, chronic inflammation, and increased risk of disease onset, such as Alzheimer’s Disease.
Why Sustained-Release Melatonin is the Best Choice
Melatonin is widely recognized for helping people fall asleep faster and for improving overall sleep quality. However, most immediate-release melatonin products support sleep for only four to five hours at most, as the studies attested above.
A melatonin formulation that supports up to 8 hours of quality sleep offers a more complete solution. Melotime™ is an extended-release melatonin ingredient designed to mimic the body’s natural sleep pattern and support sustained, good-quality sleep. Its unique release profile delivers a significant portion in the first hour, followed by continuous release of melatonin for up to 6 hours to help maintain sleep throughout the night. This dual-phase delivery supports both rapid sleep onset and prolonged sleep quality.
Melotime’s sustained-release technology delivers up to 50% of its high-quality melatonin within the first hour, helping individuals fall asleep quickly. This is followed by precisely controlled releases over the next 6 hours with a gentle tapering effect in the final hour. Together, this delivery system promotes restorative, healthy sleep.
Results from a recent crossover human study comparing Melotime™ with common immediate-release melatonin showed higher plasma concentrations of melatonin during the delayed phase (four to eight hours) among participants using Melotime™. In addition, Melotime™ demonstrated an extended half-life of 5.10 hours, compared with just 1.01 hours for immediate-release melatonin.
Conclusion
The great news is that awareness of the importance of sleep in overall health and well-being continues to grow. For example, the National Sleep Foundation’s 2025 Sleep in America® survey found that:
- Individuals who obtain the recommended amount of sleep by the NSF are more likely to flourish.
- Adults who are satisfied with their sleep are 45% more likely to be flourishing than those who are not.
- Individuals with no difficulty falling asleep are 47% more likely to be flourishing than those who struggle to fall asleep three or more nights per week.
- Three out of four adults report that good-quality sleep has a positive impact on their overall flourishing.
Sleeping soundly and waking up refreshed and energized is no longer a dream. With Melotime™, restorative sleep is within reach.
Reviewed by Sneha Sawant Desai, PhD
