A team of researchers from Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, have analyzed some of the impacts that sleep loss generates among adults, their research has been published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Participants spent 10 days sleeping about a third of the hours they used to sleep, the following week being devoted entirely to recovery.
The study tells us that sleep deprivation has a strong impact on our functionality, deficit in clarity of thought.
Recovery was not easy, even after the week dedicated to sleep.
The average amount of sleep for adults varies from person to person but on average it takes 7 hours a day.
Stephanie M. Stahl is Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine and Clinical Neurology at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis commented on how important studies like this are and how important the negative impact that lack of sleep has. about our daytime functioning.
It is common among adults to reduce the hours of sleep in favor of other activities such as work or play.
The effects of chronic sleep deprivation are greatly underestimated by people. The idea of being able to catch up on sleep on the weekend is actually a false belief.
Sleep disruption is common in certain industries, such as entertainment, healthcare, and transportation.
The ability to work from home, a fundamental practice during lockdowns due to the pandemic, however, has the negative side of being able to create imbalances in the cycle of activity and rest.
The life we live has an ever faster pace. However, this ignores our biology and the fact that we are daytime creatures in need of sleep, underestimating chronic sleep deprivation and its effects, such as lack of concentration and the potential for increased heart disease, cancer, dementia, etc. as Dr. Stahl said.
Recovery from sleep loss is what interested the research team the most.
In the study, the researchers used sophisticated wakefulness measures. One such measure was continuous actigraphy by monitoring participants’ activity levels.
Instead, by monitoring EEG brain activity on a daily basis along with subjective and objective cognitive performance tests, the scientists found that reaction rates returned to baseline after 1 week of recovery sleep.
The study authors write: “The current study suggests that 7-day recovery after 10-day sleep restriction is only enough to return the reaction rate to baseline, while other behavioral, locomotor and neurophysiological measures they show no such improvement. ”
However, it should be noted that the sample size is relatively small, so the study was somewhat underpowered
In any case, the neurobehavioral consequences of chronic sleep deprivation last longer than we expect and cannot be overcome so easily.
Unfortunately, we assume too easily that we can recover from lack of sleep, but this is not the case, studies like this bring out a very widespread problem in our society but still not adequately treated, if you are interested in the subject we advise you to read the article by MNT!
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