How do people sleep and why healthy sleep is so important for a person.

For Randy Gardner, a perfectly normal 17-year-old schoolboy, the mental arithmetic task is not difficult at all. The neurologist asked him to subtract a seven from 100, then another, and so on. But Gardner only got to 65 and fell silent. The questioner waited a moment, and then wondered why the questioner did not count further. "And what should I count?" - asked the young man. He already forgot what he was asked about.

Gardner had never had a mental problem before. And now? The neurologist writes: “Face without expression, indistinct speech, devoid of intonation; you have to encourage him to speak in order to get at least some answer. What happened to the handsome young man from San Diego, California? Everything is very simple: he wants to sleep, as, probably, no one has ever wanted to. After all, Gardner has been awake for the 11th day in a row, he has not slept for 250 hours. He needs to endure just one more night, and he will reach the goal: he will fall into the Guinness Book of Records as the longest sleeper in the world. Perhaps after the fifth subtracted seven, fatigue turned off his short-term memory, as happens with people in a state of senile dementia. Or maybe he just fell asleep for a split second. This is too short a period of time for the interlocutor to notice anything, but sufficient to erase the arithmetic problem from memory.

This was in 1965. Somnology as a science was still in its infancy. No one knew then that experimental animals die from prolonged sleep deprivation. It never occurred to anyone that the brain, exhausted to the extreme, provides itself with the necessary unconsciousness with the help of microsleep. Accordingly, no one guessed that without observing the electrical activity of the brain, it was impossible to truly determine whether a person fell asleep or not. Therefore, from the point of view of today's science, what Gardner did on himself is not a pure experiment. How great was his internal need for sleep at the moment when he forgot the arithmetic problem remains unknown. However, this story tells eloquently about what happens to a monstrously sleepy person.

The records of Gardner's condition were then kept by neurologist John Ross of the Naval Hospital in San Diego. Together with colleagues, he undertook to observe the experiment that the young man started. Already on the second day of sleep deprivation, the psychiatrist noticed young man signs of extreme fatigue: Gardner had difficulty focusing his eyes on one object and recognizing things by touch. On the third day the patient fell into melancholy, on the fourth he first had memory lapses and an inability to concentrate. Further, the young man had problems with sensory perception, he accepted the sign traffic for the person, and himself - for the famous football player. However, we are not talking about psychotic hallucinations - Gardner quickly and independently notices his mistake. In the following days, the symptoms worsen. The young man's speech slows down. He cannot remember the names of the simplest objects. The lapses in memory are more and more pronounced.

But he still set a hitherto unsurpassed world record. After 264 hours, that is, exactly 11 days, Gardner gives a legendary press conference at 5 in the morning, which William Dement recalls in his book Sleep and Health: “Standing at the console lined with microphones, Randy resembled the President of the United States. He performed impeccably, never once stumbled or fell into unintelligible muttering. After the press conference, Randy went to bed."

He slept for almost 15 hours, after which he woke up vigorous and practically healthy. The next night, Gardner did not go to bed and the next morning he even went to school. In the next few days, the young man went to bed early and slept longer than usual. But soon everything was back to normal. The fact that the effects of sleep deprivation are reversible was confirmed almost two decades later by Allen Rechtshaffen. In his rats, too, sleep deprivation did not cause long-term harmful effects if they were released from the experimental apparatus in time and allowed to sleep.

Somnologist Dement most of the time personally watched the young man, helping him to keep cheerful in the second half of the night, when the need for sleep is especially noticeable. To distract themselves, they played basketball and other games. On the last night, Gardner beat the professor several more times at pinball.

The real problems with wakefulness began on the third night. From this point on, Gardner increasingly became irritable, moody and absent-minded, or, conversely, fell into apathy and practically did not respond to attempts to communicate. Sometimes the young man resembled a somnambulist, writes Dement. Today, the scientist suggests that at such moments his overworked ward, especially if he closed his eyes for a second, actually slept. Without these sleep attacks, which could be recognized on an EEG, Gardner probably would not have been able to go so long without real sleep.

However, Dement, unlike neurologist John Ross, argues that Gardner did not at any point show symptoms of true psychosis: "His short-term mistakes and misconceptions can easily be attributed to extreme fatigue." Therefore, to this day, it is believed that sleep deprivation does not cause serious mental problems.

Modern experiments, in which sleep deprivation has been more precisely controlled, are setting in a more disturbing mood. Among Israeli soldiers who were deprived of sleep for four days, some (a relatively small percentage) suffered from the so-called "sleep deprivation psychosis" on nights when the need for sleep is especially great. During the day, mental disorders disappeared, and the soldiers did an excellent job with their duties. This picture is supported by other experiments in which people with extreme sleep deprivation showed obvious psychotic disorders, such as hallucinations, persecution mania, extreme aggressiveness or deep depression. All these phenomena, at least in a weakened form, were observed in a 17-year-old student from San Diego.

But regardless of the outcome of a purely academic debate over whether to recognize what sleep deprivation does to people as a mental illness, no serious doctor today would agree to an eleven-day experiment of this kind. Four days are now considered the extreme limit of what is acceptable during sleep deprivation in humans. Further, the health risk becomes too great.

Humans are not experimental animals. It would never occur to anyone to check on people how long they are able to live without sleep and what will happen to them. And so it is clear that such an experiment would have catastrophic results. In order not to doubt this, it is enough to look at studies that meticulously record the state of people who have not slept for only two or three days in a row.

They, like Randy Gardner, violated the reliability of sensory perception, performance falls, memory deteriorates, the ability to concentrate and judge. The even mood disappears, the mood deteriorates. No wonder sleep disorders are one of the possible causes clinical depression. All these symptoms are associated, according to experts, with the growing need for sleep. Their collection is simply called sleep deprivation syndrome. It also includes the growing risk at the most inopportune moment in broad daylight - and even more so at night - to fall asleep for a few seconds. Such an attack can be noticeably longer than a microsleep, and it is quite enough to, for example, while driving, lose control of the car.

However, sleep deprivation does not have to be one-time. It can build up gradually, in the form of a night after night deficit. People who are sleep deprived for a long time, that is, suffer from a chronic lack of sleep, eventually show the same symptoms as those who have not slept in a row for a day or two.

At first, these people do not notice that their performance has decreased. Tests in which the researchers compared the results achieved with the subjects' self-assessment showed a frightening discrepancy. Overworked people consider themselves still quite alert when their results are no longer up to standard. In this - and not only in this - they are like drunks: after 17 hours without sleep, we cope with the tests as poorly as with 0.5 ppm of alcohol in the blood. A person who gets up in the morning at 7 o'clock, already around midnight, gets behind the wheel "drunk". After a day of sleep deprivation, our reaction rate drops to the values ​​that a sleepy person shows with 1 ppm of alcohol in the blood.

It is only when a huge sleep deficit has accumulated over many days that people begin to realize that something is wrong with them. And most can't pinpoint the exact reason. They say something vague like “I’m kind of lethargic”, “I’m somehow unwell”, “I’m under a lot of stress right now” or “I’m completely twisted”. Almost no one realizes that they simply do not sleep enough.

AT best case overworked people from some point experience physical ailment, headaches and even a slight rise in temperature. They think they've caught a cold and go to bed for a day or two. If during this time they manage to get enough sleep, their working capacity returns in full. In the worst case, the problem turns into a life-threatening situation for themselves and those around them, both due to increased bouts of second sleep, often leading to accidents on the road, and due to a reduced ability to make the right decisions.

People with severe sleep deprivation are more likely to make mistakes, they are unbearably irritable, and even during the day they often fall asleep for a moment. Professional chauffeurs who, due to untreated sleep disorders, suffer from so-called daytime sleepiness, are legally deprived of the right to practice their work. The monstrous behavior sometimes observed in soldiers in war - brutal war crimes, attacks on their own units or the massacre of the civilian population - from the point of view of specialists, is also partly due to the growing lack of sleep from day to day.

A 2002 US Army study tested elite formations before and after a three-day combat exercise. A frightening drop in performance caused by sleep deprivation has been shown. Some soldiers slept only an hour in 73 hours of training. When tested for the ability to make quick decisions after maneuvers, they made an average of 15 mistakes, and before the start of the exercise - only one or two. “The results were worse than if they were drunk”, said study leader Harris Lieberman.

Soldiers are not the only ones affected by sleep deprivation syndrome. “Chronic sleep deprivation is common and has many different causes. These include medical (such as persistent pain or sleep disturbances), adverse work conditions (such as working too long or night shifts), and social or domestic responsibilities,” says David Dinges, one of the world’s leading experts on sleep deprivation, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where his equally venerable colleague Hans Van Dongen also works.

