Why sleep is so important

Accommodation it is not only a necessity, like hunger and thirst, but also a natural medicine, the most important one we have available, to cure various diseases and to prevent others.

Benefits of sleep

We spend about a third of our lives sleep, and the ancient medical school of Salerno already defined the sonno like "man's first medicine». Now, for at least twenty years, studies have been multiplying that delve into the effects of a function that cannot be considered solely biological.

In particular, sleep ensures the optimal functioning of a multitude of processes: the activity of the nervous system immune defense (sleep is particularly useful as a preventative measure even during the Covid-19 epidemic), skin radiance, the body's hormonal balance, emotional and mental health. Not to mention the functioning of the brain, where sleep improves learning abilities, memory processes, and is essential for cleaning the brain and eliminating "waste".

This is why a night's sleep improves your mood, physical condition, the memory, cognitive abilities and our general health. When we sleep, the whole body benefits., as temperature and blood pressure drop, breathing and pulse slow, and consciousness gradually fades. But the brain remains active.

• It improves creativity. This is a secondary effect of brain cleansing: brain hygiene, in fact, makes us more creative.
• It protects against hormonal problems. This benefit is especially true for women who are going through periods of major hormonal changes, such as menopause.
• It helps avoid accidents. This, too, is a result of brain cleansing. After a good night's sleep, we're more alert and able to pay attention: useful conditions, for example, when we have to drive.
• It speeds up the metabolism. The mechanism can be explained in reverse: if we sleep little, the body struggles to absorb sugars. This results in weight gain, weight gain, and feeling tired and fatigued. Even when we haven't made any particular effort. In a word, we could say that sonno It's a natural diet.
• We are more beautiful. Even people's external appearance, thanks to sonno, improves. A 2020 Swedish research, published in the British Medical Journal, shows how the same people who sleep badly are considered less attractive and less healthy.

How to recognize quality sleep

It often happens, when you wake up, that you have the feeling of "not having slept enough". The reason is linked to the qualità del sonno, crucial for enjoying its benefits. There are seven components, measured by a test called the "Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index," to classify sleep quality. These include its duration, effectiveness, time taken to fall asleep, subjective perception of its quality, sleep disturbances, medication use, and difficulties experienced throughout the day.

Studies on insomnia

Unfortunately, 80% of adults suffer from a sleep deficit. We pay for it not only in the form of stress. Sleeping less than necessary can cause dementia, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's. The "sleep science” becomes crucial for the prevention of many degenerative brain diseasesThis is revealed by two American studies published respectively in the journals Science and The Journal of NeuroscienceTogether, they open new avenues in understanding how our brain works and the role sleep plays in its "maintenance." The first study is by Maiken Nedergaard, a Danish biologist who leads a team of scientists at the University of Rochester in New York.

Sleep and cognitive abilities

The starting point of the experiments conducted by this team was the search for an “evolutionary explanation” of sleep. Accommodation, in fact, at least at first glance, it is an inefficient, unproductive, even dangerous activity: our caveman ancestors risked being devoured by beasts while sleeping. Nedergaard has found confirmation for a hypothesis that has been circulating among scientists for many decades: that sleep is the time when Our brain "cleans up" its internal parts, eliminating junk, waste.

It's a bit like what the lymphatic system does with our muscles, eliminating the lactic acid created by exercise. By analogy, the Danish scientist has named the system that operates in the brain the "glymphatic" system. And more importantly, she has demonstrated its existence and functioning with numerous laboratory experiments. For now, these have been limited to mice, monkeys, dogs, and goats.

What happens while we sleep

The verdict is clear, however. Just as muscles under stress produce toxins,, also brain accumulates "garbage" during the dayWhen we're awake, the automatic cleansing of the glymphatic system proceeds slowly, a modest 5% of its work when we sleep. During sleep, the area occupied by the glymphatic system, where the brainwashing fluids flow, can occupy up to 20% of our brain volume. These "detergents" are essential for eliminating proteins called beta-amyloid and tau, which are associated with Alzheimer's.

Sleeping too little is bad for you

On the one hand, it's reassuring to know that there's a cleaning company that goes into action every night, occupying our sleep hours by performing such a valuable job. On the other hand, this makes the sleep deficit that afflicts more or less all of us, and which is getting worse, even more alarming. Sigrid Veasey of Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology (University of Pennsylvania) with his group of researchers has demonstrated that if the sleep deficit is chronic, the brain metabolism suffers serious damage, neurons degenerate. The New York Times reports data developed by the National Sleep Foundation: an adult needs sleep seven to nine hours per night, but over the last 50 years we have reduced our sleep, on average between one and two hours a night. In the last decade alone we have lost an average 38 minutes of sleep per night.

In the United States 50 to 70 million people suffer from chronic diseases sonnoThis could be the trigger for a future Alzheimer's, dementia, and Parkinson's epidemic, neurodegenerative diseases in which the very proteins we eliminate during sleep appear. Unfortunately, the answer cannot come from the massive use of sleeping pills: the glymphatic system works less well when sleep is “artificialIf anything, a challenge for science will be to find a drug that acts as a surrogate for the glymphatic system, cleansing our brain of toxins and waste. Then we could realize the age-old dream of so many children: never going to sleep again.

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