REST AND RELAXATION | health & wellness || 21
Recent research results
“ Sleep plays an important role in regulating the hormones that influence hunger( ghrelin, cortisol, and leptin); that’ s why sleep deprivation increases appetite and leads to overeating and weight gain,” declared neurobiologist Adrian Owen of Western University, London, Ontario, Canada, who worked with the Medisys company, which completed a long-term cohort study. It also emerged that being in a wakeful state for an entire eighteen hours affects cognitive functions as negatively as a binge drinking session does. Concentration and the ability to perform certain tasks suffers. So driving a car when you’ re chronically sleep-deprived is as dangerous as getting behind the wheel while drunk. And on the whole, Medisys’ s study showed that regular sleep-deprivation increases the risk of depression, heart attacks, and strokes.
Read more at: www. digitaljournal. com / life / health / poorsleep-is-as-damaging-as-bingedrinking / article / 499370 # ixzz4wuvBiplW
Another recent study conducted by personnel at the MRK Polytechnic College showed that sleep deprivation causes the brain to“ eat itself.” The scientists compared the brains of three groups of mice. In the first group, the rodents slept as much as they wanted. In the second group, the mice slept less than eight hours. The third group was awake five days straight, that is, they suffered from chronic lack of sleep. The researchers studied the astrocytes and microglia cells. The former cleanse the brain of unneeded synapses, while the latter cleanse it of damaged cells and other waste.
The scientists established that with mice that slept a lot, the astrocytes were active in about 6 % of the synapses, in those that slept less than eight hours— in 8 % of the synapses, and in the animals with chronic sleep deprivation— in 13.5 % of the synapses. That is, when sleep was insufficient, brain cells destroyed more synapses and waste. The specialists noted that excessive activity of these cells can lead to negative consequences such as neurological disorders and Alzheimer’ s disease.
And researchers at the University of California, San Francisco who analyzed data from more than three million women established that pregnant women’ s sleep interruptions can lead to premature births, meaning births prior to 34 weeks of gestation. It was noted that among women with a sleep disorder, more than 30 % suffered from insomnia, and almost 60 % from obstructive apnea syndrome— interrupted breathing while sleeping— a kind of apnea that can end in death.
Why sleep is so essential?
Sleep is responsible for the condition of the nervous system and for immunity and hormonal balance. When sleep is of poor quality, a person is more subject to infectious diseases and suffers more from aggravation of chronic pain, and hormonal disturbances and breakdown of metabolic processes can lead to diabetes, obesity, and even cancer.
Many stars think the secret to prolonged youth and beauty is in good sleep. The film diva Sophia Loren speaks out in favor of healthy sleep: her statement that“ Sleep, sleep, and sleep is the prime guarantee of beauty!” has become an aphorism. The singer Mireille Mathieu echoes her. Jennifer Lopez calls sleep her weapon, and Catherine Deneuve contends that sleep is an irreplaceable means of maintaining health and a youthful appearance. But in fact, good sleep gives you far more benefits than beauty. It improves your sense of physical well-being, supports high“ combat capability” of the immune system, assures vigor and a generally high level of ability to work over the course of the day, promotes excellent mental concentration, protects against depression, facilitates improvement and maintenance of memory, aids in normalization of weight, and helps the body heal itself.
Correct process: stage by stage
Three to five sleep periods cycle through an average night ' s sleep. A sleep cycle typically lasts about ninety to a hundred ten minutes and consists of five stages that differ by brain activity. The first stage is drowsing, or semisleep, and then comes shallow sleep. Then there are two deep sleep stages characterized by slow brain wave patterns and comprising up to 75 % of the total sleep time. It is difficult to wake a person who is in these deep stages of sleep. Slow wave sleep is vital for our cells to carry out important restorative work. Three to four hours of slow wave sleep are necessary for physical restoration. And it is this deep, slow wave sleep that is responsible for your feeling rested when you wake up. The last stage in a sleep cycle is REM sleep, so called because it is accompanied by rapid eye movement, and which is also called paradoxical sleep because during this stage, the brain ' s activity looks the same as when you ' re awake. People dream most vividly during REM sleep, and if they ' re woken when dreaming, they ' ll remember the dream and can tell about it. The REM stage is enormously significant: according to scientific studies, information stored by the brain over the preceding day is processed during REM sleep, and information is also exchanged between the conscious and the subconscious.
But if you sleep poorly, snore, or don ' t get your sleep out and then fidget all day, if you experience difficulty getting to sleep or
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