Sleep as protection against disease and the path to a long life

Sleep is an inte­gral part of human life. Despite this, peo­ple assign sleep a sec­ondary role. Accord­ing to sta­tis­tics, the aver­age sleep dura­tion of an adult is less than sev­en hours dai­ly. Med­AboutMe talks about dis­eases caused by jet lag.

Circadian biorhythms

Dai­ly bio­rhythms were formed in the process of evo­lu­tion due to the change of day and night. The ances­tors of mod­ern man went to bed ear­ly and got up with the first rays of the sun. That is why the human body works dif­fer­ent­ly for twen­ty-four hours.

Perfect human dream

Night sleep ful­ly restores the body if a per­son fol­lows sim­ple rec­om­men­da­tions:

• Goes to bed between 22:00 and 23:00 in the evening.

This peri­od of time rep­re­sents a “win­dow” when the pro­duc­tion of the hor­mone mela­tonin begins.

• Pro­vides total dark­ness in the room: the cur­tains on the win­dows do not let in sun­light and arti­fi­cial light, and the bulbs on elec­tron­ic devices are turned off.

The syn­the­sis of the hor­mone is dis­rupt­ed if this rec­om­men­da­tion is not fol­lowed. Even the light from a blink­ing light bulb on your phone blocks the pro­duc­tion of mela­tonin.

• Sleeps about sev­en to eight hours dai­ly.

Reduced sleep dura­tion affects over­all well-being. In con­di­tions of lack of sleep, the body adapts worse to envi­ron­men­tal influ­ences. Inter­ac­tion, con­tact with peo­ple is inhib­it­ed. A per­son who sleeps less than sev­en hours a day is more like­ly to get sick. Sci­en­tists also note signs of ear­ly aging in peo­ple with insom­nia. The appear­ance also suf­fers: bruis­es appear under the eyes, wrin­kles, and the skin los­es its elas­tic­i­ty and firm­ness.

A good sleep habit is usu­al­ly formed with­in three to five weeks. In the event that a per­son failed to estab­lish sleep in this time inter­val, one should seek help from a spe­cial­ist. The doc­tor will pre­scribe a course of exam­i­na­tion to iden­ti­fy the cause of insom­nia.

Diseases due to lack of sleep

Every­one expe­ri­ences sleep depri­va­tion at some point or anoth­er in their lives. A short-term deficit mobi­lizes the com­pen­sato­ry forces of the body — sys­tems and organs work in an “emer­gency” mode, at the lim­it of their capa­bil­i­ties. How­ev­er, lack of sleep for a long time depletes, exhausts the body.

There are dis­eases and patho­log­i­cal con­di­tions that a per­son faces with chron­ic sleep depri­va­tion. Let’s con­sid­er some of them.

Decline in cognitive abilities

The brain does not have time to recov­er and process the infor­ma­tion received dur­ing the day. As a result, a per­son hard­ly remem­bers new infor­ma­tion, mas­ters skills. In child­hood, lack of sleep leads to a drop in school per­for­mance, and in adults — to a decrease in work­ing capac­i­ty, an increase in the num­ber of errors at work.

Sys­tem­at­ic lack of sleep increas­es the risk of devel­op­ing senile demen­tia, since the pro­tein — beta-amy­loid — is uti­lized dur­ing the night’s sleep.

Hormonal imbalance

Men and women gen­er­al­ly respond to sleep depri­va­tion in the same way, but there are dif­fer­ences. The body of a man is more resis­tant than a wom­an’s to vio­la­tions of dai­ly bio­rhythms. This fact is explained by both greater endurance and dif­fer­ences in hor­mon­al reg­u­la­tion.

The hor­mon­al back­ground of a woman changes with a lack of sleep and a vio­la­tion of dai­ly bio­rhythms. This is due to the fact that female sex hor­mones are pro­duced main­ly at night. The con­se­quences of lack of sleep are: vio­la­tion of the men­stru­al cycle (up to amen­or­rhea), lack of ovu­la­tion, impaired repro­duc­tive func­tion. Gyne­co­log­i­cal dis­eases cause dif­fi­cul­ties in con­ceiv­ing a child.

metabolic diseases

A per­son with lack of sleep runs the risk of gain­ing weight and get­ting meta­bol­ic prob­lems. Obe­si­ty and dia­betes — in par­tic­u­lar, are also the con­se­quences of cir­ca­di­an jet lag. Thus, those who decide to lose weight should start with the nor­mal­iza­tion of sleep.

Cardiovascular diseases

Sleep depri­va­tion is stress­ful for the body. Togeth­er with the mod­ern rhythm of life and emo­tion­al, psy­cho­log­i­cal expe­ri­ences — a dou­ble threat. Stress hor­mones affect the func­tion­ing of the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem. Dur­ing lack of sleep, heart rate increas­es. Tachy­car­dia is a poten­tial risk for the devel­op­ment of car­dio­vas­cu­lar acci­dents.

Decreased immunity

Human sleep is nec­es­sary for the immune sys­tem to work cor­rect­ly. Peo­ple with a lack of night sleep, chron­ic fatigue are more like­ly to suf­fer from infec­tious dis­eases.

Personality changes

Psy­chol­o­gists and psy­chother­a­pists in the course of research have found out: a per­son with lack of sleep acts like a per­son in a state of intox­i­ca­tion. The brain can not cope with the flow of incom­ing infor­ma­tion. The reac­tion to the out­side world is expressed by aggres­sive and uncon­trolled behav­ior.

Human sleep duration

The opti­mal dura­tion of sleep is the time that the body needs to recu­per­ate and ensure the nor­mal func­tion­ing of the body’s organs and sys­tems. A per­son­’s sleep changes through­out life: imme­di­ate­ly after birth, the child sleeps about twen­ty hours a day, and by old age, sleep is short­ened to six to sev­en hours. The aver­age dura­tion of sleep is observed at the age of twen­ty to forty years at the peak of men­tal and phys­i­cal activ­i­ty.

Accord­ing to sci­en­tists, the sleep of a mid­dle-aged per­son should be at least sev­en hours every day. A decrease in the dura­tion and qual­i­ty of sleep leads to the devel­op­ment of chron­ic dis­eases, the accel­er­a­tion of the aging process of the body.

In the con­di­tions of the mod­ern world, sleep is espe­cial­ly impor­tant for a per­son. A high lev­el of stress, expo­sure to envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors cre­ate an unfa­vor­able back­ground for the life sup­port sys­tem of the body. Sleep nor­mal­iza­tion is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to be in har­mo­ny with your inner world, as well as a way to avoid many chron­ic dis­eases.

Thus, dis­eases arise not only from “nerves”, but also in vio­la­tion of dai­ly bio­rhythms, insom­nia and oth­er sleep dis­or­ders.