Sleep is the best cure for depression

Healthy sleep is a uni­ver­sal means to relax, get a charge of vivac­i­ty. Prop­er orga­ni­za­tion of sleep direct­ly affects per­for­mance, well-being and health in gen­er­al. If a per­son does not get enough sleep, then weak­ness and drowsi­ness will not take long, fol­lowed by poor health, decreased con­cen­tra­tion, mood swings and even depres­sion. How to prop­er­ly orga­nize sleep, why is it impor­tant to go to bed today in order to wake up tomor­row?

Optimal sleep time

The required sleep time is deter­mined by many para­me­ters: age, gen­der, health sta­tus, work­load, and so on. The max­i­mum sleep time is observed in new­borns — up to 20 hours a day. With the onset of old age, the need decreas­es enough for 5–6 hours. For the adult pop­u­la­tion, the need for sleep is 7–10 hours.

All these fig­ures turn out to be aver­ages, because they do not take into account many fac­tors that will affect the dura­tion of sleep and its qual­i­ty. In adult­hood, it is nec­es­sary to focus on lifestyle, health sta­tus and even gen­der. It is believed that women need to sleep an hour more, which can be explained by the pecu­liar­i­ties of the ner­vous sys­tem.

Even diet can affect how long you sleep, how well you fall asleep, and how quick­ly you fall asleep. Peo­ple who pre­fer light meals fall asleep faster and sleep bet­ter. For lovers of fat­ty, spicy, salty, mari­nades, espe­cial­ly before bed­time, prob­lems with its qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics are more char­ac­ter­is­tic.

Sleep and depression — where is the connection?

Often you can hear from doc­tors — “you need to go to bed today, and wake up tomor­row.” The best sleep time starts from 22:00 to 6–8 in the morn­ing. How can this be explained? work and hor­mone pro­duc­tion. Dur­ing sleep, between 00:00 and 05:00, the body active­ly pro­duces the hor­mone mela­tonin, the main reg­u­la­tor of cir­ca­di­an rhythms.

In the pow­er of this hor­mone is the reg­u­la­tion of the endocrine sys­tem, blood pres­sure, sleep fre­quen­cy (fast and slow phas­es). With its suf­fi­cient devel­op­ment, the emo­tion­al, intel­lec­tu­al sphere of activ­i­ty is nor­mal­ized. The hor­mone has an antiox­i­dant effect and even slows down the aging process, which is why it is often called the “hor­mone of youth.”

With a suf­fi­cient amount of mela­tonin, the con­tent of the hor­mone of hap­pi­ness (sero­tonin) and gam­ma-aminobu­tyric acid (GABA), the most impor­tant inhibito­ry neu­ro­trans­mit­ter of the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem, increase. Accord­ing­ly, with insuf­fi­cient pro­duc­tion of the hor­mone, the con­cen­tra­tion of these bio­log­i­cal­ly impor­tant sub­stances is sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced, which is one of the key mech­a­nisms for the for­ma­tion of depres­sion. In order for depres­sion not to occur, and the con­cen­tra­tion of mela­tonin in the blood to be suf­fi­cient, it is nec­es­sary not only to go to bed on time, but also to fol­low some rules.

Rules for dealing with depression

Lit­er­al­ly two cen­turies ago, our ances­tors strict­ly fol­lowed bio­log­i­cal rhythms. Dawn meant the begin­ning of the work­ing day, and as soon as sun­set came, it was time for sleep and rest. Stay­ing awake until mid­night and even more until morn­ing was unac­cept­able. Today, most peo­ple live out­side of the bio­log­i­cal clock. Sleep time is reduced to a min­i­mum, and some pro­fes­sions and work sched­ules even mean work­ing at night and rest­ing dur­ing the day. It is these cir­cum­stances that can explain the preva­lence of depres­sion and the gen­er­al dete­ri­o­ra­tion in the well-being of patients in large met­ro­pol­i­tan areas.

