Why sleep 6 hours a day is just as bad as not sleep at all

Lack of sleep is bad for the health, and productivity. Surely you've heard this many times. But if you can feel that your skills have deteriorated? It turns out, no.

In 2004, the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia conducted an interesting experiment to prove it. In a studyThe cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: dose-response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation sleep deprivation involved 48 adults. Dream of some of them for two weeks reduced to four, six or eight hours. Others have not slept for two days.

All this time, the condition of the subjects (with the exception of hours allotted to sleep) were tested in a laboratory every two hours, tested cognitive function and reaction time. Participants were also asked how they themselves assess their condition, as far as myself feel sleepy.

Why six hours of sleep is not enough

As you can imagine, the subjects who slept for eight hours a day, had the best performance of cognitive processes. People who slept four hours a day, every day to think worse and worse.

And those who slept for six hours, retain mental capacity at a high level until about the tenth day of the experiment. That's only in the last few days, the subjects performed the test items is as bad as people deprived of sleep in general.

It turns out that, just resting for six hours, you are acting just as bad as the people for two days did not close our eyes.

One of the most impressive results of the study - the fact that people who slept for six hours, did not feel sleepy. They do not even know how their results have deteriorated.

People deprived of sleep, feel more and more sleepy, and talked about it. At the end of the experiment they wanted to sleep in two times more than in the beginning. But after six hours of sleep the subjects feel a little sleepy. Although their cognitive performance did not differ from the figures nespavshih.

This finding raises an important question: how people cope with lack of sleep, if they do not even realize what it is?

We do not know how much we sleep actually

StudySleep latency and duration estimates among sleep disorder patients: variability as a function of sleep disorder diagnosis, sleep history, and psychological characteristics University of Chicago found that people often overestimate the same amount of sleep as underestimating it. Another studySleep duration: how well do self-reports reflect objective measures? The CARDIA Sleep Study It has shown that people overestimate sleep time by an average of 0.8 hours.

So if you think you slept seven hours it is quite possible that you are actually rested only six hours.

It turns out, no one can say exactly how much he sleeps and when nap. All believe that sleeping more than it actually is.

Determine how much you sleep, it is not as easy as it seems. But there are some common tips that will definitely help you to sleep better:

1. Lie down in one and the same time.
2. Do not use the gadgets for half an hour before bedtime.
3. Do not drink alcohol.
4. Add physical activity during the day.

Another tip, which is less common: to sleep better, you need to lose weight. According toObesity and sleep US National Sleep Foundation, there is a direct relationship between insomnia and obesity.

Other causes of sleep disorders - is the physical and mental problems. Even the stress and bad moods can adversely affect sleep.

Yes, calculate the lack of sleep is difficult. But you can try to increase the quantity and quality and, as a consequence, increase their productivity.