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Natural Sciences Active Updated Aug 25, 2026

Organ-specific aging clocks find sleep's biological sweet spot

Columbia University researchers built 23 separate organ-specific biological aging clocks from blood-based machine learning models trained on nearly half a million UK Biobank participants. Sleeping between roughly 6.4 and 7.8 hours a day showed the lowest aging scores across almost every organ, while both shorter and longer sleep tracked with faster aging and more disease. The stakes are identifying which modifiable lifestyle factors, beyond sleep, could be adjusted in time to actually slow organ aging.

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  1. Aug 25, 2026 Latest

    Columbia University researchers led by Junhao Wen built 23 organ-specific aging clocks from blood-based machine learning models trained on nearly half a million UK Biobank participants and found the lowest aging scores across almost every organ in people sleeping between roughly 6.4 and 7.8 hours a day, with both shorter and longer sleep linked to faster aging and broader disease risk.

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