9 myths about sleep that scientists have debunked

Did you know?

Dur­ing deep sleep, the func­tion of smell is com­plete­ly turned off, so if, for exam­ple, a fire starts in the house, a per­son will not smell burn­ing.

Myth 4: Staying in bed is important for insomnia

30% of respon­dents think so. And they con­tin­ue to count sheep, read bor­ing books or surf the Inter­net in the hope of falling asleep soon­er. Is it worth say­ing it does­n’t work? On the con­trary, unsuc­cess­ful attempts to fall asleep increase the stress hor­mone cor­ti­sol, which fur­ther pro­longs the tor­ment.

Experts Nation­al Sleep Asso­ci­a­tion they advise those who can­not sleep to get out of bed and go to anoth­er room where they can do some relax­ing activ­i­ty. As soon as the feel­ing of drowsi­ness comes, you need to return to bed and most like­ly you will quick­ly fall into the “embrace of Mor­pheus.”

Myth 5: On weekends, you need to sleep off your weekdays.

Few peo­ple man­age to sleep as much time as they want on week­days. Most peo­ple have to get up ear­ly and get ready for school or work. There­fore, few peo­ple miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get a good night’s sleep on the week­end, believ­ing that in this way they can catch up. But it’s not!

A recent study pub­lished in the jour­nal cur­rent Biol­o­gy, showed that attempts to com­pen­sate for lack of sleep on week­ends are doomed to fail­ure. And all because they do not can­cel the neg­a­tive con­se­quences expe­ri­enced by the body of a per­son who sleeps lit­tle on work­ing days. Get­ting enough sleep on week­days and week­ends is essen­tial to stay­ing healthy.

Myth 6: Drinking alcohol before bed helps you fall asleep.

20% of respon­dents are con­vinced of this. If there is no sleep in any eye, it is enough to drink a glass of red or white wine (or some­thing stronger), and the “degrees” will dri­ve you to bed …

And while alco­hol does make you sleepy and can help you fall asleep, in the long run, drink­ing does a dis­ser­vice by “guar­an­tee­ing” poor sleep qual­i­ty and fre­quent awak­en­ings.

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Expert com­ment

Nina Kolomiyt­se­va, cer­ti­fied spe­cial­ist of the Inter­na­tion­al Yoga Asso­ci­a­tion (Yoga alliance)

Sleep is an impor­tant part of any per­son­’s life. After all, in addi­tion to rest­ing in a dream, the body solves impor­tant tasks for it asso­ci­at­ed with var­i­ous phys­i­o­log­i­cal process­es. Some of them occur pre­cise­ly in the state of sleep: for exam­ple, cer­tain hor­mones are pro­duced.

From the point of view of yoga, in a dream there are process­es of ener­gy exchange with the Uni­verse, so the impor­tance of sleep for a per­son can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed.

Despite all of the above, a huge num­ber of peo­ple have sleep prob­lems, which are often to blame them­selves.

For exam­ple, most of us have a habit of falling asleep to the TV, com­put­er, tablet screen or phone in hand. Accord­ing to these peo­ple, the pres­ence of gad­gets and the abil­i­ty to leave the TV on improves the qual­i­ty of sleep and, in prin­ci­ple, helps to fall asleep. How­ev­er, in fact, it has long been proven that the blue light emit­ted by smart­phone screens, com­put­ers and TVs is very harm­ful both to human skin and pre­vents the pro­duc­tion of mela­tonin, the sleep hor­mone. More­over, the habit of falling asleep with the devices turned on and the sound pro­vokes insom­nia.

There­fore, accus­tom your­self to go to bed cor­rect­ly — put away all gad­gets an hour before going to bed, turn off the TV, do not watch the news before going to bed. To sleep, you need silence, the absence of any irri­tants (includ­ing light and sounds), a com­fort­able mat­tress and a ven­ti­lat­ed room. And most impor­tant­ly: go to bed no lat­er than 12 o’clock at night, ide­al­ly at 11 pm. Since it is at this time that the activ­i­ty of the pitu­itary gland begins to increase.