In 2003, they published the impressive results of an interesting experiment: 48 young healthy people with a completely normal, average need for sleep slept for 2 weeks, some only 4, some 6, some 8 hours. During wakefulness, they passed every two hours tests for attention, memory and reaction speed. Only those who slept for 8 hours showed high results. In the other groups, the scores steadily deteriorated to last day experiment, and for those who slept for 4 hours, about twice as fast as with a 6-hour sleep regimen.

Two weeks later, the working capacity of those who slept for 4 hours was in the same deplorable state as that of those who did not sleep for two days in a row. Those who lived in the 6-hour sleep mode reached the state of people who did not sleep for a day. The researchers noted in the subjects "progressive neurocognitive dysfunction of systems responsible for long-term attention span and working memory."

Therefore, overbusy managers or TV presenters who say that 4 hours of sleep is enough for them are most likely mistaken. This mistake is natural, the same Dinges and Van Dongen found out: apparently, the subjective fatigue that we feel when we don’t get enough sleep for several days in a row lags far behind the decline in our mental abilities.

Analyzing the test, in which the subjects themselves assessed the degree of their drowsiness, the scientists received completely unexpected results. Approximately on the fifth day, subjects who did not get enough sleep every night stopped feeling the increase in fatigue compared to the previous night. The homeostatic component of sleep regulation reached saturation in them and did not rise further. It even seemed that their body was accustomed to a reduced amount of sleep. Indeed, after two weeks, although they were still not allowed to sleep, they no longer complained of serious drowsiness. Those experimental subjects who had to stay awake for two days in a row felt incomparably worse.

The conclusion turns out to be frightening: from lack of sleep we become stupid - and we don’t even notice it. In recent years, more and more experiments have been carried out, confirming that not only the body, but also the intellect needs sleep to function properly. Now neuroscientists see one of the most important tasks of sleep in helping nervous system process the impressions received during the day. This process takes time for the brain. If this time is not enough for him, our reason obviously suffers.

It has long been known that people who do not get enough sleep for a long time are mentally retarded, do not study so well, and remember worse. Some scientists have even suggested keeping people awake after a traumatic event so that they quickly forget the experience and their psyche does not suffer. Sleep deprivation is especially harmful for schoolchildren. Those who suffer from sleep disorders tend to study worse than average. If this problem is corrected, academic performance usually improves. Two studies conducted in the United States in 2005 and 2006 clearly showed that children who have severely disturbed sleep due to severe snoring attacks very often deviate from the norm of behavior. Overwork is manifested in them by hyperactivity, inability to concentrate, and sometimes aggression. A surprising number are even diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). After successful snoring therapy, children's behavior improves significantly.

In the first study, doctors at the University of Michigan removed tonsils from 22 children with ADHD, the most common cause of children's snoring. A year later, the diagnosis of ADHD remained only in half of the operated patients. The second study, conducted by New York doctors, compared the results of 42 children whose tonsils were removed due to snoring with the same control group, where this operation was performed for other indications. Before surgery, children with sleep disorders were significantly more likely to have deviant behavior. Three months later, test scores in the ex-snorers group improved significantly and approached those in the control group.

Thomas Alva Edison invented the electric light bulb back in 1879. However, electric light did not penetrate into the homes of ordinary citizens immediately. Therefore, back in 1910, people went to bed early and spent an average of 9 hours a day in bed. Now, according to a survey, the average German sleeps only 7 hours and 8 minutes. He goes to bed at 10:47 pm, falls asleep after a while, and wakes up between 6 and half past seven. Before going to bed, he either spends watching TV, or continues his daytime activities by electric light.

Chronobiologist Anna Würtz-Justice, head of the Basel Sleep Laboratory, where I had my somogram, believes that this trend often leads to health problems in the end: “Modern people sleep an hour less on average than 20 years ago. Perhaps many of the so-called "diseases of civilization" are the long-term consequences of such a development. Indeed, a growing body of evidence indicates that chronic sleep deprivation leads to metabolic disorders. Obviously, the body needs a long night's rest so that the continuous chain of signals of finely balanced hormones has time to complete its work.

Sleep deprivation affects carbohydrate metabolism and the hormonal system in the same way as normal aging processes, Carina Spiegel and Eva Van Kauter from Chicago found out in 1999. In their experiment, four healthy young people slept only 4 hours for six days in a row. As a result, their blood test looked as bad as it usually happens in people in a pre-infarction state or on the outskirts of diabetes. "Lack of sleep appears to increase the severity of chronic age-related diseases", the researchers concluded. In other words: who sleeps little, ages faster.

Neurotransmitters such as insulin, leptin and ghrelin, as well as thyroid and adrenal hormones, constantly provide a balanced, body-adapted level. internal energy in which our organs can work optimally. During sleep, growth hormone launches a program of complex renewal of the body. New cells are born in the body and it expends considerable energy on this. And since we do not eat at this time, fat is burned first of all from energy reserves on the abdomen, buttocks and thighs. Therefore, synthetic growth hormone, which promotes weight loss and rejuvenation, has gained notoriety as a popular dope in power sports.

Perhaps athletes, instead of doping, should simply sleep more and deeper. After all, if there is not enough time for the complex process of nocturnal metabolism, or if we sleep too irregularly, the whole system can go wrong. “Many studies now confirm that Sleep deprivation and metabolic disorders are linked" says Wurtz-Justice. A smiling, energetic woman, a native of New Zealand, makes a frighteningly serious face. And she is right: her words mean that, for example, obesity, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease are on the rise, in part because we are sleeping less and more erratically.

In recent years, the combination of three diseases, which doctors call the metabolic syndrome, has become especially frequent. Patients are overweight, have dramatically elevated serum lipids and blood pressure, and are prone to diabetes. Can it be considered coincidental that this trend appeared at the same time as the general reduction in sleep time?

Most probably not. In Holland, a group of neuroscientists led by Ruud Buijs from the Amsterdam Institute of Neuroscience has been investigating the causes of the metabolic syndrome for several years. They were able to find compelling evidence that what is common to all the various manifestations of this disease, which affects a quarter of the population in the United States, is a failure in the control of metabolism by the biological clock. Buys' conclusion in short reads: who sleeps badly and always at different times, the body's internal rhythms fail, and this can lead to metabolic disorders.

As for excess weight, now no one doubts its direct connection with lack of sleep. In recent years, many scientists during the most different experiments proved that people who sleep very little or poorly are more likely to be obese than others * .

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* This is just one of many factors, and by no means the most important: if a person sleeps little, but moves a lot, then he will, on the contrary, lose weight.

Shahrad Taheri of Stanford University in California has shown, for example, that body mass index (BMI, body weight divided by height squared) in people who sleep less than 8 hours a night increases in direct proportion to sleep deprivation. Hormones that regulate appetite are likely to play a decisive role in this: in people who sleep too little, the levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin are increased in the blood, and the amount of leptin, which restrains appetite, is reduced.

This is not surprising, since the body during sleep suppresses the secretion of ghrelin and increases - leptin, so that hunger does not wake us up at night. If a person does not get enough sleep, too much ghrelin is produced, which prompts them to eat more than they need. Emmanuel Migno, leader of the Stanford Research Group, agrees: “Our study demonstrates a significant link between sleep and metabolic hormones. In developed countries, where chronic sleep deprivation is common and food is readily available, the observed effects “play a critical role in widespread obesity."

Chronobiologist Rud Buijs has discovered a direct link between the central internal clock in the hypothalamus and a nearby area of ​​the brain called the nucleus arcuatus (semicircular nucleus), which is responsible for regulating appetite. “It turns out that circulating hormones act on the suprachiasmatic nuclei, and changes in them, in turn, immediately modify the activity of the nucleus arcuatus,” he told colleagues at a neuroscience conference in 2006.

This worrying trend is also affecting children: Canadian researchers at Laval University in Sainte-Foy found in 2006 that children aged 5-10 who slept only 8-10 hours a day suffered overweight 3.5 times more often than their peers who received 12-13 hours of sleep prescribed at this age.

That same year, the results of the largest sleep and overweight survey to date were presented at the San Diego convention. The sheer amount of data processed makes it worth considering: Sanjay Patel, a physician at the University of Cleveland, and his colleagues analyzed data from 68,000 nurses who were surveyed about sleep duration and weight every two years from 1986 to 2000. Moreover, due to the huge number of respondents, it was possible to take into account the impact on the weight of the individual amount of sleep, since other significant factors in the groups identified on this basis did not differ - be it height, age, sports activity, or the quantity and quality of food.

Women who slept five hours or less a day already weighed an average of 2.5 kg more by the beginning of the survey than those who slept seven hours. Ten years later, the difference in weight has increased to 3.25 kg. “These numbers don't seem particularly large, but they're talking about the average,” explains Patel. Some women recovered significantly more during the survey. In particular, those nurses who slept only five hours were three times more likely to put on 15 kg. And even with six hours of sleep, there was an increased risk of very strong weight gain.

