Myth or reality: Is it true that you need to sleep at least 7 hours?
Text: Anton Mukhataev
EVERY DAY WE HAVE MANY THOUSANDS OF POPULAR COUNCILS, rules and statements, many of which in fact prove to be delusions. We are launching a series of materials in which we will dissect popular opinions and find out whether they are related to reality. Today we understand how long you need to sleep and how the duration of sleep and life are related.
Statistics show that the overwhelming majority of the adult population in developed countries is chronically insufficient for sleep. And although the working day in the civilized world continues to decrease, people still sleep less than it would cost. Someone blames electronic devices with displays that do not allow a person to calm down, others talk about the severe stress that they face at work and at school. And because it is assumed that even if you do not sleep on weekdays, you can sleep more on weekends. The perfect deal is to sleep as much as you can afford. According to neuroscientist Sigrid Vizi, “it’s impossible to sleep“ too much. ”If you have had enough rest, you will immediately wake up.”
So, you can throw out the alarm clock, trust your own body and sleep as much as you want?
It is most natural for a person to sleep not for 7-8 hours in a row, but twice for 3-4 hours with a break for 1-2 hours. In the 1990s, the American psychiatrist Thomas Ver, who conducted the experiment, transferred the subject to conditions without artificial lighting for a month. Later, Vera was confirmed by his compatriot, historian Roger Ekirh. He found in the documents of the Middle Ages and the New Age hundreds of references to two pieces of sleep, while they were always talked about as something obvious. As scientists assume, this rhythm of sleep helped people cope better with stress. In the late 17th century, prosperous Europeans introduced fashion for a long sleep, the rest followed, and the tradition finally disappeared in the late 19th – early 20th centuries, when electric lighting was introduced everywhere.
Recently, Franco Cappuccio, a professor at the University of Warwick, who specializes in cardiovascular diseases, studied 16 studies in which more than 1.1 million people have participated in the past ten years. Cappuccio found a direct link between sleep length and human health: those who fit in between 6 to 8 hours felt better than others. This is expected, but something else is interesting: mortality among those who slept longer than eight hours was higher than among those who did not sleep. As Cappuccio concluded, too long a dream suggests that a person has health problems - or that he is very tired.
The main thing to understand is how individual the sleep is. After grueling workouts, athletes need more time to recover than an office worker who sits at a table all day, and babies need a longer sleep than older people. It is unlikely that today many will be able to go to two periods of sleep with a break, as it was before the invention of artificial lighting, but if you regularly sleep for more than 8 hours, then this may be an occasion to see a doctor. Not to mention the fact that you need to sleep at least 6-7 hours every day, and not just on weekends.
Photo:1, 2 via Shutterstock
The material was first published on the site Look At Me