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Sleeping little is not good for your health: according to experts we run the great risk of falling terribly seriously ill.
Systematically resting less than we should – less than 5 hours a night – puts us at a very high risk of seriously compromising our health. Here’s what scientists discovered.
Sleeping too little risks making us seriously ill – Abruzzo.cityrumors.it
It has long been known that Chronic lack of sleep is linked to the symptoms of a much feared disease and very difficult to deal with. A recent study has provided further keys to understanding this relationship even further. The research, which appeared in the magazine Translational Psychiatry, shows that the systematic lack of night rest could anticipate and increase the probability of getting sick. Let’s try to understand better what it is.
Sleeping 5 hours a night, that’s what you risk
Resting less than 5 hours a night could increase the risk of developing depression. Odessa Hamilton, a biobehavioral epidemiology researcher at University College London and lead author of the study, talks about a relationship similar to «Chicken and egg story between suboptimal sleep duration and depression».
Does less than 5 hours of sleep put us at risk of disease? Abruzzo.cityrumors.it
Often both «they occur concurrently, but the question of which of the two comes first is decidedly open», explains the expert. Some clues come from the investigation into «genetic susceptibility to diseases» which allowed us to determine that “Lack of sleep probably precedes symptoms of depression, rather than the opposite.”
The team of researchers led by Hamilton examined the genetic and health data of 7,146 people (average age 65 years) enrolled in a research among the British population, theEnglish Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). The results showed that those who showed a greater genetic predisposition to sleep less than 5 hours a night it also turned out more likely (2.5 times more) to develop symptoms of depression over the following 4-12 years.
However, the opposite did not happen: that is, those who were more genetically predisposed to depression did not show a greater propensity to sleep little. However, it remains true that depression also leads to sleep disturbances. A third of participants already suffering from depression slept worse than those who didn’t suffer from it.
Ma sleeping too much is also bad for you and leads to a higher risk of developing depression later. In fact, participants who slept more than 9 hours a night were 1.5 times more likely to suffer from depression than those who slept an average of 7 hours a night.
This does not mean, warns Hamilton, that those with sleep disorders will inevitably become ill with depression. The British research should be read as confirmation that sleep is important for mental health. The scholar recommends «avoid procrastinating the moment of rest».
A genetic predisposition, the scholar then recalled, is not equivalent to having a destiny set in stone. «There is this saying in genetics, that the genes load the gun and the environment pulls the trigger. You may be genetically predisposed to this, but you can take action to mitigate the risk».