Long-term lack of sleep affects not only metabolism and energy. Endocrinologist Eva Van Kauter proved back in 1992 that with sleep deprivation, the human body produces significantly less growth hormone. It means that lack of sleep reduces for the entire system internal organs possibility of night regeneration. Such a reduction can lead to diseases at almost all levels. If organs do not have the time and material to replace old or diseased cells with new ones, they will inevitably perform worse and their resistance to disease will decrease.

The same phenomena underlie the ancient folk wisdom that the sick person is most useful sleep. Probably everyone has experienced this for themselves: you go to bed sick, sleep unusually deep and long, and wake up healthy. It is not for nothing that during an illness or during the recovery period after surgery, our need for sleep is much higher than usual. The body needs extra time, and possibly extra growth hormone, to renew itself. Sleep is the sacred duty of the patient!

There is a lot of evidence for these words. The rats that Allen Rechtshaffen kept awake soon developed sores that wouldn't heal. And that growth hormone, produced by the body only in the phase of deep sleep, plays a decisive role in this, was proved in 2005 by a group of American researchers led by dermatologist Ladan Mostagimi. In their experiments, the skin of rats was slightly damaged, and every time they were awakened during the BS, and in deep sleep they were not disturbed - and the wounds healed at the same rate as in normally sleeping animals.

One of the most important systems in the body, fueled by sleep every night, is the immune system. Physiologists have always believed that lack of sleep weakens resistance to disease - and vice versa, that we sleep so much during infectious diseases like the flu because the immune system is working with special stress at this time. It was believed that during sleep it kills and removes pathogens and produces healing neurotransmitters and antibodies, and also activates lymphocytes.

“Oddly enough, there is very little experimental evidence for this assumption,” says Jan Born, a neuroscientist and hormone specialist from Lübeck. True, people whom doctors deliberately infected with ARI viruses fell ill more often and got sick more severely if they slept little. Allen Rechtshaffen's experimental rats, despite extreme sleep deprivation, fell ill infectious diseases no more often than animals from the control group.

Perhaps this is simply due to the fact that the animals were not examined properly. In any case, Rechtshaffen's employee Carol Everson later repeated his experiments and got exactly the opposite result: the immune system of animals that looked healthy at first glance was significantly weakened after 14 days without sleep. Already on the fifth day, the immune defense in Everson rats was unable to control microbial attacks. The researcher came to the following conclusion: "Prolonged sleep deprivation after a few days leads to infection of normally sterile internal tissues with pathogenic bacteria." If the experiment dragged on, the bacteria continued to multiply and the rats eventually died.

Some of the strongest evidence that sleep supports the immune system comes from a team of researchers in Lübeck led by Jan Born. In 2003, Tanya Lange and her colleagues vaccinated 19 test subjects against hepatitis. Some of the vaccinated had the opportunity to sleep normally after that, others agreed to stay awake at night and the next day. After 4 weeks, those who slept normally had almost twice as many antibodies to pathogens in their blood as the rest. While the function of sleep in direct resistance to infection is not yet clear, "the result of the experiment shows the importance of sleep for the development of long-term immune defenses," the researchers wrote. On the other hand, now none of the experts doubt that lack of sleep leads to illness also because it opens the green light to pathogens of infectious diseases.

Each of us sometimes uncontrollably "stick together" eyes. We all know that there is only one reasonable solution in this case: sleep. But reason rarely triumphs. Blind-eyed people drive around in cars. But eyelids that drop by themselves are an undoubted sign of drowsiness, which, as the pioneer of somnology Dement rightly noted, "is the last - and by no means the first - step on the way to falling asleep." When we close our eyes, we are not really in control of ourselves anymore. As a result, many drivers wake up in a ditch - while others do not wake up.

“Should it be a crime to drive while asleep? Undoubtedly! demands Eileen Rosen, a Philadelphia somnologist. In the United States, about 100,000 fatigue-related accidents occur each year, with 71,000 injured and 1,500 dead. The material damage is estimated at billions of dollars. In Germany, the numbers look no better: according to a survey by the Association of German Insurance Companies, overwork is the cause of 24% of fatal crashes on Bavaria's roads. If you count total number 5361 deaths on German roads in 2005, it turns out that falling asleep at the wheel claimed the lives of 1287 people.

But still many people thoughtlessly go on vacation by car in the evening of the last working day- the time at which attacks of drowsiness occur most often. Indeed, often before the holidays, people are forced to work especially intensively and therefore sleep less than usual. Imperceptibly, they accumulate a significant sleep deficit. And then the usual afternoon decrease in activity is quite enough for the driver to become dangerously sleepy.

What to do in such cases, found out in 1997 by Louise Rayner and Jim Horn from the University of Lowborrow in the UK. They checked various ways resistance to sleep and found the optimal combination: you need to drive to the nearest parking lot, drink two cups of coffee or another drink with a high content of caffeine, and then lie down for a quarter of an hour. When tested in a driving simulator, this worked better than either of the two tools separately. Since the invigorating properties of caffeine appear only after half an hour, it is possible to fall asleep without problems. And after a short nap, caffeine also does its job, and driving for at least the next two hours is not much of a risk.

Such an experiment finally proved that caffeine - effective remedy invigorating, which, if used correctly, can be of great benefit. Coffee enhances the arousal system in the brain, producing the same effect as interesting, distracting, strenuous work or sports. It is no coincidence that William Dement, helping Randy Gardner to hold out, entertained him with a game of basketball and pinball.

But by forcing the switch of sleep centers to remain unnaturally long in the “wake” position, we are at great risk: the lack of sleep becomes more and more from this. Along with it, there is a growing danger of making a dangerous mistake the next day, and especially on the night that follows. In addition, with chronic sleep deprivation, as described above, people become stupid, fat and sick.

All this together, it would seem, should make everyone carefully monitor enough sleep. But how do we know exactly how much sleep we are missing? How much sleep exactly does a person need? Somnologists have been looking for answers to these questions for many years.

Thomas Wehr, psychobiologist from the American National Institute health in Bethesda, asked in the early 1990s. the question of what would happen if people were given the opportunity to sleep for 14 hours a day. This would correspond to the natural situation that our ancestors experienced every winter for thousands of years. Would people sleep for seven, eight or nine hours in a row, as in recent centuries, or would they return to the forgotten “winter hibernation”?

Ver selected 24 people for the study, who spent four months sleeping in the sleep laboratory. During the day they were allowed to get up at 10 o'clock and do whatever they wanted. They were to spend the next 14 hours in bed in a darkened room. Apparently, at first, the test subjects made up for a significant deficit and arranged for themselves a real course of sleep therapy. On average, they slept more than 12 hours a day. This was a clear indication that they had previously - without noticing it - significantly lacked sleep.“Now no one knows what it means to be truly cheerful,” says Ver. It must be assumed that most people accumulate over time no less sleep deficit than his volunteers.

But sleep therapy was working. Gradually, the subjects began to sleep less and after about four weeks they reached the no longer changing value of 8 hours and 15 minutes. Everything indicates that this is the natural average human need for sleep, at least in the darker season. In summer, when daylight hours are longer, we probably need a little less sleep than in winter.

The results obtained by Ver are in good agreement with what somnologists have long considered the approximate daily need of a person for sleep - 8 hours. If 100 years ago people spent 9 hours in bed, it can be assumed that the majority slept anyway only 8 of them.

But it would be a big mistake, against which the reader must be warned, to try to force yourself to sleep for exactly 8 hours. For some this may be too little, but for others it may be too much. The need for sleep varies from person to person. “If we are healthy and nothing prevents us from sleeping as much as we want, the body will automatically take the necessary amount of sleep,” says Claudio Basetti, director of the neurology department at the University Hospital of Zurich, sleepwalker. Our job is to provide the right conditions. The need for sleep is partly genetic, and also depends on many other factors. Any number between 5 and 10 hours is considered normal.

Therefore, those who sleep for a long time should not be ashamed of this, much less allow themselves to be called lazy. In the same way, people who cannot stay in bed for a long time should not pay attention to accusations of restlessness or excessive careerism. A person cannot do anything with his individual need for sleep.

However, those who claim that they get enough sleep in less than 5 hours, or that they have hardly slept at all for a long time, are usually mistaken. Famous sleepless people, such as Napoleon, who allegedly made do with four hours, or the inventor of the electric light bulb, Thomas Edison, who aspired to do without sleep at all, deceived themselves. Napoleon, apparently, suffered from a sleep disorder and therefore often fell asleep during the day. Edison, they say, also slept often and a lot during the daytime hours.

Somnologists are constantly inviting people into the sleep lab who claim they don't get much sleep. At the same time, with amazing regularity, it turns out that patients fall asleep perfectly at night, and sometimes sleep deeply for several hours in a row. But they themselves stubbornly assert the opposite, and this is not surprising: when we are half asleep, we lose the sense of time. The time spent awake seems incredibly long to us, and the hours spent in a dream, on the contrary, fly by unnoticed. In principle, a person does not register periods of sleep lasting less than 20 minutes. Interestingly, people who sleep poorly tend to underestimate the length of their sleep, while healthy sleepers usually report completely correct data on how much they sleep.

