The habit of sleeping only six hours is just as bad for your health and productivity as a few sleepless nights. But you do not even notice it ...
Lack of sleep is harmful for both health and productivity. Surely you've heard this many times. But can you feel that your abilities have worsened? It turns out, no.
In 2004, an interesting experiment was conducted at the Pennsylvania University School of Medicine in Philadelphia, proving this. 48 adults took part in the study of sleep deprivation. The sleep of some of them was reduced to four, six or eight hours for two weeks. Others did not sleep for two days.
All this time in the laboratory every two hours tested the condition of the subjects (except for the hours allocated for sleep), checked cognitive functions and reaction time. Participants were also asked how they themselves assess their condition, how drowsy they feel.
Why six hours of sleep is not enough
As you understand, subjects who slept for eight hours a day had better indicators of cognitive processes. People who slept four hours a day, every day, they got worse and worse.
And those who slept for six hours, kept their mental abilities at a high level until about the tenth day of the experiment. But only in the last few days these subjects performed test tasks as badly as people who are deprived of sleep at all.
It turns out that, resting for only six hours, you act as badly as people who did not close their eyes for two days in a row.
One of the most impressive results of the study is the fact that people who slept for six hours did not feel sleepy. They did not even know how much worse their results were.
People deprived of sleep felt more and more sleepy, and talked about it. At the end of the experiment, they wanted to sleep twice as much as in the beginning. But after a six-hour sleep, the subjects felt just a little sleepy. Although their indicators of cognitive activity did not differ much from those of those who did not.
This discovery raises an important question: how do people cope with a lack of sleep, if they do not even realize that it is there?
We do not know how much we really sleep
A study by the University of Chicago showed that people also often overestimate the amount of sleep, as well as underestimate it. Another study showed that people overestimate sleep time by an average of 0.8 hours.
So, if you think that you slept for seven hours, it is quite possible that in reality you only rested for six hours.
It turns out, no one can say exactly how much he sleeps and when he sleeps. Everyone believes they sleep more than they really are.
Determine how much you sleep, not as easy as it seems. But there are some common tips that will definitely help you sleep better:
- Lie down at the same time.
- Do not use gadgets half an hour before bedtime.
- Do not drink alcohol.
- Add physical activity throughout the day.
Another tip, which is less common: to get better sleep, you need to lose weight. According to the National Sleep Foundation website, there is a direct link between insomnia and obesity.
Other causes of sleep disorders are physical and mental problems. Even stress and bad mood can negatively affect sleep.
