Our grandmothers always said that 8 hours of sleep are necessary to feel good, but were they right? This is the question posed by a group of British researchers, who analyzed a large sample of people, arriving at truly surprising results.
Well, let’s forget the 8 hours of sleep, that’s how long it is necessary to stay in the arms of Morpheus to be able to stay young and fit. Because not everyone knows that one of the first causes of premature aging is the lack of adequate rest. So good nutrition, daily exercise and skin care become completely useless if you don’t get enough sleep. There is even evidence that reducing sleep to just 5 hours negatively affects heart health. The British experts have compared the amount of rest with the brain activities of a large number of people, more than 500,000, aged between 38 and 73 years.
From this in-depth analysis it emerged that a specific area of the brain reduces in size, and consequently in capacity, if you sleep too little, but also for too long. This area is called the hippocampus, because it is shaped like a seahorse. Well, this organ is considered the seat of memory. It is easy to understand how its reduction in size leads to more or less severe amnesia.
Let’s forget about 8 hours of sleep, here’s how much you need to sleep over 40 to stay young and active
No memory problems, despite getting older, were found in a group of people who on average rest the same number of hours. They have also been shown to have a greater speed in analyzing everyday problems and to find the fastest and most effective solution. The skin and vision are also younger and their decline much slower.
Therefore, those who have obtained the best results in cognitive tests are the group of people who rest on average 7 hours a night. Furthermore, it was found that middle-aged women, due to their different hormonal balance, have to sleep between 11 and 13 minutes longer than males to obtain the same results.
We therefore remember that in order to stay young and in shape, a good rest has the same importance as a healthy diet and adequate physical movement.
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