There are only three reliably documented cases of extremely short sleep in the specialized literature: two men who got less than three hours of sleep per night, and Miss M, a 70-year-old former nurse from London, who actually slept for only one hour a night. Cases where people regularly sleep for a very long time, more than ten hours, are much more common, but also make up an extremely small percentage of the total.

Short sleep is not always unhealthy. And for someone who already gets enough sleep, extra hours of napping, according to the latest data, will not bring any particular benefit. Only if you feel regular lack of sleep, manifested, for example, in daytime sleepiness on weekdays and long sleeps on weekends, you need to find out, by experimenting on yourself, what your personal need for sleep is and compare with the amount of sleep that you really manage to get.

To do this, during a vacation or vacation, you can arrange yourself a sleep treatment, staying in bed every morning until there is not the slightest desire to sleep further, and in the evening you still try to fall asleep in regular time. A few days later, it is established - like the test subjects of Thomas Vera - more or less constant time sleep, in which a person feels vigorous during the day, and easily falls asleep in the evening.

As a result, not only the state of health becomes better than before the holiday, but there is also clarity regarding the individual need for sleep. Those who want to maintain health and performance for a long time are advised to adhere to the data obtained. If it is impossible to conduct such an experiment on weekdays, it is worth starting a sleep diary, marking all the hours of both night and daytime sleep in order to calculate at the end of the week required time sleep. People whose required daily sleep time is 8 hours should get approximately 56 hours of sleep per week. If on working days they manage to sleep only for 7 hours, it is desirable to somehow get 5 hours. This can be achieved by arranging for yourself, for example, four half-hour "quiet hours" per week, ten hours of sleep on Saturday and nine hours on Sunday.

Those who would like to sleep longer should think about what time is best for them to go to bed. After all, one practically does not manage to wake up in the morning later than usual, and the other - to fall asleep early in the evening. The internal clock that runs at different people with different speed, depending on which version of the clock genes we inherited from our parents. Although the biological clock adjusts itself according to daylight, so that in the end its day is almost always 24 hours, the time it shows is usually slightly behind or slightly ahead of the actual time.

Therefore, chronobiologists divide people into types, borrowing their names from the world of birds: people who prefer a nocturnal lifestyle are called owls, and early risers are called larks. Pronounced owls fall asleep later than ordinary people, because their biological time is somewhat behind the real one. In the morning, they can sleep for a very long time, especially in a darkened room, when the internal clock does not receive a signal from daylight to speed up. When they finally wake up, they often still feel lethargic until noon, but in the evening they remain active and efficient for an unusually long time. At night, the chronobiological component of general drowsiness rises so slowly that they can easily fall asleep only in the very late hours of the night - at least if they had a good night's sleep in the morning and did not gain an unusually high need for sleep.

Larks, on the other hand, get tired early and get up before dawn because their internal clock runs faster than usual. The opportunity to lie in bed longer does not give them any pleasure. As a rule, they still cannot sleep at this time and are annoyed that they missed the morning hours, when their working capacity is especially great, to no avail. If larks need to sleep longer, they should go to bed earlier in the evening. Provided that their body really needs sleep, they will easily fall asleep at this time. It is better for owls to get up later in the morning.

Recently, the number of people with pronounced extreme chronotypes has been increasing, said Munich chronobiologist Till Renneberg. At the same time, real owls that go to bed around four in the morning are much more common than pronounced larks, which are already waking up at this time. These are the results of a large-scale survey in which 400 thousand people participated.

Obviously, most people are now in the grip of a dangerous trend: as they go out into the daylight less and less, the genetically determined pace of their body clock becomes critical. “Even on cloudy days, the street is many times brighter than in well-lit offices. But because we work indoors, our rhythms get out of sync with the outside world,” Renneberg warns. Previously, people were much more likely to work for outdoors. Therefore, extremely pronounced owls and larks were rare exceptions. “For most people, the following rule is true: the less daylight they receive, the later their internal clock adjusts to the real day. If we were all farmers and didn’t spend so much time in the twilight of workrooms, a much smaller number of people would go to bed in the morning, but there would also be fewer people whose eyes are already glued together at eight in the evening.

The fact is that for our consciousness, electric light, despite its weakness, is a sign of the day, while the chronobiological system perceives it as twilight at best. As a result, the physiological clock lacks that setting signal that chronobiologists in all languages ​​call the German word "zeitgebers" - external time determinants. Because of this, the internal day and night are consistent with the real light and dark times of the day even worse than it is laid down by nature. Sleep disturbances can result.

It is not difficult to determine your own chronotype on your own. To do this, you only need to calculate at what time on free days, for example, by the end of the vacation, when the sleep deficit is minimal, the middle of sleep falls. If you sleep, for example, from midnight to eight in the morning, then the middle of sleep comes at four. According to research by chronobiologists, this is the case for most people, and this chronotype is considered average.

There are also many intermediate types - more or less temperate owls or larks. Extreme owls - that's about one in twentieth - do not reach mid-sleep until half past seven in the morning or later. Expressed larks - people whose biological clock without a set signal passes the daily cycle in less than 24 hours - are especially rare: only 2% of the respondents found such people. Their mid-sleep time is 2:00 a.m., whether they follow a work schedule or choose their sleep time freely. This is not surprising, since they usually get up in the morning by themselves, long before the alarm goes off.

Most Germans lean towards the "owl" type. This is why they love long-haul westbound flights, such as from Germany to New York, because thanks to the difference in time zones, they finally feel energized in the morning and eat breakfast with appetite, as only early risers usually do. AT ordinary life they are controlled by two oppositely directed time meters: “In the evening, sleep is reduced by the biological clock, and in the morning by the alarm clock,” says chronobiologist Til Renneberg. The later our chronotype is, the worse those and other hours are consistent with each other.

This is a serious problem for a large number people, insists Renneberg, who coined the term “social jet lag” for her: “It can have very serious consequences for performance and health and is comparable to jet lag on long-haul flights, only it accompanies us all our lives.” People suffering from it go to bed the later, the slower their biological clock goes. On the other hand, the alarm clock is not at all interested in their chronotype and reduces the duration of sleep the more, the more pronounced the “owlness”. A survey conducted by Renneberg gave frightening results: "Almost two-thirds of people suffer from lack of sleep during the working week." And only a few manage to make up for the lack of sleep over the weekend.

In winter, the wake-up call is heard too early for the vast majority. In summer, when we get more light in general and the sun floods the room early in the morning, many people become closer to the "larks" and generally need less sleep.

Almost all chronobiologists criticize the hours of work we have adopted on the basis of the data obtained. Contrary to the adage “he who gets up early, God bless him,” larks are “rare birds in modern society,” Renneberg notes. Specialists demand changes in this area: work and study should start later, and a long break is needed in the middle of the day, allowing you to sleep or go out into the fresh air. Employers will also benefit from this: the number of errors and accidents at work associated with lack of sleep will be reduced, and a number of diseases that cause great economic damage will be less likely to occur.

Lack of sleep in pronounced owls reaches such values ​​during the working week that on free days they are able to sleep for 12 hours in a row and often stay in bed until one in the afternoon. The middle of sleep shifts in them, thus, from 3-4 am on weekdays to the time after 7 am. But people with a normal chronotype also suffer from starting the work day too early: they also have to get up earlier than the body requires during the week, and therefore on weekends they sleep about an hour longer than on work days.

Larks face the opposite problem: since their family and circle of friends are often dominated by owls, morning people have to stay awake too long on weekends. Who will leave the guests before midnight, because it's time to sleep, or refuse to go with his wife or husband to a late movie session? As a rule, early risers make up for their lack of sleep on weekdays quite easily.

With particular force, the social jet lag hits teenagers and young people. Their biorhythms, due to age characteristics, are significantly behind real time. At the same time, it does not matter at all whether young people are lovers of discos or homebodies. They are subject to a biological, hormonally driven program of nocturnal activity and stay awake well after midnight, because they simply cannot do otherwise. True, parents and teachers have a different opinion. They say that young people do not go to bed on time because they are crazy about discos. The latest data from biorhythm research is in favor of young "owls": at the age of about 20, people are active at night, because - for reasons unknown to science - they are so programmed by nature.

If a schoolboy who falls asleep late at night needs to cram formulas or foreign words in the morning, he will do it very badly - both because of the colossal lack of sleep, and because of the biological clock, which still shows sleep time. “At eight o'clock, schoolchildren listen to the teacher in the middle of their subjective night,” says Til Renneberg. “It doesn’t bring much benefit to teaching.” Therefore, the start of lessons in the upper grades should be postponed to 9 a.m. A survey conducted in Munich showed that children and adolescents become more and more "owls" as they grow older. This phenomenon reaches extreme degrees among school graduates and junior students.

