10 facts about the importance of sleep health
Need to sleep about 8 hours, and a better night’s standard recommendations of scientists known to all, but what if you run them does not work? Than you can get sick from lack of sleep and what to do if the window of the polar night?
1. The well-known “eight hours sleep”
We often hear that need to sleep eight hours a day. Such a recommendation gives national health organization around the world, from the British NHS to American National Foundation on sleep. But where it really came from this Council?
Studies conducted in different countries to determine how often diseases affect different populations, come to the same conclusion: people suffering from lack of sleep as those who sleep too much are more prone to numerous diseases and live less on average.
However, it is difficult to say whether sleep disorders cause of disease, or a symptom of an unhealthy lifestyle.
By “too short sleep” usually refers to less than six hours, “too much sleep” is more than nine to ten hours.
Children who have not reached puberty, is usually recommended to sleep at night to 11 hours, and infants up to 18 hours a day. Night sleep of teenagers is supposed to be up to 10 hours.
Shane O’mara, Professor of the Department of experimental brain research at Dublin’s Trinity College, says that although it is difficult to answer unequivocally whether the sleep deprivation was the cause or consequence of poor health, these two phenomena mutually influence each other.
For example, people who don’t pay sufficient attention to exercise, sleep worse, causing them increased fatigue and, as a result, the sport does not remain forces and so on.
We know that scientists are again and again linked chronic sleep deprivation — that is, the lack of sleep for one or two hours for an extended period of time with bad health: to notice the negative impact of lack of sleep, it is not necessary to stay up several days in a row.
2. What happens to your body when you enough sleep?
Lack of sleep can lead to a number of diseases.
The results of 153 studies involving more than five million people clearly indicate the relationship of lack of sleep with diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, coronary artery disease, and obesity.
Studies have shown that lack of sleep for just a few nights may increase a healthy person prediabetes state. Moderate sleep deprivation reduces the body’s ability to control the level of glucose in the blood.
Insufficient sleep decreases the effectiveness of vaccines, lack of sleep to have a devastating effect on the immune system, making us vulnerable to infections.
In one study, participants whose sleep was less than seven hours were three times more susceptible to colds than those who slept seven or more hours.
The body of people with a lack of sleep produces excessive amounts of ghrelin — the hormone responsible for the emergence of feelings of hunger, and insufficient leptin, a hormone that causes saturation and thus increases the risk of obesity.
Also noted the link lack of sleep with reduced brain activity and even, in the long term, dementia.
Professor O’mara says that toxic substances accumulate in the brain during the day and removed while sleeping. If you sleep long enough, your condition is “reminiscent of a mild concussion”.
The effect of too long sleep have been less studied but it is known that he is also associated with a number of disorders, including cerebral activity in older people.
3. Different types of sleep help repair the body
Our sleep consists of cycles which are divided into several stages. Each cycle lasts from 60 to 100 minutes. Each stage plays a role in numerous processes that are going on in our body while we sleep.
The first stage in each cycle — drowsy, relaxed state between wakefulness and sleep. Breathing slows, muscles relax, heart rate slows down.
The second is a bit more deep sleep, during which you can sleep, but to think that you are awake.
Stage three — deep sleep, when it is very difficult to Wake up, any activity in the body at this moment is at a minimum.
The second and third phase enter a phase of slow sleep, usually at this time people can not see dreams.
After a deep sleep we are in a few minutes returned to the second stage and then move on to the REM phase of sleep, which is usually accompanied by dreams.
Thus, during a complete sleep cycle a person goes through all the stages from the first to the third, then for a short time is returned to the second stage, and then comes the fourth stage, REM sleep.
During the next cycles, the length of the rapid phase of sleep increases, so the lack of sleep has a greater impact on it.