Torbjörn Åkerstedt
Torbjörn Åkerstedt writes about sleep as a daily health behaviour, showing how people misjudge their own sleep and how that gap matters for illness risk and wellbeing. He is a senior professor of psychology in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet and a researcher at the Stress Research Institute at Stockholm University, and he uses this background to translate sleep science into clear, data‑driven explainers for The Conversation and other outlets. His work centres on sleep quality, sleep duration and sleepiness in everyday life, often contrasting subjective impressions with objective measurements.
Sleep differences between men and women
Åkerstedt’s recent coverage focuses on a paradox in sleep between men and women: women tend to have objectively better sleep but report worse sleep quality, while men report sleeping well despite more disturbed sleep. In his article “Women report poor sleep despite a good night’s rest — while men overestimate their own sleep quality,” he explains that women spend more time awake during night-time awakenings and are therefore more aware of interruptions, which can lower their self‑rated sleep quality even when laboratory measures look good. He contrasts this with men who wake up less fully during interruptions and therefore overrate how well they sleep, a pattern he links to under‑recognised sleep problems in men.
Across companion pieces such as “How did you sleep last night? It depends if you're a man or woman” and “Women underestimate their sleep quality, men overstate theirs,” he returns to this theme of mismatch between perceived and measured sleep. He highlights how these gendered perceptions can shape who seeks help for insomnia and related conditions, pointing out that men who overstate their sleep quality may miss treatment for problems that affect their health and daytime functioning. The coverage stays close to study data, drawing on polysomnography and other objective recording methods as a counterpoint to survey responses.
From insomnia to long‑term health risks
Åkerstedt consistently links sleep patterns to serious health outcomes, emphasising that poor or disturbed sleep is not just a nuisance but associated with early mortality and chronic disease. In his popular writing on insomnia and self‑reported sleep quality, he notes that research connects long‑term sleep problems to increased risk of conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. That framing reflects his long research record on sleep duration and mortality, including large cohort studies showing a U‑shaped relationship between very short or very long sleep and higher death rates in adults under 65.
He brings weekend sleep and recovery into this picture, drawing on findings that people who sleep too little on weekdays but extend their sleep at weekends do not show the same mortality risk as those who remain chronically short sleepers. This work underpins his broader message that both the amount and regularity of sleep feed into long‑term health, and that single‑number targets miss important age and lifestyle differences. By anchoring his commentary in these longitudinal datasets, he positions everyday complaints about “sleeping badly” within a continuum that runs from mild insomnia to measurable increases in disease and mortality.
Everyday sleepiness, work and social life
Much of Åkerstedt’s authority as a commentator comes from decades studying how work and daily routines shape sleep and sleepiness. His research has examined how high work demands, long or irregular hours and difficulty switching off from work predict disturbed sleep and trouble awakening, with stress‑related factors emerging as some of the strongest risk indicators. He has also investigated how sleepiness affects safety and performance, including the role of drowsiness in accidents and the impact of shift work on alertness.
His coverage of subjective sleep quality sits within this broader view of sleep as embedded in social life. He has co‑authored work showing that patterns of social activity during afternoons and evenings are closely linked to both momentary sleepiness and subsequent sleep duration, with busier afternoons associated with greater sleepiness and longer sleep, and very active evenings tied to reduced sleepiness but shorter sleep. These lines of research support a recurring thread in his public writing: sleep complaints are best understood in the context of work stress, social schedules and daily behaviour, not in isolation.
Academic voice across news platforms
Åkerstedt writes primarily as an academic expert contributing explainers rather than as a general‑assignment reporter. For The Conversation, he authors pieces that present new sleep studies and then interpret what the findings mean for common experiences such as feeling unrefreshed despite “sleeping enough.” The same articles are syndicated across platforms including Yahoo News, 1News and Popular Science, extending his analyses of gendered sleep perceptions and health risks to wider audiences. He also contributes to RTÉ’s Brainstorm section, where he revisits the question “How did you sleep last night?” through the lens of sex differences in sleep perception and measurement.
Across these outlets he maintains a consistent format: start from specific empirical results, clarify the difference between subjective reports and objective measures, and then connect those findings to health outcomes such as insomnia diagnoses, chronic disease and mortality. This makes his byline distinctive on a health beat crowded with general sleep tips, positioning him as a source for stories that need authoritative interpretation of complex sleep research rather than lifestyle advice.
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