And only with the end of adolescence does this tendency suddenly reverse, and all people become closer to the lark type. This shift in sleep patterns is a systematic process common to all of us, and is probably due to hormonal changes.

Thus, the Munich chronobiologists discovered reliable method, which allows you to determine the end of adolescence for each individual. The change in the pace of the internal clock is the first "biological marker of the end of adolescence," Renneberg says. “Women reach their breaking point at 19.5 years, and men at 20.5.” As in all other maturation processes, women are ahead of men here. Over the years, all people gradually approach the "larks".

Of course, genetic conditioning also plays a role, superimposed on biological features maturation. Therefore, there is some truth in the saying "who was an owl, that owl will remain" - this is due to the inherited pace of the internal clock.

Strictly speaking, this rhythm can only be compared among peers. Even extreme owls become as close to larks in old age as, perhaps, only in early childhood. And pronounced larks at the end of adolescence enter a phase of unexpected nocturnal activity.

These results suggest that in vain in many families the custom of a common breakfast at 8 or 9 a.m. is sacredly observed. By this time, grandparents must have been hungry for a long time and, having nothing to do, managed to set the table for the whole family and go for fresh buns. Mom - a real lark - also just returned from a morning run. But the father is a typical owl - and teenage children are in great need of more sleep. If you wake them up now, a family breakfast will only bring quarrels and a spoiled mood.

What to do if the biological rhythms of members of the same family diverge too far, or if a person wants to change his chronotype in order to still get enough sleep? Here it is very important to go out into the daylight at the right moments so that the time measurement center in the diencephalon receives the correct corrective signals.

People prone to nocturnal activity are advised not to draw the curtains in the evening so that the first rays of the sun penetrate into the bedroom, hastening the internal clock, which is still showing the night. For the same reason, it is desirable for owls to go outside as early as possible during the day, for example, go to work on foot or go for a run before breakfast. In the evening, on the contrary, it is better to avoid bright lights so that the internal clock, already tuned in to the onset of darkness, does not receive a signal to slow down. For example, sitting in the summer after work on the terrace of a cafe, it is better to wear sunglasses. Expressive larks have the opposite program: they need to slow down their biological clock, and for this, go out more in the evening and wear sunglasses in the morning.

The strongest effect of daylight on the internal clock can be supported by a successful schedule of bodily signals emanating from the so-called peripheral clocks in individual organs. The time when we eat and exercise is important here. Owls should try, contrary to the inner feeling, not to eat too late in the evening and be physically active. Larks are advised to do the opposite.

But do not set yourself unattainable goals from the very beginning. It is important not to rearrange the internal clock as soon as possible, but to develop regular monotonous signals that change biorhythms in the long term, while at the same time not disrupting their work. The most important thing is, if possible, to go out at the same time, have breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as play sports; moreover, this schedule should very gradually shift towards the desired chronotype.

The effort invested in such a long-term lifestyle change will pay off doubly: after all, with social jet lag, not only chronic sleep deprivation will disappear. At the same time, the need for unhealthy habits will decrease. “The stronger the social jet lag, the more people grab on to stimulants, and the more smokers among them,” Til Renneberg discovered.

Thus, for many of us, more and better sleep will benefit on many levels. And if you already have a suspicion that you are suffering from sleep disorders, you should not put it off indefinitely. Chronic lack of sleep is very important to recognize in time - and effectively eliminate.

Image copyright Getty Images

In countries where clocks are changed from summer to winter time this Sunday, people will get an extra hour of sleep. But how much do we really know about sleep and its impact on various areas of our lives?

1. Everyone knows "eight hours of sleep"

We often hear that you need to sleep eight hours a day. This recommendation is given by national health organizations around the world, from the British NHS to the American National Sleep Foundation. But where did this advice actually come from?

Studies conducted in different countries to determine how often diseases affect different populations come to the same conclusion: people who suffer from lack of sleep, like those who sleep too much, are more susceptible to multiple diseases and live shorter lives on average. .

However, it is difficult to say whether sleep disturbances are the cause of diseases, or vice versa - a symptom of an unhealthy lifestyle.

"Sleep too short" usually means less than six hours, "too much sleep" is more than nine to ten hours.

Children who have not reached puberty are usually recommended to sleep at night until 11 o'clock, and infants - up to 18 hours a day. Night sleep teens are considered to be up to 10 hours.

Shane O'Mara, professor of experimental brain research at Trinity College Dublin, says that while it's hard to definitively say whether sleep deprivation is a cause or a consequence of ill health, the two influence each other.

For example, people who do not pay enough attention to physical exercises sleep worse, because of which they have increased fatigue and, as a result, there is no energy left for playing sports - and so on.

We know that scientists have time and again linked chronic sleep deprivation—that is, missing one or two hours of sleep for an extended period of time—to poor health: You don’t have to stay up for several days in a row to notice the negative effects of sleep deprivation.

2. What happens to your body when you don't get enough sleep?

Lack of sleep can lead to a number of diseases.

Results from 153 studies involving more than five million people clearly show the link between lack of sleep and diabetes, high blood pressure, diseases of cardio-vascular system, ischemic disease and obesity.

Studies have shown that lack of sleep for just a few nights in a row can lead to healthy person to the pre-diabetic state. Moderate sleep deprivation reduces the body's ability to control blood glucose levels.

Lack of sleep reduces the effectiveness of vaccines, lack of sleep has a devastating effect on immunity, making us vulnerable to infections.

In one study, participants who got less than seven hours of sleep were three times more likely to colds than those who slept seven or more hours.

The body of people with a lack of sleep produced excessive amounts of ghrelin, a hormone responsible for the feeling of hunger, and insufficient amounts of leptin, a hormone that causes satiety, and thus increases the risk of obesity.

Sleep deprivation has also been associated with reduced brain activity and even, in the long term, dementia.

Professor O'Mara explains that toxic substances accumulate in the brain during the day and are removed during sleep. If you do not sleep long enough, your condition "resembles a mild concussion."

The impact of too much sleep is less understood, but it is also known to be associated with a number of disorders, including brain damage in older people.

3. Different types of sleep help the body recover

Our sleep consists of cycles that are divided into several stages. Each cycle lasts from 60 to 100 minutes. Each stage plays a part in the numerous processes that go on in our body while we sleep.

The first stage in each cycle is a drowsy, relaxed state between wakefulness and sleep. Breathing slows down, muscles relax, pulse slows down.

The second is a slightly deeper sleep, during which you can sleep, but at the same time consider that you are awake.

The third stage is deep sleep, when it is very difficult to wake up, any activity in the body at this moment is at a minimum level.

The second and third stages enter the phase of non-REM sleep, usually at this time a person does not dream.

After deep sleep, we return to the second stage for a few minutes, and then move on to REM sleep, which is usually accompanied by dreams.

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Thus, during a complete sleep cycle, a person goes through all stages from the first to the third, then briefly returns to the second stage, and then comes the fourth stage - the REM phase.

Over the course of the following cycles, the length of REM sleep increases, so the lack of sleep affects it to a greater extent.

4. Shift workers with sleep disorders are more likely to get sick

Shift work can cause a large number health problems. Researchers have found that those who work shifts and get too little sleep at the wrong time may be at an increased risk of developing diabetes and obesity.

Shift workers are significantly more likely to rate their health as poor or fair, a 2013 NHS study found.

The researchers also found that people in this group are much more likely to suffer from chronic diseases than those working on a standard schedule.

Shift workers are much more likely to miss work due to illness, statistics show.

The gap between those who do physical and mental work is even greater, and in addition, lack of sleep seems to have a greater effect on those who lead a sedentary lifestyle.

5. Many of us suffer from sleep deprivation more than ever.

Judging by the media reports, you might think that we are in the grip of an epidemic of sleep deprivation. But has sleep deprivation really gone up?

A study in 15 countries gave a very mixed picture. In six countries, scientists recorded a decrease in sleep duration, in seven - an increase, and two more countries gave conflicting results.

There is plenty of evidence that over the past few generations, sleep duration has changed little. However, if you ask people how they rate their lack of sleep, a different picture emerges.

So why do so many people report fatigue? This may be due to the fact that the problem affects certain groups, and the general trend is difficult to identify.

Sleep problems vary significantly by age and gender, a study of 2,000 British adults has found. In the course of it, it turned out that women of almost any age suffer from lack of sleep more than men.

In adolescence, the indicators are more or less the same, but then women begin to suffer significantly more from lack of sleep - this may be due to the appearance of children. Then the gap closes again.

Caffeine and alcohol affect the duration and quality of sleep.

Regularly going to bed later due to work or socializing causes people to get less rest despite getting the same amount of sleep, explains Prof Derk-Jan Dijk from the Sleep Research Center at the University of Surrey.

In addition, some may sleep too little during the week and oversleep on weekends, increasing their average sleep hours. However, in the end, these people still suffer from lack of sleep.

