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"Get Sleep"

  • Writer: fleurishliving
    fleurishliving
  • Apr 21, 2021
  • 3 min read

The "Get Sleep" resource from the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School covers the impact of sleep on our health and mood and what you can do to improve your sleep. Here is a brief summary.


Health - Sleeping helps to maintain many vital functions. One of the most important of these functions may be to provide cells and tissues with the opportunity to recover from the wear and tear of daily life. Major restorative functions in the body such as tissue repair, muscle growth, and protein synthesis occur almost exclusively during sleep. Scientists have discovered that insufficient sleep may cause health problems by altering levels of the hormones involved in such processes as metabolism, appetite regulation, and stress response. Numerous studies have found that insufficient sleep increases a person's risk of developing serious medical conditions, including obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease and has been associated with a shortened lifespan. The study results show that reducing sleep by just two or three hours per night can have dramatic health consequences.
Mood - Sleep and mood are closely connected; poor or inadequate sleep can cause irritability and stress, while healthy sleep can enhance well-being. University of Pennsylvania researchers found that subjects who were limited to only 4.5 hours of sleep a night for one week reported feeling more stressed, angry, sad, and mentally exhausted. When the subjects resumed normal sleep, they reported a dramatic improvement in mood. Chronic insomnia may also increase the risk of developing a mood disorder, such as anxiety or depression. While sleep research is still exploring the relationship between depression and sleep, studies have shown that depressed people may have abnormal sleep patterns.
Memory - Although no one knows exactly how sleep enables memory consolidation, a number of studies have shown that a reduction in total sleep time or specific sleep stages can dramatically inhibit a person's ability to consolidate recently formed memories. Poor sleep appears to affect the brain's ability to consolidate both factual information—such as what you had for breakfast or that Paris is the capital of France—and procedural memories about how to do various physical tasks—such as riding a bicycle or playing the piano. Even if sleep is "recovered" on subsequent nights, the brain will be less able to retain and make use of information gathered on the day before the all-nighter.
Judgement and Safety - Drowsy driving causes 1 million crashes, 500,000 injuries, and 8,000 deaths each year in the U.S. Just one sleepless night can impair performance as much as a blood-alcohol level of 0.10 percent, beyond the legal limit to drive. Like alcohol, sleep deprivation also affects judgment, making it harder to assess how impaired you are when you're tired.

Although there is some genetic variation, most adults need between 7.5 to 8.5 hours of sleep per 24-hour period to function optimally. You can find your optimal sleep time if you set aside several days (perhaps during a vacation) to allow yourself to sleep as long as possible. Once you know how much sleep you need, it's important to allot that amount of time in your daily schedule for sleep.

If you've tried everything and still can't manage to get adequate sleep, consult your primary care physician, who can help determine whether your sleep problem is a symptom of some other condition and may refer you to a sleep specialist. You can also find a list of specialists at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, www.sleepeducation.org and at the National Sleep Foundation, www.thensf.org. A sleep specialist can assess your sleep problem, determine if you have a sleep disorder, and develop a treatment plan that addresses your life situation and sleep issues.

 
 
 

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