Tossing and turning tied to more death and cancer

What's the news: Long "sleep latency" is tied to much greater risk of death and cancer.

Why should we believe it: This news is based on a study published last week by scientists from Korea. They tracked a population of 3757 people over almost 14 years. And they found that:

1. Habitual long sleep latency (taking more than an hour to fall asleep once a week, or more than 30 mins 3x per week) was tied to a 2.2x risk of all-cause mortality

2. Habitual long sleep latency was tied to a 2.7x risk of cancer

3. There was no connection between habitual long sleep latency and cardiovascular disease and other causes of death

What's going on? We don't know. This is just a statistical analysis, though a scary one. Maybe it's just a strange correlation. Maybe sleep latency and cancer risk both go up due to some underlying factor. Maybe cancer, even in its very early stages, impacts sleep. Or maybe long sleep latency does in some ways contribute to cancer.

So what specifically can you do now: While we certainly don't know for sure that sleep latency contributes to cancer and mortality, falling asleep sooner will certainly not hurt you, and is very likely to benefit you, both immediately and in the long term. But how do you fall asleep faster?

I recently came across an article describing a method supposedly developed by the U.S. Army to fall asleep "under any conditions, including gunfire." It sounds preposterous. But I tried it, minus the gunfire. I was surprised. It works, over and over. If you'd like to read about it and try it yourself, you can find it here.