Adolescents can be particularly affected by sleep deprivation, Professor Dyck said.

6. We didn't always sleep the way we do now.

But that wasn't always the norm, says Roger Ekirch, a professor of history at Virginia Tech. In 2001, he published a scientific paper on the results of 16 years of research.

His book When the Day Ends states that hundreds of years ago people in many parts of the world slept in two.

Ekirch found more than two thousand testimonies in diaries, court records and literature that prove that people went to bed shortly after dusk, then stayed awake for several hours at night - and went to bed again.

In his opinion, this means that the body has a natural preference for "segmented sleep."

Not all scientists agree with him. Some researchers have found modern hunter-gatherer communities that don't have two stages of sleep even though they don't have electric lights. That is, "segmented sleep" is not necessarily the default natural norm.

According to Ekirch, the transition from biphasic to monophasic sleep occurred in the 19th century. Then the possibility of lighting houses led to the fact that people began to go to bed later, while waking up at the same time as before. Improvements in lighting led to a change in the biological clock, and the industrial revolution required people to be more productive.

7. Phones keep teens from sleeping

Sleep experts believe that teenagers need up to 10 hours of sleep a day, but nearly half of them sleep significantly less, according to data from the British health system.

Bedrooms are supposed to be a place of relaxation, but there are more and more distractions in them, such as laptops, mobile phones. All this complicates the process of going to bed.

We have more variety of entertainment than ever - the result is the temptation to stay awake more.

The blue light emitted from electronic devices makes us less sleepy. And the activity itself - talking with friends or watching TV - stimulates our brain when it should relax.

Statistics show that most young people continue to check their phones after they go to bed.

8. More research into sleep disorders

More and more people are turning to doctors with complaints of sleep problems.

Analyzing data from the British health system in June, the BBC found that the number of studies on sleep disorders in the last decade has grown every year.

There are several factors, but the most important one seems to be obesity, says neurologist Guy Leshziner. The most common complaint, according to his observation, is obstructive sleep apnea - a violation of breathing during sleep, which is closely related to the problem of excess weight.

The media has also played a role, as people are more likely to seek therapy after reading an article about sleep problems or searching the internet for symptoms, he says.

The recommended treatment for insomnia is cognitive behavioral therapy, and doctors are increasingly coming to the conclusion that pills in such cases should not be prescribed. However, many still do this, because not everyone has the opportunity to undergo treatment without medication, especially outside of big cities.

9. Are there differences in different countries?

One study examined the sleep habits of people in 20 industrialized countries. It turned out that the time when people go to bed and wake up can vary up to an hour in one direction or another, but in general it was about the same in different countries.

As a rule, if on average the inhabitants of the country went to bed later, they woke up later, although not in all cases.

The researchers concluded that social factors - work time, school schedule, habits associated with free time - play a more significant role than the dark or daylight hours.

In Norway, where the duration of darkness can range from zero to 24 hours, sleep duration varies by only half an hour on average throughout the year.

And in countries like Britain, where the times of sunrise and sunset are highly dependent on the season, and in countries closer to the equator, where this difference is minimal, the duration of sleep remains constant throughout the year.

And what about the effect of artificial lighting?

A study of three communities with no access to electricity in three countries - Tanzania, Namibia and Bolivia - found that the average sleep duration there was about 7.7 hours. That is the same as in industrialized countries.

Thus, the duration of sleep is about the same all over the world. In these communities, they also went to bed not as soon as it got dark, but fell asleep about three hours after sunset - and woke up before dawn.

Most studies show that yes, artificial light delays sleep time, but it does not necessarily reduce its duration.

10. "Larks" and "owls"

There have always been "morning" and "evening" people. We even have genetic evidence to support this.

Artificial light seems to exacerbate this effect - especially for people who prefer to stay up late. If you already tend to be a night owl, the artificial light will encourage you to stay up even later.

Approximately 30% of us tend to be early risers and 30% night owls, with the remaining 40% somewhere in between - although a few more of them prefer to get up earlier than stay up late.

In doing so, we can partially control our biological clock. Those who are used to getting up and going to bed later may try to realign themselves and get more daylight.

A team of researchers selected a group of volunteers in Colorado who were denied access to artificial light sources. And just 48 hours was enough to move their biological clock forward by almost two hours.

Levels of melatonin - a hormone that tells the body that it's time to get ready for sleep - began to rise earlier in the volunteers, and their bodies began to prepare for sleep closer to sunset.

Everyone knows that early sleep and, at the same time, early rise have a positive effect on the health and general condition of a person. It has been scientifically proven that the positions in which we sleep and our sleep patterns affect the lives of each of us. We all love to sleep, but how many of you devote enough time to this and try to make sleep comfortable?

It is certain that few people have the opportunity to enjoy quality sleep on a daily basis. You may consider that you are now at working age, and it is absolutely normal if you do not get enough sleep for several hours and spend them at work. But let me assure you that this is not normal at all. Sleep is essential for full recovery. Remember that the main thing here is quality, not quantity. To this day, not everyone realizes the importance of sleep. Many people think that work is more important, and this is fundamentally wrong. We must not forget that the time we spend sleeping is extremely important for our health.

How many hours of sleep do you need on average according to your age:

Newborns up to 2 months 12-18 hours
From 3 months to 1 year 14-15 hours
From 1 to 3 years 12-14 hours
From 3 to 5 years 11-13 hours
From 5 to 12 years 10-11 hours
From 12 to 18 years old 8.5-10 hours
Adults (over 18 years old) 7.5-9 hours

1. Brain activity

Sleep not only gives you the opportunity to relax and recharge, but also increase brain activity, improve memory and alertness. Yes this main reason for which it is so important. We all want us and our children to be healthy. At the same time, it has been scientifically proven that brain activity increases many times if we pay due attention not only to the quantity, but also to the quality of sleep every day. Nourishing the brain also undoubtedly has importance in this process, but proper sleep should be a mandatory addition to it. It improves memory and concentration, which increases your productivity. In addition, good sleep reduces the chances of getting mental disorders, depression, etc., which are extremely harmful to our psyche. Among other things, .

2. Lifespan

We all dream of being immortal, like vampires from popular fairy tales and movies. But this is impossible. And yet, why do we ourselves shorten our life span by refusing sleep? Its deficiency reduces our life expectancy. Perhaps it is this fact that can convince you that sleep is extremely important in our lives. Many studies prove that if we do not sleep as much as our body requires, most likely we will live less than those people who listen to their bodies. So remember: by reducing the time of sleep, you are reducing the time of your life. Therefore, think before you prefer work to sleep, otherwise you can pay dearly for it.

3. Immunity

The strength of our body lies in the fact that it protects itself with the help of its immune system. We don't get runny noses, coughs, etc. if the immune system is working properly, but everyone knows that it suffers if we don't get proper sleep. Yes, according to research, this is true. The immune system acts as a kind of fighter in our body. It expels all viruses and diseases from the human body. Therefore, if we do not get enough sleep, we become more prone to disease. So sleep more if you want to boost your immunity.

4. Recovery

Daily recuperation is extremely important, because only in this way can we replenish our physical and mental activity, which significantly increases efficiency. As noted earlier, the morning can only be truly awake after a good night's sleep. In addition, it is recovery that helps a person feel cheerful and full of enthusiasm. During sleep, your entire body from the top of your head to your toes relaxes. During the day, you spend all your energy on work, and at night your activity is restored. Thus, provide the body with proper sleep and be full of energy.

5. Good morning

Each of us wants to feel attractive and full of energy in the morning, but, unfortunately, we are usually lucky only on weekends and holidays. But now you can make every morning really good! Good sleep can certainly make your awakening less painful. If you get enough sleep every night, your body takes care of all the biological processes. For example, at this time, the kidneys begin to effectively perform their functions, which ultimately activates the work of the entire digestive system. Moreover, when you wake up, you feel both physically and mentally rested for this, which ultimately gives your morning a positive mood.

6. Health

We all work hard and can stay up all night to earn a living. Of course, you can give up sleep and work even harder, but be sure that this will lead to serious problems in the future. Lack of sleep can seriously affect your performance. Short-term sleep leads to even greater fatigue and inability to perform duties, even with a great desire. Therefore, many companies today equip special rooms where workers can rest when the need arises. Thus, sleep is extremely important for maintaining a person's working capacity at the initial level.

7. Mood

Have you ever watched your mood after being awake all night, or after your sleep was interrupted at the wrong time? Surely you are angry with others and wind up with a half turn. Have you thought about what is behind this? Yes, we are talking about the importance of good sleep again. Its deficiency can lead to excessive irritability, lack of tolerance, increased stress and lack of mood. So stop thinking it's just mood swings and focus more on quality sleep every day if you want to stay positive all the time.

