Poor sleep? You can help science!

How much sleep the best cellists? What happens if you put a person sleepy to play poker? Why do we protrude leg out of bed when sleeping? This article - a review of the scientific sleep research.

How much sleep the best cellists? What happens if you put a person sleepy to play poker? Why do we protrude leg out of bed when sleeping?

This article - a review of the scientific sleep research.

sleep Cello

Maybe you remember Layfhaker I wrote the famous long-term experiment, the psychologist Anders Erickson, where he figured out the reasons for the success of the best cellists and outsiders failure. Study it was very big. Anders got a lot of interesting conclusions, and one of them touched sleep.

Erickson calls a dream for success the second most important after the number of hours just making music. The best musicians, according to his calculations, slept an average of 8 hours a day, including the 20-minute "Sandman" in the afternoon. At that time, as the "bad guys" enough sleep back to normal.

Sleep and mental activity

In the book «Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School» author presents the results of experiments, which showed a negative impact of insomnia:

• Dullness of pain signals
• decreased alertness
• Reduced capacity for purposeful activity
• Deterioration of all kinds of memory
• worsening of mood
• Confusion of logical thinking
• Fall counting skills

Naps - this is normal

In the same book, we learn that the ulterior motive is dragging us off to sleep in the area of ​​15-00. This is caused by a set of biochemical reactions in our brain. Fight this through a variety of stimulants can be, but is wiser just to sleep at least 15-30 minutes. This nap will refresh you and make smarter.

Sleep makes us happier

In the book «NurtureShock: New Thinking about Children» tells about an interesting experiment. A group of students, not sleeping at night, handed out cards with words and asked to remember. Later in the process of "remembering" it turned out that the students were able to reproduce 81% of words with negative shade like "cancer" and only 31% of words with positive or neutral like "sun" or "basket".

The thing is that for memorizing the negative data from the person responsible amygdala. While positive and neutral data stored hippocampus. Lack of sleep has more precisely the hippocampus, and confirmed that the experiment.

Poor sleep impairs decision-making

An interesting experiment held at the University of Massachusetts. They put two groups of people (one of which was deprived of sleep) to play poker for money. And then analyzed their decisions. Result: "Sleepless" make the right decisions in their 4 times less "bouncy" colleagues.

How many hours of sleep? Eight!

Napoleon once uttered: "A man has to sleep 6:00, the woman - 7; more than 7 hours sleep only children and full of fools. "

But the authors of the book «Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep» do not agree with him. They say (and this is confirmed by various studies) that the optimal total sleep time - 8 hours a day.

Students need to sleep longer

The authors of the book «Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You're So Tired» led the research data that suggest that young people need to sleep 8 to 12 hours a day. The criterion for evaluation - performance.

jet lag syndrome affects your efficiency

A team of researchers from Stanford lifted details of games in the National Football Association (NFL) for 25 years. They are filtered only those games where the team met with each other with the West and East coasts (between New York and Los Angeles, for example, the difference in time - 3 hours). The team, which had to "break" your daily regimen lost in 63% of cases.

We also analyzed the performance of sportsmen of various kinds (golf, baseball, figure skating, swimming, etc.) and found a direct correlation between time of day and level of performances. Because world records were recorded more frequently during periods of peak tidal forces on the daily schedule of the athlete. Conversely, athletes in his hometown which was the night, showed results below expectations.

The situation is important

Everyone knows that drinking coffee before going to sleep is not necessary, but you should not drink and alcoholic drinks. Alcohol It can help you quickly "fall" asleep, but then during the night sleep is very restless and broken. So effect dehydration.

Bright lightIncluding radiation emanating from the laptop or TV, can confuse your brain and will be perceived by him as the light of day. So go to sleep, lying in bed with a tablet - a bad idea.

Recent studies have shown that as the approach of sleep, our body begins to reduce its temperature. At the same time, the temperature of our hands and feet increases - through them unequaled heat. This explains why many people stick their legs out of bed during sleep. That is why some of us seem uncomfortable mattresses - they are "hot to sleep." Researchers offer to take before bedtime cold showerAnd the optimum temperature for sleeping room called 16-19 degrees Celsius.

athletics during the day conducive to sound sleep, while a sedentary lifestyle contrary worsen your sleep.

Other tips "sleepy doctors":

• Go to bed at the same time each day
• Use the bedroom only for sleep and sex
• For half an hour before going to bed, turn down the lights

Tell us, how do you sleep?

Perhaps these tips will seem trivial and not worthy of the proud title of "life hacking". Then just share your secret or complain on his problem in the comments!

(Via)