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NEW YORK (CNN) – Hey, sleepy heads. What you believe about sleep is perhaps a pipe dream.
According to researchers at NYU Faculty of Medicine Langone Health, who conducted a study published Tuesday in the journal Sleep Health, many of us have notions of sleep unfounded and may even affect our health.
"There is such a link between restorative sleep and our wake up success," said Rebecca Robbins, senior research investigator, postdoctoral researcher at the NYU Langone Health Population Health Department. "And yet, we often find ourselves debunking the myths, whether it be with media outlets, friends, family or a patient."
Robbins and his colleagues browsed 8,000 websites to find out what we thought we knew about healthy sleep habits, before presenting them to a hand-picked team of sleep medicine experts . They determined the myths and then ranked them according to their degree of falsity and their importance to health.
Here are 10 very bad and unhealthy assumptions that we often make about sleep, an act in which we spend about a third of our lives – or, if we lived up to age 100, about 12,227 days combined.
Stop yawning. It is time to put to bed these unhealthy myths about sleep.
"If you wanted to be able to function best during the day, not be sick, be mentally strong, have the lifestyle you would like, how many hours do you have to sleep?" asked Girardin Jean-Louis, principal investigator of the study, professor in the Department of Population Health.
"It turned out that many people had the impression of sleeping less than five hours a night," he said. "It's the most problematic assumption we've found."
We are supposed to sleep between seven and ten hours each night, depending on our age, but US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US) report that one-third of Americans sleep less than seven hours a night . According to World Sleep Day statistics, sleep deprivation threatens the health of nearly 45% of the world's population.
"We have plenty of evidence showing that sleeping five hours or less a night, steadily, dramatically increases the risk of adverse health effects, including cardiovascular disease and early mortality," Robbins said.
In a longitudinal study published in 2007 on 10,308 UK officials, researchers found that those who reduced their sleep by seven to five hours or less per night were almost twice as likely to die from all causes, especially cardiovascular disease.
Science has also linked sleepy sleep with high blood pressure, weakened immune system, weight gain, lack of libido, mood swings, paranoia, depression and an increased risk of diabetes, stroke, dementia and some cancers.
Sitting asleep as soon as the car / train / plane starts to move is not the sign of a well-rested person, say sleep specialists. In fact, it's just the opposite.
"Sitting down instantly anywhere, anytime, is a sign that you are not getting enough sleep and that you fall into" micro sleep "or mini-sleep episodes," Robbins said. "It means your body is so exhausted that whenever it will have a moment, it will begin to pay off its sleep debt."
You feel sleepy because of the accumulation in the brain of a chemical called adenosine, which occurs throughout the day as you head towards the night. A good night's sleep reduces this chemical so that when you wake up, the levels are at the lowest and you feel refreshed.
But the more you stay awake and the less you sleep, the more your adenosine level increases, which creates what is called a sleep load or a sleep debt.
Do you want to check your level of sleepiness? Watch the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, and if you are worried, consult a sleep doctor who can perform more in-depth tests in a sleep lab.
People also believed that the brain and the body could adapt and learn to function optimally with less sleep. That too is a myth, say the experts. Indeed, your body goes through four distinct phases of sleep to restore itself completely.
In the first step, you start to sleep lightly and you disengage from your environment in the second stage, where you will spend most of your total sleep time. Steps three and four contain the deepest and most restful sleep and dream state of paradoxical sleep, or rapid eye movement sleep.
"During REM, the brain is very responsive," Robbins said. "It looks like your brain is awake if we connect you to two other electrodes and we are able to monitor your brain waves."
REM sleep can occur at any time during the sleep cycle, but on average, it starts about 90 minutes after your sleep. REM is when your body and brain are busy storing memories, regulating mood and learning. It's also when you dream. The muscles of your arms and legs are temporarily paralyzed during REM sleep, so you can not realize your dreams and hurt yourself.
Because a good night's sleep gives you time to repeat your sleep cycle, you will go through several cycles of REM, which account for about 25% of total sleep time.
Deep sleep is another important stage of sleep, when your brain waves slow down in what is called delta waves or slow sleep. This is the moment when the human growth hormone is released and the memories are treated more deeply.
"The deeper phases of sleep are really important for neural generation, muscle repair and the immune system," Robbins said.
It is difficult to wake a person from a deep sleep. If you wake up, you may feel groggy and tired; Studies show that mental performance can be affected for 30 minutes.
In your dreams, maybe. In fact, "noisy and noisy snoring interrupted by breathing pauses" mark sleep apnea, a dangerous sleep disorder that, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, increases the risk of heart attacks, fibrillation ear, asthma, blood pressure, glaucoma, cancer, diabetes, kidney disease, and cognitive and behavioral disorders.
