How Many Years Can Bad Sleep Take From Your Life?

In this video, Max Risk and Mia Optimal simulate two different sleep paths to see how poor sleep can affect lifespan, healthspan, and long-term disease risk over time. CHAPTERS 00:00 Same Age, Different Sleep Paths 01:05 Simulation Rules 01:58 Sleep Range 02:40 Short Sleep 03:30 Long Sleep 04:15 Sleep Quality 05:27 Metabolic Fallout 05:59 Diabetes 06:40 Blood Pressure 07:19 Stroke 07:59 Regular Sleep 08:34 Final Scoreboard This video was made without any AI involvement. The research, script, narration, editing, visuals, and final production were created manually by Yuna Lebed. The voiceover is my real human voice. This episode is based on real scientific evidence: peer-reviewed research, official health data, population-level studies, and expert guidelines where available. This is science entertainment, not medical advice. The numbers come from real data, but they are population-level estimates, not personal predictions. SOURCES 1. Mortality in the United States, 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/dat... 2. The Routledge Handbook of the Economics of Ageing, 2023. DOI: 10.4324/9781003150398-30 3. Recommended Amount of Sleep for a Healthy Adult: A Joint Consensus Statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society, 2015. DOI: 10.5664/jcsm.4758 4. National Sleep Foundation's sleep time duration recommendations: methodology and results summary, 2015. DOI: 10.1016/j.sleh.2014.12.010 5. Imbalanced sleep increases mortality risk by 14-34%: a meta-analysis, 2025. DOI: 10.1007/s11357-025-01592-y 6. Joint Associations of Device-Measured Sleep Duration and Efficiency With All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality: A Prospective Cohort Study of 90 398 UK Biobank Participants, 2023. DOI: 10.1093/gerona/glad108 7. Meta-analysis of short sleep duration and obesity in children and adults, 2008. DOI: 10.1093/sleep/31.5.619 8. Life expectancy associated with different ages at diagnosis of type 2 diabetes in high-income countries: 23 million person-years of observation, 2023. DOI: 10.1016/S2213-8587(23)00223-1 9. Blood pressure in adulthood and life expectancy with cardiovascular disease in men and women: life course analysis, 2005. DOI: 10.1161/01.HYP.0000173433.67426.9b 10. Association of Cardiometabolic Multimorbidity With Mortality, 2015. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2015.7008 11. Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration: A prospective cohort study, 2024. DOI: 10.1093/sleep/zsad253 If you want more evidence-based life simulations like this, subscribe to Life XP and like the video. It helps motivate more long-form episodes. What should Max Risk and Mia Optimal simulate next? Write your ideas in the comments.