8. Beauty

It's no secret that each of us wants to always remain beautiful and attractive. If you are too, then remember that sleep plays a huge role in maintaining our beauty. Then you will never have to use all the harmless cosmetics that promise incredible results to look good. All you need is a good daily sleep. Let's see how it works in terms of the impact on human body. When you sleep 6 to 8 hours a day, your body heals and repairs itself on its own. During the deep sleep phase, our cells are renewed. Lack of sleep leads to dark circles under the eyes, which obviously do not make you look attractive, and also does not give the skin a chance to recover and shine, as it happens when you get enough sleep. Hence, try to maintain your beauty every night.

9. Health problems

Obviously, no one likes to be vaccinated, undergo surgery, or drink bitter medicines. To make this happen as rarely as possible, it is necessary to prevent unpleasant procedures. Millions of people face serious health problems due to lack of sleep. This includes various types of cardiovascular diseases. Regular sleep disruption can also lead to hypertension and increased levels of stress hormones in the body. Thus, it becomes clear that sleep deprived people are more likely to suffer from stress than those who sleep enough. In addition, there may be problems associated with arrhythmia. Remember that proper sleep can save you from serious problems with health.

10. Completeness

Today, obesity is becoming more and more common throughout the world. Each of us wants to be in shape. You can easily drop excess weight by allocating enough hours of sleep every day. You're probably confused right now because you don't understand how weight gain and sleep can be related, right? Let's get acquainted with a number of scientific facts regarding this phenomenon. In our body, there are two hormones responsible for this process: ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin is an appetite stimulant. When you don't get enough sleep, the level of ghrelin in our body increases. Leptin, in turn, decreases during sleep deprivation. Thus, yours and you begin to consume more food, due to which weight gain occurs. Hence, you sleep well and eat less.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of sleep for a person. Sleep is a whole mysterious world that lives according to its own, different from earthly laws. On average, a person spends a quarter of a century in this state, not reacting to the world around him.

Thanks to artificial lighting, there is no need to go to bed at sunset. And the modern inhabitant of the Earth began to sleep less than his ancestors. On average, the duration of a person’s sleep is 7 hours, but a hundred years ago he slept at least 9. The acquired 2 hours for reality were not without losses. Previously, the rhythm of the body was controlled by nature. And, despite the fact that most of the day people are surrounded by artificial light, the cells of the body contain information about the natural biological rhythm. It is impossible to deceive this chronometer.

The norm of sleep for a person per day is at least 8 hours. If a person devotes less time to it, the following happens in the body:

• accumulation in the blood of amyloid - a protein that destroys the walls of blood vessels. It also affects connective tissue and contributes to the occurrence of heart disease;
• up to 30% of immune cells are lost, which means that the risk of reproduction in the body of pathogenic bacteria and viruses increases.

Scientists have found that if a person sleeps less than 6 hours, the IQ decreases by 15%, and the risk of obesity increases by 23%. They directly link the obesity of modern people and the increase in cardiovascular diseases with a violation of the daily norm of sleep and a violation of circadian rhythms (biological clock).

What happens to a person without sleep

Sleep deprivation primarily affects the mental state: irritability, an increase in the number of mistakes, difficulties in interacting with others. In the future, this can lead to serious illnesses - psychosomatic disorders.

Lack of sleep contributes to the fact that information ceases to be remembered, attention decreases, reaction speed decreases, speech slows down, and the ability to quickly express one's thoughts.

When awake for 3 days, when the dangerous line for health has not yet been passed, the following happens to the body:

• sudden mood swings, depression, aggression;
• jumps in blood pressure, violation of the pulse rate and blood clotting;
• violation of carbohydrate metabolism, possible appearances signs characteristic of the early stages of the development of diabetes mellitus.

Continuous wakefulness for 20 hours weakens attention, as if the blood contained 0.5% ethanol. This corresponds to a mild degree of intoxication. Therefore, getting behind the wheel without enough sleep is the same as having a drink before that. The reaction in this state slows down by 5-10 times.

On the second day:

• there are problems with the cardiovascular and digestive systems;
• fatigue, weakness;
• microbes appear.

On the third day, sleep absorbs completely.

It has been experimentally established that after 11 sleepless days the psyche does not stand up, and the person loses his mind, which cannot be restored.

Sleep disorders or snoring

Today, 89 sleep diseases or pathological conditions associated with it are known. They are not familiar to ordinary people, with the exception of lethargy, increased daytime sleepiness, insomnia, sleep apnea.

Doctors see the main problem in such a pathology as sleep apnea, when a person suffocates in a dream. Its main symptom is loud, intermittent snoring. According to statistics, among people aged 30 to 60, 44% of men and 28% of women snore. Snoring is a symptom of narrowing of the airways, respiratory arrest, hypoxia (lack of oxygen).

Cause of snoring

When falling asleep begins, muscle tone decreases, including in the respiratory tract. Muscles sag and prevent air from entering the lungs. When the brain is asleep, it does not feel whether a person is breathing or not. He sends respiratory impulses, but attempts to breathe are not realized, since the airways are blocked. This can last from 20 seconds to a minute, and in record cases up to 2 minutes. This lack of oxygen awakens the brain, it opens the airways and the person snores. Having received oxygen, the brain falls asleep again. And everything repeats again. The number of cycles per night can reach up to 500.

As a result, a person feels sleepy in the morning, he is worried about headaches, high blood pressure. But the most terrible consequence of stopping breathing during sleep is a 5-fold increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. It turns out that sleep can be dangerous. But this is not a reason to refuse him, because he is also a natural healer.

Why does a person need sleep?

Muscles lose their tone a few minutes after falling asleep. In this way, nature has protected us from damage to the body in sleep. But if the parts of the body do not move, this does not mean that the brain is not working. At this time, his activity may be higher than during wakefulness.

Sleep has two phases:

• Metabolic - the first 3-4 hours of deep sleep, when growth hormones and testosterone are produced.
• Information - begins closer to the morning, when the brain processes the information received during the day.

The importance of sleep is due to the fact that at this time the main immune cells that destroy viruses and bacteria are activated. That is why they say that a person recovers in a dream. Neurons and areas of the cerebral cortex, which in wakefulness are engaged in the analysis of signals coming from them outside world and then they are engaged in the coordination of our movements, at rest they switch to the analysis of signals coming from the internal organs. Thus, work on errors is going on in each system and organ:

• skin cells are renewed;
• toxins are actively removed;
• collagen protein is intensively produced, which ensures the elasticity and strength of the skin;
• there is an intensive metabolism and energy in the cells.

Even nightmares are considered curative by scientists. People who often have nightmares adapt better to their environment. Playing the brain of such a situation leads to the search for a way out of it.

When you sleep in the dark, the hormone melatonin is released. It protects against stress and premature aging, from colds and cancer. Therefore, the insufficient duration of human sleep, which means a decrease in the daily dose of melatonin, leads not only to chronic diseases, tumors, heart attacks, but also to a decrease in intellectual potential.

Dreams are the key to unraveling secret desires

The average duration of dreams in a lifetime is 6 years. This happens every 90 minutes after falling asleep, and the longest half-hour dreams occur in the morning. Interesting dreams of people rarely remain in memories after waking up.

The famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, with the help of their interpretation, gives the key to understanding secret desires:

• Plots of nudity and feelings of shame associated with it, which are most often in dreams - a subconscious desire to return to childhood, when nudity was natural.
• Flying - repressed sexual arousal.
• Persecution, attacks, murders - their own aggressive impulses.

Interesting fact: People deprived of sight also have dreams, only they do not see them, but hear and feel them.

Researchers believe that dreams are hidden from us true desires and thoughts. It is always difficult to look directly and frankly at yourself, at your desires, emotional condition from the side. But there is a readiness to perceive this information if it is presented in the form of images. Only not everything seen in a dream should be betrayed. Images, scientists believe, are not only the language of the subconscious, but also the result of the analysis and processing of information that enters the brain through hearing, sight, touch, and smell. Most of the information (90%) is perceived through vision and processed by the brain into visions. We dream what we see.

Remember, sleep is an integral part of our life, training process and anabolism. There is a lot of evidence that there is a relationship between lack of sleep and health problems - low life expectancy, irritability, stress, depression, Alzheimer's disease, mental and neurological disorders, cardiovascular disease, diabetes.

If you include in your lifestyle 15-20 minutes of daytime sleep or increase the time of night sleep, then the changes will be immediately noticeable. Good mood, alertness, a 5% increase in strength, improved cognitive function - these are the "consequences" of increasing the amount of sleep.

Sleep phases

All physiological processes in the body, the production of all hormones occur within a 24-hour cycle. Everything obeys the daily "circadian" rhythm: gene transcription, basic metabolic rate, insulin sensitivity, glycogenesis, lipolysis, blood pressure, body temperature, secretion adrenal hormones (cortisol), pituitary hormones (testosterone). And sleep is the most important process for all 24 hours, because the regulation of behavioral and biological reactions depends on whether a person is awake or sleeping.

