Sleeping is necessary for the body. The regular change of sleep and wakefulness makes up the human daily cycle.
Interesting fact. Winter hibernation of many animals, which is also called seasonal sleep, is a “natural” protection of the body against adverse conditions. Unfortunately, people cannot afford to fall asleep for such a long period, although sometimes, let’s face it, you want to.
Nature has “programmed” a different mode for humans: 7-8 hours at night and 30-45 minutes during the day – that’s why we tend to sleep after dinner. A person spends approximately ⅓ of his life in sleep.
WHO recommends a certain duration of sleep for different age groups. For example, for children from birth to 3 months – as many as 14-17 hours a day. From the age of 5, the daily need for sleep gradually decreases: teenagers need an almost adult norm – 8-10 hours (for adults – 7-9 hours).
Life without sleep is simply unthinkable, because its deficiency can lead to:
- the appearance of extra kilograms “on the sides”;
- the development of chronic diseases – for example, type II diabetes, arterial hypertension (high blood pressure);
- disorders of the heart and blood vessels;
- decrease in immunity and resistance of the body to infections;
- deterioration of vision;
- decreased libido;
- malfunction of the brain and nervous system, weakening of memory and intelligence;
- premature aging.
Sleeplessness (insomnia) increases the risk of developing mental disorders, because it disrupts the synthesis of serotonin – the “happiness hormone” and melatonin – the “sleep hormone”.
Insomnia is often a sign of various diseases, and drowsiness is the result of overwork. Physiologists call this state “the body’s request for rest.”
Why do we sleep?
Even in ancient times, people thought about the nature of sleep.Humanity once believed that in sleep the soul separates from the body, and if it does not return before waking up, the person will leave this world. In ancient Greece, they worshiped the god of sleep – Morpheus. And the Slavs believed and feared that night owls are responsible for children’s crying at night and bad sleep – hostile spirits that cause insomnia in children.
And only in the 19th century, the nature of sleep began to be studied scientifically – and it is still being studied. As a result of experiments and research, it was established that sleep is a general inhibition that extends to the entire cerebral cortex. It occurs when brain cells need rest – this is how the body “protects” the brain from overstrain and fatigue. During sleep, neurons restore their performance, actively absorb nutrients, and accumulate energy.
A healthy sleep gives vitality, vitality, restores physical and mental strength. After all, there is a folk saying for a reason: “The morning is wiser than the evening.”
Healthy sleep. What is he like?
Sleep quality is one of the main indicators of physical and mental health. How much sleep should be normal? The answer is simple: each organism is individual. The duration and depth of sleep depend on a person’s metabolism, his age, work, habits, and physical exertion.
Interesting Facts. Politician Benjamin Franklin, whose face is depicted on the $100 bill, set aside a maximum of 4 hours a day for sleep. In his opinion, “there shouldn’t be a lot of good things in life.”
Napoleon usually went to bed around midnight, slept until 2 a.m., then got up, worked, and went to bed again for a couple of hours closer to the morning.As a result, he also slept about 4 hours a day, although many historians are inclined to the version that the commander suffered from chronic insomnia due to stress.
The famous physicist and inventor Nikola Tesla slept 2-3 hours a day, constantly thinking about his experiments.
And finally, the great British politician Winston Churchill always used the opportunity to take a nap after dinner: “You must sleep between lunch and dinner, and no half-measures, ever! Take off your clothes and go to bed. This is what I always do. Don’t think you’ll get less work done because you sleep during the day. This is a stupid opinion of people who have no imagination. On the contrary, you will be able to do more, because you get two days in one – well, at least one and a half.”
But, following Churchill, remember that in many adults daytime sleep provokes the problem of nighttime insomnia. The World Sleep Society recommends sleeping no longer than 45 minutes between 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. during the day.
Healthy human sleep is a cyclic process and it is divided into phases: slow and fast. When a person begins to fall asleep, the slowest one comes first. We slowly fall asleep, gradually, as if losing contact with external stimuli, our eyes cease to see, and our olfactory organs cease to distinguish smells. Touch and hearing are only partially preserved.
Many vital processes change during sleep: gas exchange and body temperature decrease, energy expenditure decreases, blood pressure drops, breathing and heartbeat slow down, and muscles relax.
Slow-wave sleep consists of stages (stages) that take about 2 hours in total. About an hour after falling asleep, a therapeutic deep sleep occurs, thanks to which our psyche is restored, the brain is “updated”, energy is replenished, cell regeneration occurs, pulse and blood pressure normalize, anxiety and unnecessary worries go away. At this time, the body’s production of the “stress” hormones cortisol and adrenaline significantly decreases and the synthesis of anabolic testosterone and growth hormone increases.
The concept of “quality sleep” means first of all the duration of deep sleep, and not just all the hours a person spent in bed. After all, you can sleep for even 12 hours, but if only half an hour was allocated to deep sleep, the brain definitely did not have time to fully rest, and the body did not recover its former strength. Too long sleep is also harmful for a person: it makes him lethargic and lazy, concentration of attention noticeably deteriorates.
The slow phase is followed by REM sleep. This is the fifth stage of sleep, the “most active”, although it is during this period that a person is maximally inactive – the muscles are “paralyzed” and the body is motionless. However, the subconscious mind works quite energetically: if a sleeping person is woken up during the phase of REM sleep, he will remember his dream in detail. But it is worth noting that a sudden awakening in this phase has a negative effect on the psyche. The duration of REM sleep is about an hour.
Why is it so difficult to fall asleep?
Consider that about a third of the world’s population suffers from insomnia. It is very painful, and it is no coincidence that in ancient China people were sentenced to death due to sleep deprivation.Even then it was known that the longer a person does not sleep, the more “messy” the body becomes: control over motility is lost, muscle spasms, hallucinations appear, speech and all physiological processes are disturbed, and as a result, death occurs.
But let’s turn away from the tortures of the ancient world and highlight the most common modern causes of insomnia:
- strong shocks and excessive emotions, both negative and positive;
- insomnia in women during the climacteric period;
- mental disorders – panic attacks, depression, neuroses;
- the habit of eating at night;
- abuse of alcoholic and tonic drinks;
- side effect of some medicines;
- diseases manifested by a pain syndrome (joint inflammation, intervertebral hernias, cancer);
- forced violation of the regime – for example, night work shifts, frequent changes in time zones, sleepless nights of young mothers and other “external” factors.
How can we help a patient solve insomnia problems?
If the problem lies not in the daily routine and arbitrary deformation of circadian rhythms, but there is a problem of a physiological nature or biochemical problems, then we can offer the following treatment methods:
– reducing the level of excessive cortisol production using a bioidentical composition of melatonin with a 100% duplicate molecular formula of our own. The dosage is selected individually for each patient and administered into the body in the form of a capsule, which is administered for 6 months. regulates your sleep.
– balance the level of androgens and estrogens, which during the period of male and female menopause or andropause significantly decrease and cause insomnia. Bioidentical capsules are also used with the required dose of bio-hormone, which will solve the problem with sleep.
– with a neurological factor of different etymology, with the help of neural exosomes and neural crest cells, it is possible to regulate the transmission of nerve impulses, making them synchronous and correct in relation to the reactive nervous system.