Melania Rizzoli
At night, while we sleep, our brain goes into sleep mode but a part of it remains awake and active, continues to monitor the environment around us, protecting the induction and continuation of our sleep for hours, and remains alert and ready. precisely to restore the state of wakefulness quickly, that is to wake us up when necessary, when for example noxious stimuli or sudden sensory disturbances break out. It will have happened to each of us to wake up in the middle of the night and immediately resume the state of consciousness for a sudden noise, a thud, a voice call or a physical stimulus, but also for a slight sound, and this is because the brain maintains, even when we are in the phase of deep sleep, a state of high attention, an alert to protect our safety during the dream and unconscious state, when we abandon ourselves to the cerebral numbness that lowers the eyelids and turns off the gaze and alertness.
THE DISORDERS – For these reasons, falling asleep with the TV on is unhealthy and in the long run can be even dangerous, since this habit is capable of developing sensory disturbances that persist even during the state of daily wakefulness due to incomplete rest and annoyed by background noises, affecting the mood and reactivity of our activities of the day. Researchers from the University of Salzburg have published a study in the Journal of Neurosciences in which they undoubtedly demonstrate how disturbed sleep causes the K-Complexes, or brain waves linked to sensory disturbances during sleep, to increase dramatically, which are amplified when during sleep. at night we remain in the presence of a tuned television, even with the volume turned down, if not even in “mute” mode, because they have emphasized that even the light of the screen, which varies alternating with bright and sparkling flashes the images transmitted that follow one another, is capable of altering rest and causing cerebral disharmony throughout the night. In fact, exposure to artificial night light has been found to be responsible for altering hormonal metabolism and other biological processes that affect health conditions, to the point of affecting the lipid metabolism that regulates overweight, which is slowed down when exposed to night light. even to that small and feeble security, compared to those who sleep in total darkness.
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A HABIT – Many people, during the Covid epidemic and during the long isolations and quarantines imposed by the pandemic, as well as in recent weeks due to the recent war between Russia and Ukraine, got used to falling asleep with the TV on, in order not to lose the breaking news and maybe changing the channel to distract yourself from the anxiety caused by too many adverse and close events that have happened and persist in the daily news, or simply to fall asleep to the background of the singsong vocal sound of many broadcasts, without knowing that to forget to turn off the screen and the light does not make us rest well and properly, it keeps the brain in a continuous state of alert, since even while we sleep it is able to learn and store what it hears and sees with the passing of the hours while we sleep, discharging then in dreams that who considers useless, waste or too much in an attempt to keep the biological and hormonal clock and the normal cycle in order sleep-wake. Therefore, when it is time to go to sleep, it is always better to turn off TV, lights and smartphones, so as not to constantly stress our most precious organ during sleep, so as not to subject the neurological computer essential to life that regulates the life to further stress. our existence day and night, whose lack of rest will make itself felt the following day with all its tiredness and irritability, so we hear ourselves say: “Didn’t you sleep well?”, making us not only anxious and irascible in the eyes of others, but also unpleasant and unbearable, all due to a TV left on that we have not, at least apparently, not even seen, followed or listened to.