Golden slumbers: The health benefits of good sleep

Sleep is one of our 'Big Six Lifestyle Risk Factors' which influence health and wellness, and is a critical driver of health – playing an essential restorative role in replenishing energy stores of the body, memory consolidation, and immuno-protection. A lack of sleep is a contributing factor to health conditions including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer that impact large numbers of people globally. Studies indicate that between 10% and 30% of adults worldwide have difficulties initiating and maintaining sleep, and that many people today are living under a regimen of constant 'sleep debt', i.e. the unfulfilled physiological need for sleep.

For insurers, an improved understanding of the relationship between sleep and health can enhance underwriting and be used to develop health and wellness offerings that enhance customer experiences and engagement.

Understanding how the different phases and facets of sleep influence different risk factors is a compelling area of research. The development of wearable and health tracker technologies has opened up exciting new avenues to understand how large numbers of people move and sleep in their daily lives and how these link to markers of health. So it is critical to mature and validate these new dynamic data sources. 

A new Swiss Re partnership with the University of Oxford will compare sleep patterns from clinical and wearables data, and then explore associations between sleep and health conditions in members of a large, long-term research cohort. Over coming months and years we aim to deliver a host of insights covering medical, behavioural, and data spheres. Ultimately this will enable further refined risk-management and development of solutions for customers that improve their sleep, wider wellbeing and health.