![]() ![]() Sleep was once a fringe research topic, but public interest has grown in recent years. She recently published a chapter in the first textbook ever published on sleep as a matter of public health. Szklo-Coxe has spent her career studying how sleep research can inform public policy to better align the rhythms of our daily lives with the rhythms of our sleep. With DST, we get less light in the morning, so it disrupts this zeitgeber - an external cue that influences our internal circadian clocks." Permanent Daylight Savings Time may even work against the changes we're trying to make with delaying school start times. "National year-round fixed standard time aligns best with human circadian rhythm biology and would be best for public health and safety. She notes the American Academy of Sleep Medicine supports year-round standard time. But with daylight savings, there is an increased risk for social jet lag, which is when your work, school and other responsibilities are chronically misaligned with your natural biological circadian rhythm," said Szklo-Coxe, an associate professor of community and environmental health in the College of Health Sciences. "I do agree seasonal time changes twice a year should be eliminated, and a permanent time established. But the proposal may miss the mark for achieving good sleep, according to Old Dominion University sleep researcher Mariana Szklo-Coxe. Congress appears to agree last week, the Senate approved the Sunshine Protection Act that, if signed into law, would make daylight savings time permanent. “There are many important connections between health and sleep,” says Wu.For many, losing an hour of sleep at the end of daylight savings time is enough to throw off a week. Immunity is compromised, increasing the likelihood of illness and infection. Symptoms of depression, seizures, high blood pressure and migraines worsen. When people don’t get enough sleep, their health risks rise. Sleep is vital to the rest of the body too. Researchers also believe that sleep may promote the removal of waste products from brain cells-something that seems to occur less efficiently when the brain is awake. ![]() If we sleep too little, we become unable to process what we’ve learned during the day and we have more trouble remembering it in the future. First, a healthy amount of sleep is vital for “brain plasticity,” or the brain’s ability to adapt to input. If you have ever felt foggy after a poor night’s sleep, it won’t surprise you that sleep significantly impacts brain function. Napping for more than 30 minutes later in the day can throw off your night’s sleep by decreasing your body’s sleep drive. A major difference between sleep and hunger: Your body can’t force you to eat when you’re hungry, but when you’re tired, it can put you to sleep, even if you’re in a meeting or behind the wheel of a car. Throughout the day, your desire for sleep builds, and when it reaches a certain point, you need to sleep. Sleep drive also plays a key role: Your body craves sleep, much like it hungers for food. People with total blindness often have trouble sleeping because they are unable to detect and respond to these light cues. One key function of this clock is responding to light cues, ramping up production of the hormone melatonin at night, then switching it off when it senses light. On a typical night, you’ll cycle through four or five times.Īccording to Wu, there are two main processes that regulate sleep: circadian rhythms and sleep drive.Ĭircadian rhythms are controlled by a biological clock located in the brain. The cycle then repeats itself, but with each cycle you spend less time in the deeper stages three and four of sleep and more time in REM sleep. Though REM sleep was previously believed to be the most important sleep phase for learning and memory, newer data suggests that non-REM sleep is more important for these tasks, as well as being the more restful and restorative phase of sleep. The third and fourth stages are deep sleep. The second is light sleep, when heart rate and breathing regulate and body temperature drops. The first stage comes between being awake and falling asleep. The first part of the cycle is non-REM sleep, which is composed of four stages. Throughout your time asleep, your brain will cycle repeatedly through two different types of sleep: REM (rapid-eye movement) sleep and non-REM sleep. ![]() “But it turns out that sleep is a period during which the brain is engaged in a number of activities necessary to life-which are closely linked to quality of life,” says Johns Hopkins sleep expert. But what exactly happens when you sleep?īefore the 1950s, most people believed sleep was a passive activity during which the body and brain were dormant. The human body requires rest to recharge. Sleep accounts for one-quarter to one-third of the human lifespan.
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