April 18, 2024

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Will sleeping less than 6 hours cause serious physical and mental damage?

Will sleeping less than 6 hours cause serious physical and mental damage?



 

Will sleeping less than 6 hours cause serious physical and mental damage?

In today’s society, staying up late has become the ” new normal ” for many young people.

Do you also play with your mobile phone in the early morning of a certain night, regretting that you should not drink milk tea or eat late at night, and feel that it is another day of insomnia? ?

The harm of staying up late and insomnia is also great. Although many people know that staying up late is not good, they cannot change this bad habit.

 

According to the statistics of the World Health Organization ( WHO) , the global sleep disorder rate is as high as 27%. In China, the incidence of insomnia among adults is as high as 38.2 % . There are sleep disorders, and this data is still increasing year by year.

 

Soomi Lee , an assistant professor at the University of South Florida , published a paper entitled: Naturally Occurring Consecutive Sleep Loss and Day-to-Day Trajectories of Affective and Physical Well-Being in Annals of Behavioral Medicine .

The study showed that getting six hours of sleep per night is the minimum amount of sleep required to maintain optimal health for the average adult, and that getting fewer than six hours of sleep on just three consecutive nights was enough to lead to a substantial deterioration in physical and mental health .

 

Will sleeping less than 6 hours cause serious physical and mental damage?

 

Previous research has shown that lack of sleep can impair next-day performance, mood and energy. But little is known about the effects of continuous sleep deprivation on day-to-day health.

 

Soomi Lee investigated the sleep situation of 1958 relatively healthy and well-educated middle-aged people. They participated in this 8-day study.

Participants provided daily sleep conditions and mental and physical behavior records for eight consecutive days. Getting less than 6 hours of sleep is considered sleep deprivation.

Participants also answered a series of questions related to sleep duration the previous night and daily well-being.

Of these, 42 percent reported at least one night of sleep deprivation, sleeping 1.5 hours less than usual .

 

Participants were also asked to report the occurrence and severity of 28 physical symptoms, including upper respiratory symptoms (such as sore throat, runny nose) , pain (such as headache, muscle aches, back pain) , gastrointestinal symptoms (such as stomach problems, diarrhea ) and so on.

 

Participants reported feeling angry, nervous, lonely, irritable and depressed due to lack of sleep .

They also developed more physical symptoms, such as upper respiratory problems, pain, gastrointestinal problems and other health problems .

These negative emotions and symptoms were elevated on consecutive sleep-deprived days and did not return to baseline unless they slept more than six hours at night.

 

Using the data, Soomi Lee found that the largest increases in these symptoms occurred after just one night of sleep deprivation.

Mental and physical problems worsened with consecutive sleep deprivation, with the number of these exacerbations peaking on the third day .

Afterwards, the body became relatively accustomed to repeated insomnia, but that changed on day six, when the severity of physical symptoms reported by the participants peaked .

 

Will sleeping less than 6 hours cause serious physical and mental damage?

 

 

More than a third of adults sleep less than 6 hours a night.

Once this becomes a habit, it becomes increasingly difficult for your body to fully recover from sleep deprivation, creating a vicious cycle that affects your physical and mental health and performance.

Previously, a study led by Soomi Lee also found that losing as little as 16 minutes of sleep per day can affect productivity.

 

There are also many people who believe that even if they don’t get enough sleep in normal times, as long as they sleep more on weekends, they can make up for the lack of sleep in normal times.

The results of this study tell us that just one day of lack of sleep can significantly impair daily physical and mental health, and three consecutive days of lack of sleep can lead to a significant deterioration of physical and mental health.

So perhaps the best way to maintain your daily energy and well-being is to get at least six hours of sleep each night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paper link:
https://doi.org/10.1093/abm/kaab055

Will sleeping less than 6 hours cause serious physical and mental damage?

(source:internet, reference only)


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