Anoth­er myth about sleep can be con­sid­ered the opin­ion that you need to sleep at least 8 hours at night. In fact, the num­ber of hours for sleep is indi­vid­ual and depends on the inter­nal needs of the body. Whether you have enough time for qual­i­ty sleep is very easy to find out.

Sleep should occur 10–20 min­utes after you pur­pose­ful­ly lie down in bed. If you toss and turn for an hour or more, then you are sleep­ing too much (or have expe­ri­enced sleep dis­tur­bances). If you fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pil­low, you are not get­ting enough rest.

Try to avoid sleep depri­va­tion: go to bed at the same time (before 12), and get up ear­ly in the morn­ing. It is very impor­tant. Since the desire to sleep off on the week­end is a rather dan­ger­ous myth that leads to the restruc­tur­ing of bio­log­i­cal rhythms. If you didn’t get enough sleep all week for one rea­son or anoth­er, then decid­ed to take a break on the week­end and slept until 11–12 on Sat­ur­day and until one on Sun­day, then you are guar­an­teed to go to bed lat­er, which means that on Mon­day it will be dif­fi­cult for you to get up ear­ly, and you won’t sleep again.

Wak­ing up on week­days and week­ends is desir­able at the same time. Sleep­ing more than your body needs is not healthy and may be a symp­tom of some kind of mal­func­tion in the body: the pres­ence of depres­sion, meta­bol­ic dis­or­ders, etc. Accord­ing to stud­ies, peo­ple who sleep no more than 6–8 hours a night live longer. At the same time, the life expectan­cy of those who like to sleep is rel­a­tive­ly less.

Expert com­ment

Yana Kasatk­i­na, beau­ty blog­ger

Sleep is a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in a healthy lifestyle that affects mood and vital­i­ty, hor­mone pro­duc­tion, meta­bol­ic process­es, and appear­ance. Sleep direct­ly affects the main­te­nance of human health and beau­ty.

The youth hor­mone Mela­tonin (it also has immunos­tim­u­lat­ing and antiox­i­dant prop­er­ties) is pro­duced before 23:00.

Ade­quate sleep will help ensure the fol­low­ing fac­tors:

• Lack of light in the room: from LED lamps, mobile phone screen, tablet, TV, night lamp, street lamp out­side the win­dow and even the moon. A salt lamp is suit­able as a night light for the peri­od of prepa­ra­tion for sleep. Avoid phones and TV two hours before bed­time, or install an app on your phone that adjusts the col­or tem­per­a­ture of the dis­play. Thick night cur­tains or a sleep mask will also help.
• The air tem­per­a­ture in the room is up to 22 C degrees.
• Humid­i­ty is above 60. A humid­i­fi­er will save the sit­u­a­tion in win­ter.
• Smell. Aro­ma oils to help relax and have a ben­e­fi­cial effect on the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem (cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem).
• pos­i­tive thoughts. Our thoughts affect the pro­duc­tion of hor­mones that con­trol our mood, reac­tions, state. In a state of depres­sion or stress, it is dif­fi­cult to fall asleep, and the sleep itself is often of poor qual­i­ty. There­fore, we focus on the pos­i­tive and make bright plans.
• Din­ner 2 hours before bed. By the time you go to bed, the body should not be focused on digest­ing food, the stom­ach is set to rest. If you still want to eat, then 1–1.5 hours before bed­time make a light snack.
• Sleep posi­tion. For a good rest of the body, you will need an ortho­pe­dic pil­low and an ortho­pe­dic mat­tress. A plus will be the dis­ap­pear­ance of creas­es and swelling on the face.

If you still can’t fall asleep, then take a hot show­er, after leav­ing the show­er, the body tem­per­a­ture will drop and the body will pull into sleep.

All healthy sleep, and there­fore beau­ty!