Mela­tonin is prac­ti­cal­ly not pro­duced dur­ing day­time and even morn­ing sleep, when it is light out­side. Inter­feres with its devel­op­ment and arti­fi­cial light­ing. There­fore, those who like to sleep with night­lights, to the sound of the TV, need to give up their addic­tion.

Doc­tors around the world have for­mu­lat­ed basic rec­om­men­da­tions to nor­mal­ize mela­tonin lev­els and pre­vent depres­sion. And the main empha­sis is on the nor­mal­iza­tion of the dai­ly rou­tine. Wak­ing up ear­ly, going to bed before mid­night, and sleep­ing for 6 to 8 hours is rec­om­mend­ed as a pre­ven­tion of depres­sion. After return­ing to a nor­mal sched­ule, many patients notice improve­ments in their well-being and men­tal bal­ance with­in a few days.

Diet will also help boost mela­tonin pro­duc­tion by focus­ing on foods high in essen­tial amino acids, such as nuts, meat, fish, and dairy prod­ucts. Only after con­sul­ta­tion with a spe­cial­ist can drugs that increase the pro­duc­tion of mela­tonin be pre­scribed.

Weakness and drowsiness will go away if …

Not only depres­sion can devel­op in the absence of nor­mal sleep, but also weak­ness and drowsi­ness. In the fight against these unpleas­ant con­di­tions, when the con­cen­tra­tion of atten­tion, intel­lec­tu­al activ­i­ty falls, doc­tors place spe­cial empha­sis on observ­ing the regime of the day, sleep and wake­ful­ness.

Sleep should start and end at about the same time. And for the imple­men­ta­tion of the plan, it is nec­es­sary to strict­ly fol­low the sched­ule. In just a few days, falling asleep will be easy and car­ried out at the same time. Need­less to say, weak­ness and drowsi­ness will be removed as if by hand.

But there are crit­ics of this rec­om­men­da­tion. Not every­one can fol­low the sched­ule, which is asso­ci­at­ed with some life cir­cum­stances — work, house­hold chores. Need­less to say, moth­ers of new­born babies often suf­fer from chron­ic sleep depri­va­tion, weak­ness and drowsi­ness, which can devel­op into depres­sion.

Based on this, for prop­er sleep and pre­ven­tion of the con­se­quences of insuf­fi­cient mela­tonin pro­duc­tion, you need to choose your own sched­ule and do every­thing so that sleep comes today and awak­en­ing comes tomor­row.

What can I do to get sleep faster?

Dur­ing sleep, the brain con­tin­ues to work active­ly and process­es all the infor­ma­tion received dur­ing the day. As a result of this process, a long-term mem­o­ry is formed, due to addi­tion­al con­nec­tions in nerve cells. Day­time sleep is half as effec­tive as night­time sleep. Of course, after a day­time sleep, weak­ness and drowsi­ness will pass, but still not com­plete­ly. What’s more, day­time naps keep you at risk for devel­op­ing depres­sion.

To facil­i­tate falling asleep and nor­mal­ize sleep, you must fol­low cer­tain rules:

• do not sleep dur­ing the day;
• sur­ren­der to the arms of Mor­pheus only in a good mood;
• the bed is just for sleep­ing. You should not watch TV, read books, surf the Inter­net in it, but you can dream up;
• it is for­bid­den to use stim­u­lat­ing and stim­u­lat­ing drinks at night — ener­gy drinks, cof­fee, alco­hol;
• some elab­o­rate rit­u­al will also help you fall asleep — for exam­ple, a bath with herbs, a walk before going to bed.

By fol­low­ing these sim­ple rules, sleep and wake­ful­ness will quick­ly improve and you will feel good again, and you can for­get about weak­ness and drowsi­ness for a long time.

Sound and full sleep is a guar­an­tee of health, and a guar­an­tee of excel­lent health, suc­cess in work and even beau­ty. It is believed that in the absence of suf­fi­cient sleep, hair turns gray much ear­li­er, a per­son ages, and the risk of ear­ly impo­tence in men increas­es. Take care of your health and bold­ly give your­self into the arms of Mor­pheus, sweet dreams.