What happens if a person sleeps for half an hour every day? For example, if you go to bed at 10 o'clock today, tomorrow at 10:30, and the day after tomorrow at 11 o'clock... You might say, nothing, I always do that.
But you certainly don't do that very often. You may stay up late for several days to work because of overtime; because of jet lag, force yourself to sleep late... But after consecutive nights of sleep, you'll get compensatory sleep, such as a good night's sleep after overtime, such as a weekend to make up for a lazy sleep.
But you know what? Someone's biological clock is inherently different from a person's and is not controlled by autonomous regulation.
People who are "invisible" by society
A British man named Michael Reed began to find himself different from the sixth grade. He always woke up in the middle of the night and then had trouble falling asleep; even if he fell asleep again, he would wake up again almost every half hour; going to school in the morning was groggy, like drinking wine or taking sleeping pills.
The situation soon had a huge impact on him, and he became sleepy-eyed and seemed ready to fall asleep at any moment. From a sunshine teenager who loves sports, he has become a sleepy bug in people's eyes.
After that, his body began to have problems, and the immune system sometimes seemed to no longer function, causing him to often have painful oral herpes and ulcers, and due to frequent lack of sleep and inability to recover, resulting in muscle weakness, body aches, inability to concentrate, completely from a person who was passionate about life to a person with little energy and listlessness all day.
Reed went to many doctors, but he couldn't find the cause, always saying that this was a problem encountered in the growth of the body, and it would disappear when he grew up. But when he grew up, this situation did not disappear, but he disappeared - the different schedule from ordinary people caused him to lose contact with all his friends, lose his social circle, and completely fall into social death.
What was even more painful was that he could not read, could not earn money, everyone thought he was lazy, the doctor did not believe what he said, thought that he was in trouble, and he fell into a lonely, almost completely isolated world.
It wasn't until 2005 that he stumbled upon that if he slept two hours late every day, he would be able to sleep until he woke up naturally! This made him ecstatic, and after only a few weeks, his health began to gradually recover, from the original holding a cup of tea and feeling sore in his arms, to being able to ride his bicycle freely into the countryside.
He began to write, became a freelance writer, the only work that did not require him to get up on time every day, he could work and live freely according to his own rhythm. Reed soon regained his old self: ambitious, curious, interested in getting along with others, and continues to this day.
In 2019, after 27 years of living abnormally, doctors finally diagnosed that Reed was not lazy, but sick, he suffered from a disease called non-24-hour sleep cycle syndrome, and his biological clock was 26 hours, not the 24 hours of ordinary people.
Non-24-hour sleep cycle syndrome
Non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder (abbreviation: non-24, N24SWD) is an extremely rare disease in normal people, also known as non-24-hour sleep-wake syndrome, non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder, etc., is a symptom of the body clock rhythm and natural day and night out of sync. The typical symptoms of patients are mainly insomnia and excessive daytime sleepiness, and the sleep pattern is reversed, that is, the need to sleep during the day and be very awake at night, which seriously interferes with and impairs their normal work, study and other social activities.
Many of the people who develop this sleep disorder are completely blind people who are completely blind because they are unable to reset the body's biological clock through the main environmental indication of "light." In the United States, about 100,000 blind people with the disease are unable to establish a normal sleep cycle due to lack of sensitivity to light. The disease can occur at any age, and more men than women.
Some studies believe that the biological clock signal generated by the human hypothalamus averages 24 hours and 11 minutes, slightly longer than the 24 hours of the earth's day, but normal people can affect melatonin secretion according to zeitgebers, including changes in sunlight conditions, time, intensity and duration of physical and social activities, and adjust the deviation of the biological clock - under the action of timing factors, external light intensity, retinal light-sensitive cells receive signals and transmit them to the pineal gland through the paraventricular nuclear loop. Inhibits melatonin secretion and is regulated by suprachiasmaticnucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus, which promotes arousal and, conversely, promotes melatonin secretion and promotes sleep.
If a person is deprived of external time cues for a long time (living in a cave or artificial environment without light), the biological clock does not reset and drifts, and the secretion of hormones (eg melatonin, cortisol) and sleep/wake time are constantly postponed, leading to the emergence of non-24-hour sleep syndrome, most of the time more than 24 hours.
But people like Reed, who are not blind, still sleep time can not be controlled by the influence of timing factors, and every day will be advanced or postponed, some half an hour, some 1 hour, day after day, year after year. The different routines from ordinary people make them unable to connect with society and other people, and it is difficult to heal with them for a lifetime.
Because circadian rhythm disorders are associated with various cancers, diabetes, and heart disease, patients with non-24-hour sleep syndrome may have a significantly shorter life expectancy if they are forced to live a normal life, in addition to various painful and torturous symptoms.
Isn't life wonderful? The earth's 24-hour rotation, daily sunrise and sunset such a simple thing, so that all life has formed a 24-hour physiological rhythm, once changed, it may lead to difficult to adapt to the pain and suffering, how many life on the earth is eliminated in this way?