"Sleep apnea is extremely exhausting," Robbins said. "These patients sleep, then wake up all the time, then they fight against sleep all day because they are so exhausted, it is also very misdiagnosed, we think it affects about 30% of the population and about 10% are diagnosed. "
Do you think that a drink before going to bed will help you fall asleep and stay asleep? Dream.
Alcohol can help you fall asleep, but that's where the benefits stop, Robbins said. Instead, it traps you in lighter sleep phases and "dramatically reduces the quality of your rest at night."
"He continues to pull you out of quick eye movements and deeper sleep phases, which forces you to wake up without feeling like being restored," Robbins said.
You must admit that it makes sense: how can you fall asleep if you are not in bed trying? Yet, sleep experts say that continuing to count sheep for more than 15 minutes is not the smartest solution.
"If we stay in bed, we will associate the bed with insomnia," Robbins said. She equates this to "go to the gym and stand on a treadmill without doing anything".
In reality, Robbins said, it takes about 15 minutes for a healthy sleeper to fall asleep. If you turn a lot longer than that, you should get out of bed, change the environment, and do something senseless: "Reduce the lights and fold the socks," she suggested.
Some people also believe that it is just as refreshing for your body to stay in bed with your eyes closed without sleep. Nope. It's another dream, say the experts.
Sleeping experts say that's another myth that can negatively affect your health.
"We recommend that people have a regular sleep schedule because it controls what we call the body clock, or circadian rhythm, of the body," said Jean-Louis. "It controls all the body's hormones, body temperature, diet and digestion, as well as sleep-wake cycles."
When your internal clock and the outside world are out of sync, you may feel disoriented, mentally foggy and sleepy when you need to operate at optimal levels. Just think about what happens when you are crossing time zones or the time is ticking.
Studies of shift workers who work unusual hours andlive in shift with their normal biological rhythm, show that they run an increased risk of heart disease, ulcers, depression, obesity and some cancers, as well as a higher rate high accidents and injuries at the workplace due to a slower reaction rate and a bad decision -making.
Come on, we all do it – or check our laptop or smartphone before we turn off for the night. Unfortunately, it prepares us for a bad night.
"These devices emit a brilliant blue light, and that's the blue light that tells our brain to become alive and alert in the morning," explained Robbins. "We want to avoid blue light before going to bed, from sources such as television or your smartphone, and do things that relax you."
According to the National Sleep Foundation, blue light affects the release of melatonin, the sleep hormone, more than any other wavelength of light. Watching television or using an electronic device less than two hours after bedtime means that you will need more time to fall asleep, that the state of your dreams or your paradoxical sleep is lesser and that even if you sleep at least eight hours, you wake up groggy. .
If you or your children can not perform this two-hour break because of homework or night tasks, experts suggest dimming the screen or installing an application that can warm up the screen in the colors of the sunset. Red and yellow have longer wavelengths and do not affect melatonin.
Raise your hand if you press the snooze button. Why not, right?
"Resist the temptation to fall asleep, because unfortunately, your body will go back to sleep – a very light and mediocre sleep," Robbins said.
At the end of your sleep, your body is probably approaching the end of its last EMR cycle. Press this repeat button, and the brain falls back into a new EMR cycle. Now, when the alarm goes off a few minutes later, you will be in the middle, and not at the end, of this cycle, you will wake up groggy and stay so longer.
Have trouble getting rid of the usual snooze button? Place the alarm on the other side of the room, so you have to get up from the bed to turn it off.
And no, you can not tell Google or Alexa to turn it off. It's cheating.
"It's a myth because we all experience dreams four to five times a night," said Jean-Louis. "And we do not remember it because we did not wake up and did not disturb our sleep."
A study out of France showed that people who often remember their dreams have higher brain activity in the brain information treatment center. They also woke up twice as often during the night and were more sensitive to noise when they slept or woke up.
"Now I'm going to tell you that if you have a dream with a strong emotional context, you may come back to say, two o'clock in the afternoon, when you have time to relax," he said. declared Jean-Louis. "Sometimes something triggers that, but if it's a strange little dream, most of us who sleep well do not remember it."
The research team has found more myths that we tend to accept as facts, said Jean-Louis, such as "more sleep, it's always better" (no, you can really too much sleep and harm your health), "taking a nap in the afternoon can correct insomnia" (in fact, if you sleep long enough to enter a paradoxical or deep sleep cycle, your clock biological will be even more disturbed), and "it is better to have a warm room than cold" (no, you sleep better in cold weather).
Which means we could all use a little education on good sleep hygiene, a set of habits to train that will prepare you for a healthy sleep life. The National Sleep Foundation has advice, as does the CDC.
After all, no amount of caffeine can help you deal with the damaging consequences of insufficient sleep, nor will you train yourself to adapt to sleep deprivation, Robbins said.
"Sleep is a very active process," she said. "In fact, it is crucial to restore the body and is the most effective and efficient way to do it."
Sweet Dreams!
The-CNN-Wire ™ and © 2018 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.
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