At what ages do people sleep the least across their lives? While some might think it’s in early maturity when 20-somethings are taking advantage of their youth and financial freedom, a latest study has found it’s, actually, not the case. People sleep the least from their early thirties until their early fifties, in line with researchers.

For the study, published in Nature Communications, researchers checked out the changes in people’s sleep duration throughout their lives, and the way they may differ across countries by assessing the information from 730,187 participants from 63 countries.

Because the researchers explained, sleep is “essential for our well-being.” How long people sleep varies from one person to a different, however it’s one in all the aspects that determine “many health and social domains.”

“Particularly, age has been shown to elucidate a big share of the variance in sleep duration throughout the general population, with children sleeping considerably longer and higher than adults, and younger adults sleeping lower than older ones,” they wrote.

Of their study, the researchers used data from the Sea Hero Quest project, which is a video game that was developed to evaluate people’s navigation ability. It was designed to support Alzheimer’s research, in line with University College London (UCL), and it has contributed to “quite a few studies…as an entire.”

One in every of the questions asked of the players of the sport, as an example, is about their sleep patterns. Through this, the researchers found that there have been three “distinct” phases in humans’ life courses—early maturity (19-33 years old), mid-adulthood (34 to 53 years old) and late maturity (54 years old and over).

While the youngest participants with the minimum age of 19 slept essentially the most, sleep quality began declining as they progressed into early maturity until 33 years of age. The decrease then slows down and plateaus, just for the sleep to extend again across the time they hit 53.

In other words, people slept the least ranging from their early thirties until their early fifties, and this was the identical for each women, across countries and even educational levels.

“Such reductions in sleep to mid-life have previously been related to the demands of child-care and dealing life,” the researchers wrote. “The increasing sleep reported after 53 years is probably going related to a discount in child-rearing responsibilities and alleviation of other aspects driving the lower sleep in mid-life.”

Additionally they found some reasonably interesting differences within the sleep patterns of individuals across groups. As an illustration, although the world average sleep duration was 7.01 hours each night, women on average slept about 7.5 minutes longer than men.

And although the age pattern was “remarkably stable across countries,” there have been still some geographical differences within the sleep duration of the participants per country.

Specifically, those in Eastern European countries slept essentially the most, having an additional 20 to 40 minutes of sleep every night. Then again, those in South East Asian countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, slept the least.

Cultural norms could also be behind these differences, the researchers said. As an illustration, some countries may frown upon taking naps within the workplace while others see it as normal.

The difference may be explained, they said, by latitude, with those near the equator tending to sleep less.

“Prior research has found that a rustic’s average bedtime, but not average wake time, predicts sleep duration and that solar cues do influence sleep but are being attenuated in the true world,” they wrote.

While previous studies have checked out people’s sleep patterns, the researchers said, these normally focused on only a particular age group, or particular sleep problem, or relied on smaller sample sizes.

“Previous studies have found associations between age and sleep duration, but ours is the primary large study to discover these three distinct phases across the life course,” study lead Professor Hugo Spiers of UCL, said within the university news release. “We found that across the globe, people sleep less during mid-adulthood, but average sleep duration varies between regions and between countries.”

The study also shows how sleep researchers can utilize widespread video game use the world over to accumulate data on larger and more diverse populations, the researchers said.