We all know that staying up late hurts the body, but there is always no way to go to bed early, which is a true portrayal of many people. Staying up late not only leads to inattention, decreased immunity, increased risk of cancer and heart disease, chronic lack of sleep in the elderly, and even signs of Alzheimer's disease.
According to statistics, more than 300 million people in the mainland have sleep disorders, and the insomnia rate of adults is nearly 40%. What changes will occur in the body due to long-term lack of sleep? What are the criteria for healthy sleep? How to adjust?
Deep sleep can remove toxins from the brain, and fragmented sleep is not good for health
What happens to chronic sleep deprivation? It goes without saying that it affects health. The reason is very simple, only in the case of sleep, especially deep sleep, the brain can have the ability to clean up the brain toxins to the maximum.
The latest research has found that the longer and deeper the sleep, the stronger and faster the brain's ability to clean up toxins. Throughout the sleep process, deep sleep is the best time for the cerebrospinal fluid to clear the brain of toxic proteins, and we do not enter a deep sleep state until about 70 minutes after we fall asleep. Generally speaking, a healthy person's deep sleep time at night is about 2-3 hours, accounting for about 1/4 of the entire sleep time, from this point of view, it is necessary to ensure 6-8 hours of sleep time per night.
Knowing such a theory, it is very easy to understand why the following sleep patterns are not conducive to the health of the body. Many people think that staying up late often, but using the fragmented time of the day to make up for sleep can make up for the lack of sleep.
But in fact, fragmented sleep during the day simply does not guarantee the body's deep sleep time to clean up the brain's toxic proteins, and the result will only be health damage.
Studies by sleep scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have shown that fragmented sleep can lead to the formation of atherosclerosis, which naturally increases the risk of coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, and stroke. In addition, fragmented sleep also brings more inflammatory factors in the blood circulation, which is also a key factor in the cause of arteriosclerosis.
Daytime sleepiness in the elderly, or signs of Alzheimer's disease
Here, I would like to refer in particular to an important phenomenon, the problem of daytime sleepiness in the elderly. Daytime sleepiness is very likely to be a sign of Alzheimer's disease, it shows that the elderly's daytime fatigue has been very serious, why this is so, or because the time of deep sleep at night is seriously insufficient, and we have already talked about earlier, deep sleep is the best time to clean up the brain toxic proteins, there is not enough deep sleep time, toxic proteins can not be completely removed, natural damage to the brain, natural depression, anxiety and even the risk of dementia increased significantly.
Writing this, some people may ask, why are they more awake after staying up late? This requires understanding the clocks inherent in our bodies. Regulated by circadian rhythms, almost all of our physiological functions have their own optimal time, including, of course, our sleep and wakefulness.
The pressure of the body's sleep comes from the accumulation of a substance called adenosine in the body, and as the waking time increases, the adenosine produced by the brain's energy consumption will accumulate, and when it is gathered to a certain concentration, the body will appear sleepy signals. Usually, this signal occurs 14-16 hours after waking up. However, if you stay up all night, the circadian rhythm will bottom out and rebound, and the more you stay up, the more awake you become.
But this sobriety is only a return to the light, and when the circadian rhythm falls again, greater distress will come. What's worse is that staying up late for a long time will destroy this rhythm! The consequence of this destruction is that you can't sleep when you should be asleep, and you can't wake up when you should be awake.
There are 4 criteria for healthy sleep, and doctors recommend adjusting them in this way
So, what kind of sleep is healthy? This requires a little bit of sleep. The normal sleep structure cycle of the human body can be divided into two types, the rapid movement of the two eyes during sleep is light sleep, and the movement of the eyeballs or slow movements during sleep is deep sleep. The time from light sleep to deep sleep is about 60-90 minutes, and there are about 3-4 cycles in one night.
For healthy sleep, there are generally 4 simple criteria, one is to fall asleep relatively quickly, generally half an hour can fall asleep, the second is stable sleep, can not wake up frequently at night (less than 2 times), the third is not excessive early awakening (more than 2 hours earlier than usual), the fourth is to wake up after full of energy, no fatigue and drowsiness. This ensures enough time for deep sleep.
To this end, we have the following recommendations:
First, establish a normal sleep rhythm. This requires the establishment of fixed sleep times and wake-up times, which have positive implications for the establishment of the sleep circadian clock. It is recommended that for people with insomnia, they can go to bed at 10:30 pm and get up at 5:30 am. No matter how long you sleep, you have to get up on time the next day.
Second, maintain sleep motivation. Sleep motivation is associated with continuously maintained wakefulness time with proper exercise, and the longer you stay awake, the greater your sleep motivation and the easier it is to enter a state of sleep. People with insomnia should not lie in bed prematurely to brew sleepiness, and can wait until they are sleepy before going to bed. Never touch electronic products such as cell phones, TVs, etc. in bed.
Third, keep your body and mind relaxed. Physical or psychological tension is very prone to insomnia, and relaxing the muscles can relax the tension state. Common methods of relaxation include breathing relaxation, intentional relaxation, and mindfulness relaxation.
In short, the importance of sleep to health can not be overemphasized, and staying up late cannot make up for the health damage caused by staying up late no matter how to make up for it. Scientifically assess your sleep status and stop losses in time to really benefit your health.
For more cancer and health-related knowledge, please continue to pay attention to [Dr. Li talks about cancer prevention]!