The Importance of ‘Good’ Sleep

[GordMay]

The Importance of ‘Good’ Sleep

Back in 2005, Canadians averaged about eight hours of sleep a night. By 2013, that dropped to seven. Now, about 40 per cent of Canadians are dealing with some kind of sleep disorder.

Something about sleep keeps our bodies and minds from falling apart. The lack of it has been linked to obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and depression. Researchers are now discovering some fascinating things about how important sleep is to the way our brains store memories, and learn things.

A growing body of research points to clear links, between the quality of your sleep and memory formation [1], including a new paper [2] which found just a one per cent reduction in deep sleep, each year, in individuals aged 60 and up, was associated with a significantly higher risk of developing dementia.

Another study [3], involving American nurses, found people who both under- or overslept — either five hours or less a night, or nine hours or more — showed worse performance on cognitive tests. The researchers estimated those groups were mentally two years older, than their counterparts getting seven or eight hours of sleep each night.

Some research [4] even suggests sleep deprivation mimics the feeling of being drunk, with one Australian research team likening a single day of sleep deprivation, with the mental impairment of a blood alcohol concentration of 0.10 per cent.

Solo sailors take note.

[1] “Sleep loss and temporal memory” ~ by Y Harrison & J A Horne
➥ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10718074/

[2] “Association Between Slow-Wave Sleep Loss and Incident Dementia” ~ by Jayandra J. Himali, PhD, et al
➥ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...stract/2810957

[3] “Sleep Duration in Midlife and Later Life in Relation to Cognition” ~ by
Elizabeth E. Devore ScD, et al
➥ https://agsjournals.onlinelibrary.wi...1111/jgs.12790

[4] “Fatigue, alcohol and performance impairment” ~ by Drew Dawson & Kathryn Reid
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/40775