Studies in humans and animals have shown that all of these processes occur spontaneously, but are interconnected, controlled by the hypothalamus, its area, which is called the "suprachiasmatic nucleus" (SCN). We know it better under the name "biological clock".

Humans are the only creatures among animals that have learned to control their sleep synthetically, with the help of coffee and artificial lighting. But even in this case, the SCN continues to work and make sure that the person still wants to go to bed in the evening. If someone is sleep deprived, SCN stimulates moments of microsleep. You all noticed it, probably, in the subway.

Quality or Quantity?

The quality of sleep matters just as much as the quantity. During the night, sleep goes through two main phases: slow-wave sleep (non-rapid eye movement, NREM), which occupies 80% of sleep, and REM sleep (rapid eye movement, rapid eye movement, REM), which occupies the remaining 20 %. NREM is also divided into 4 phases.

Does sleep deprivation increase catabolism?

Chronic lack of sleep affects the level of the hormone cortisol the most. With elevated levels of cortisol, a person faces the following problems: increased breakdown of proteins in the muscles, deposition of fat in muscle tissue, poor glucose control and insulin resistance, high blood pressure.

Alpha males sleep a lot

Testosterone and growth hormone are strongly influenced by daily biorhythms. Sleep provides the necessary conditions for the peaks of these hormones to occur. To negate muscle growth and set the muscles for increased catabolism, just 1 week of sleep deprivation is enough.

Long term sleep deprivation

Studies have shown that among older men, poor sexuality and depressed mood are complained of by those who have not had enough sleep for a long time. They also had intensifying muscle atrophy (senile sarcopenia).

There is a strong relationship between sleep and anabolic hormones. The release of testosterone precedes REM sleep. Lack of REM sleep is not life threatening, but it does affect neurogenesis and information storage.

According to studies, a long sleep improves your love life and memory, can dispel the blues, make you smarter.

How to increase anabolism during sleep?

If your sleep is not the best right now, use the following tips to improve it:

• May your sleep be comfortable. Invest in good bed a quality mattress.
• Let the bedroom be just a place to sleep. Don't use your laptop in bed - it will make her full of stress working environment. Create a calm environment.
• Turn off the lights. Melatonin is very sensitive to light, its level decreases even due to light. mobile phone or a small light bulb. Buy good curtains or wear a sleep mask.
• Make sleep a priority. Control your own bedtime, skip late nights in front of the computer or TV, or party late in the middle of the week.
• Keep cool. Body temperature decreases during the NREM phase. The normal temperature for sleeping is about 21 degrees.

Sleep and nutrition

It has been proven that with lack of sleep, a person consumes 22% more calories the next day (that's about 500 kcal)! Use the following tips to help you recover better while you sleep.

• Less carbohydrates during the day - more in the evening. Regulate your activity level with macronutrients. Eat more protein for breakfast and lunch and more carbohydrates for dinner. They will help you relax, and if you trained in the evening, then recover.
• Drink dietary supplements. The most useful combination of zinc, magnesium and vitamin B6. Zinc is needed for melatonin secretion and maintaining normal testosterone levels, magnesium is needed to increase melatonin levels and lower cortisol levels, and vitamin B6 is critical for serotonin secretion, which also helps with recovery.
• Drink in small sips. In order not to wake up to go to the toilet, drink the bulk of the liquid in the first half of the day, and in the second, reduce the amount of water - for example, drink in small sips.
• Cut down on coffee. Caffeine and caffeinated drinks can last up to 12 hours and interfere with sleep. In the afternoon, you should switch to herbal clocks such as rooibos.
• Eat before bed. Dairy is the go-to meal before bed: it's a great mix of protein and carbs to help you relax. They promote deeper sleep, reduce cortisol secretion, and increase production of the neurotransmitter serotonin.
• Alcohol - only at lunch. Alcohol has a very negative effect on REM sleep, so after alcohol you feel sleepy, but the sleep will be of poor quality and you will get up broken. It is better to drink soft drinks at night, and finish with alcohol in the afternoon, so that by the time of sleep the body has already been cleansed.

Sleep. It's funny what the best remedy in order to look good, always at our fingertips. Sleep has a positive effect on appearance, overall health and training performance.

cocktail recipe before bed

Ingredients:

• 1 scoop vanilla protein
• 240 ml skimmed milk
• 40 g oatmeal
• 1 banana
• 1/4 tsp cardamom
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp sweetener

Cooking method:

Place everything in a blender and blend until smooth. Add water to make the cocktail thinner. Sweet spices will make sleep deeper, banana, oatmeal and milk are sources of tryptophan, which increases serotonin levels.

Nutritional composition:

Fats - 4.1 g

Protein - 35.3 g

Carbohydrates - 56.7 g

Winter and summer time

Until recently, the entire country switched from winter to summer time and vice versa twice a year. Then it was decided to stop at a single time, and the power engineers stood up for the summer, and the doctors - for the winter. And for good reason. A huge amount of data has been accumulated on the growth of visits to polyclinics after each switchover.

It is so arranged by nature that the vast majority of living organisms on the planet exist according to daily rhythms - that is, it depends on the change of day and night. Moreover, the biological day does not completely coincide with the astronomical one and can be from 22 to 28 hours. During the day in any organism, the activity of various life processes has clearly defined ups and downs. In the wild, in animals, fluctuations in body temperature and blood pressure, the change in sleep-wake cycles are strictly coordinated with the light period of the day.

People are no exception. Over a long period of evolution, the human biological clock has adapted to work during daylight hours, that is, after sunrise, which is genetically fixed. Healthy human sleep should ideally last from dusk to dawn. Unfortunately, nowadays this is unrealistic, because the time in the country is set by law.

Our internal clock

From mid-autumn to mid-spring, most are forced to wake up long before the first rays of the sun. Getting up at the alarm clock at night, force-feeding breakfast, going to work in a half-asleep state is a serious stress for the body, tantamount to moving to another geographical zone. As you know, after an air flight with a change in time zones, a person needs to acclimatize due to the imbalance of internal and external rhythms. But travel in our life is still not so frequent, but in the time mode set artificially, we live every day. Is it possible under such conditions to have a strong healthy sleep? Rhetorical question...

Due to the discrepancy between our internal clocks and the official time, the production of melatonin, the hormone responsible for our health and good mood, is disrupted. If it is enough, we wake up healthy and vigorous, if not, we feel overwhelmed and sleepy, which is further aggravated by cloudy weather and short daylight hours. However, many do not even realize how important healthy sleep is for good health.

What are the consequences of rhythm failure? This is a constant feeling of fatigue, decreased performance, depressed mood, irritability. All of the above are manifestations of desynchronosis - a violation of the body's adaptation to the external environment. Constant desynchronosis leads to a "breakdown" of the biological clock, which exacerbates chronic diseases and new ones arise. Swedish and American doctors conducted research among flight attendants who worked on flights with crossing time zones. Most of them have coronary heart disease, hypertension, digestive system disorders.

How to achieve quality sleep?

How to be? Is sound healthy sleep possible these days as such? Of course, for modern man to achieve complete merging with nature will not work for objective reasons, and, above all, this is our work schedule. But you need to do everything in your own power. Try, if possible, to organize the working regime in such a way that the working day begins no earlier than an hour and a half after dawn. It's great if the authorities will meet you halfway and allow you to set a more flexible schedule. In Russia, some of the advanced offices in the capital have already been introduced new form- part of the employees come to work by 8 in the morning, some - by 11.

• Don't start at hard time adaptation of large projects, and do not take on additional household responsibilities. The body is already having a hard time. The wise Japanese begin to perform the most difficult and responsible work no earlier than a couple of hours after dawn. The same rule applies to school and student exams.
• Try to find time at any cost - an extra couple of hours a day for healthy sleep. Among other things, it will help to deal with weather sensitivity. It is very useful for the body to go to bed, get up and eat at approximately the same usual hours. To improve the emotional background will help physical education, but without overload. Even better if they pass on fresh air. Any activity will do - exercise, walking, rollerblading or cycling.
• Use the smallest opportunity to be in the light. Do not curtain windows during the day, arrange small breaks at work with access to the street. If a sunlight still not enough, try to see a doctor who will prescribe light therapy sessions.
• Pay attention to food. It is very important to eat foods containing the amino acid L-tryptophan, from which the joy hormone serotonin is produced. These are bananas, cheese, cottage cheese, peanuts, dark chocolate, dried dates.
• Healthy human sleep is affected by the so-called light pollution. It includes even the weak street light breaking through the curtains. Try to sleep in complete darkness, turn off the TV and nightlight at night. To go to the kitchen and to the toilet room, a dim light bulb is enough.
• If you are working on a computer evening time, do not forget about additional lighting. The bright light of the screen in a dark room is detrimental to vision.

By following these simple rules, any of us can significantly reduce the adverse manifestations of autumn-winter depression and improve health.