- An insufficient amount of sleep affects your intellect.
- Sleep deprivation can be the cause of some types of cancer, such as breast cancer.
- Lack of sleep shortens telomeres and accelerates aging.
Tell me how long you sleep so I can tell you how long you live. On average, we need seven to eight hours to get fit. However, in the last thirty years I have lost an hour of sleep a night. According to a study carried out by Public Health France, we sleep even less than 6 hours, a situation considered worrying.
How does lack of sleep affect our health?
Chronic lack of sleep is a danger primarily to our intellectual functions. If you have been deprived of sleep for twenty-four hours, you wake up in the state of someone driving with 1 g/l of alcohol in the blood! Our perceptions and judgments are altered.
Sleep also consolidates learning done during the day. Sleep allows neural networks to stabilize information in long-term memory. A reduction in sleep time is accompanied by the stimulation of the stress hormone, cortisol, with the consequence of hardening of the arteries and the appearance of cardiovascular diseases.
Extending the nights would also be a prerequisite for successful weight loss. Sleep duration has an effect on hormones that influence appetite. Studies have shown that sleep-deprived volunteers with free access to a buffet could gain up to 3 pounds per week! Cause: fatigue that pushes you to snack.
How would sleep help us extend our lifespan?
Long-term insomnia and sleep deprivation make you more vulnerable to viral infections like the flu and reduce the effectiveness of certain vaccinations. Worse: Chronic sleep debt puts you at higher risk of certain cancers, especially breast cancer among women.
But lack of sleep is also an aging accelerator. It affects our telomeres, the small pieces of DNA that form protective caps covering the ends of our chromosomes. “As we age, telomeres shorten. This process is more marked when we regularly lack sleep. The good news is that the process is reversible. Sleeping more, exercising or meditating are great ways to extend your telomeres and life expectancy.”
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2024-02-07 20:42:32
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